Lilias Rider Haggard Explained

Lilias Margitson Rider Haggard, MBE (9 December 1892 – 9 January 1968) was the fourth and youngest child of the British writer Sir Henry Rider Haggard and Mariana Louisa Margitson^[1] and a cousin of the naval officer Sir Vernon Haggard and the diplomat Sir Godfrey Haggard.^[2]

A member of the Haggard family, she was educated at Saint Felix School in Southwold, Suffolk. For her work as a Voluntary Aid Detachment auxiliary nurse during the First World War, she was awarded an MBE in 1920. She was a member of Norfolk County Council from 1949 to 1952 and in 1953 was elected president of the Norfolk Rural Craftsmen's Guild.

She wrote a number of books, including a biography of her father entitled The Cloak That I Left. Her book Norfolk Life, based on columns she wrote for the Eastern Daily Press, contains an introduction by Henry Williamson.

She is buried at Ditchingham, Norfolk,^[3] and is the subject of a 2015 biography by Victoria Manthorpe.^[4]

Books

• I Walked by Night: Being the Life History of the King of the Norfolk Poachers, written by himself, editor (1935), illus. Edward Seago
• The Rabbit Skin Cap: A Tale of a Norfolk Countryman's Youth, editor (1939), illus. Edward Seago
• Norfolk Life (1943), with Henry Williamson
• A Norfolk Notebook (1946)
• A Country Scrapbook (1950), illus. Wilfred S. Pettitt
• The Cloak That I Left: A Biography of the Author Henry Rider Haggard (1951)
• Too Late for Tears (1969), a biography of her mother and her family

Notes and References

1. Dawson Haggard D.,The History of the Haggard Family in England and America: 1433-1899 (Albany, New York, 1899) - retrieved online at Web site: Haggard/Hoggard Families . 2015-12-07 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20160208160932/http://haggard.surnames.com/historical_files/H1.htm . 2016-02-08 . on 3 October 2010
2. Burke, B. A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, 14th ed. (1925). Haggard of Bradenham, pp. 804-806.
3. Literary Norfolk (2007) - retrieved online at http://www.literarynorfolk.co.uk/ditchingham.htm on 3 October 2010
4. Manthorpe, V., Lilias Rider Haggard: Countrywoman (Poppyland Publishing, 2015)