Born: 9 April 1865, United Kingdom
Died: 4 October 1904
Country most active: India
Also known as: Laurence Hope, Violet Adela Florence Cory, Violet Nicholson
The following is excerpted from the 1912 supplement to Dictionary of National Biography, originally published between 1885 and 1900, by Smith, Elder & Co. It was written by Francis Bickley.
NICOLSON, Mrs. ADELA FLORENCE, ‘Laurence Hope’ (1865–1904), poetess, born at Stoke House, Stoke Bishop, Gloucestershire, on 9 April 1865, was daughter of Arthur Cory, colonel in the Indian army, by his wife Fanny Elizabeth Griffin. She was educated at a private school in Richmond, and afterwards went to reside with her parents in India. In 1889 she married Colonel Malcolm Hassels Nicolson of the Bengal army [see below] and settled at Madras. The name Violet, by which her husband called her, was not baptismal. Mrs. Nicolson devoted her leisure to poetry. Her first volume, in which she first adopted the pseudonym of ‘Laurence Hope,’ ‘The Garden of Kama and other Love Lyrics from India, arranged in Verse by Laurence Hope,’ was published in 1901. Generally reviewed as the work of a man, it attracted considerable attention and was reissued as ‘Songs from the Garden of Kama’ in 1908. How far the substance of the poems was drawn from Indian originals was a matter of doubt. They are marked by an oriental luxuriance of passion, but the influence of Swinburne and other modern English poets is evident in diction and versification. Two other volumes under the same pseudonym, ‘Stars of the Desert’ (1903) and ‘Indian Love,’ published posthumously in 1905, display similar characteristics and confirmed without enhancing their author’s reputation. Some of her shorter poems have become popular in musical settings. Mrs. Nicolson died by her own hand, of poisoning by perchloride of mercury, on 4 Oct. 1904, at Dunmore House, Madras. She had suffered acute depression since her husband’s death two months before. She was buried, like General Nicolson, in St. Mary’s cemetery, Madras. She left one son, Malcolm Josceline Nicolson.