Robin Hyde, born Iris Wilkinson in Cape Town in 1906, was raised in Wellington, New Zealand. A journalist from the age of 17, she published her first poetry collection in 1929. Between 1935 and 1938, she wrote five novels, including Wednesday''s Children (1937) and Nor the Years Condemn (1938). Hyde/Wilkinson left New Zealand in 1938, visiting Hong Kong and China before travelling to England, where she died in 1939.