Mona Wilson


Mona Wilson was a British civil servant and author. She is known for her scholarly work, including The Life of William Blake and other biographies of literary and historical figures. As a civil servant, she was one of the first women in the United Kingdom to earn equal pay for her work.

Life

Wilson was born in Hillmorton Road, Rugby to James Wilson and Annie Elizabeth Moore. She was educated at Clifton High School, Bristol; St Leonard's School, St Andrews; and Newnham College, Cambridge. Wilson became interested in social and industrial problems after she graduated and went on to join the Women's Trade Union League. Wilson became secretary of the Women's Trade Union League in 1899.
After being appointed to the National Insurance Commission in 1911, she received a yearly salary of £1000, making her the highest-paid woman civil servant of the time and one of the first women to receive equal pay in the United Kingdom. In 1917, she was involved in creating a mothers' Pensions bill. In 1919, she retired from civil service and began to work on her writing.
In 1932, she was made an Associate of Cambridge University.

Writing

She wrote several scholarly works after her retirement from the civil service in 1919, including The Life of William Blake, which went through several reprintings and remained popular for several decades. Her biography of William Blake was considered to be very accessible by Angus Whitehead. The Guardian wrote that Wilson "told his story more fully and sensibly than anyone else." The Observer states that her biography was "the most satisfactory since Gilchrist."
Wilson was featured in Grand Tour: A Journey in the Tracks of the Age of Aristocracy, where she contributes a piece about the Wife of Bath.
Jane Austen and Some Contemporaries describes the biographies of Jane Austen and several women who were her contemporaries. The book was described by The Guardian as being very thorough in its understanding of the people of Austen's time, though a little difficult to follow if the reader is not familiar with the time period.
Wilson also published a short story under the nom de plume "An Ordeal" in The Nation in 1909 and a novella "The Story of Rosalind Retold From Her Diary" as "Monica Moore" in 1910.

Publications