page_title: Althea Gyles
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: Althea Gyles / Later life
caption_attribution_description: English: Cover of W. B. Yeats's book *The Secret Rose*, designed by Althea Gyles, first published 1897
context_page_description: Althea Gyles was an Irish poet and artist. She is known for her book cover designs, for writers who included W. B. Yeats.
context_section_description: Although Gyles continued to work, at writing and painting, she also drifted and had poor health. She gravitated towards a variety of movements and interests, which included horoscope writing, Buddhism, anti-vivisection, and vegetarianism, while being supported by dissatisfied patrons such as Clifford Bax, who considered her a parasite. The publisher Grant Richards encouraged her to write her memoirs of the 1890s. As a result, she wrote a novel, Pilgrimage, which Richards rejected in February 1921, although he continued to request a memoir until early 1924. She wrote to Farjeon in the 1930s, while living in awful conditions in a Brixton basement, with a big mongrel dog. The last address recorded for her was 19, Tredown Road, Lewisham, at which time her room was empty except for a chaise longue, a few items of bric-à-brac, and her manuscripts. Gyles died in a nursing home at 69, Crystal Palace Park Road, Beckenham, Kent, on 23 January 1949. In Faith Compton Mackenzie's novel Tatting (1957), a character called Ariadne Berden is based on Gyles.
  Photographs of Gyles with Constance Markievicz were discovered in 2007. Her manuscripts are now in the collections of the University of Reading.
caption: The Secret Rose, 1897, cover by Althea Gyles
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