Amy Clarke

Amy Key Clarke (21 December 1892 – 20 June 1980) was an English mystical poet and writer, and a teacher at The Cheltenham Ladies' College.

Amy Key Clarke was born at 121 Elgin Crescent, Kensington, London, England. Her parents were Henry Clarke, a lecturer and tutor, and his wife Amy (née Key, also known as Mrs. Henry Clarke), a writer and first Headmistress of Truro High School.

Clarke was educated at St Paul's Girls' School and at The Cheltenham Ladies' College where she was a student at St Hilda’s House from 1905–1906 – the senior house of the College. After reading Classics at Newnham College she returned in 1924 to teach as Senior Classical Mistress, becoming successively Head of Classics, Head of Upper College, and Director of University Entrants. She was away from 1939 to 1947, when she returned as House Mistress of St Hilda’s House until 1948, and then finally retired in 1953.

In 1917 Amy stayed for seven weeks with Florence Cunningham (1871–1950, grand-daughter of writer Peter Cunningham) at her home in Bayswater. Florence was a mystic who believed herself to be a prophet whom the voices she heard addressed as “Mary”: she compared herself to Abraham, Isaiah and The Messiah, but it should be said that she was later, for a short period, committed to the care of the Holloway Sanatorium in Virginia Water, Surrey. Florence's daughter was Edith Cunningham, then 18, whom Amy had met at St Paul's Girls' School.

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