Mary Augusta Wakefield

Mary Augusta Wakefield (19 August 1853 – 16 September 1910) was a British composer, contralto, festival organiser, and writer. Biography Early life Wakefield was born in Kendal, where her paternal ancestors had been members of the Quaker community before converting to Anglicanism. Her parents William Henry Wakefield and Augusta Hagarty Wakefield had four sons (including the cricketer William Wakefield) and two other daughters. Her mother was from an Irish-American background. In the 1860s her father took over the family business, which included a bank and a gunpowder mill. In 1868, he built Sedgwick House a few miles outside Kendal. (The family gunpowder mill started in Sedgwick in the 18th century, but production had moved to a new site in 1850). As a child, Wakefield learned traditional border folksongs from her nurses, which she later included in her collection Northern Songs. As a teenager she was sent to a finishing school in Brighton. She studied music in London with Alberto Randegger and George Henschel, and in Rome with Giovanni Sgambati. Later life Wakefield corresponded with and visited many musicians and writers, including Lucy Broadwood, J. A. Fuller Maitland, Herbert O