Helen Jane Waddell (31 May 1889 – 5 March 1965) was an Irish poet, scholar, theological novelist, translator, publisher's reader and playwright.
Her mother, Jane Martin, died after returning to Ireland while Helen was a baby; Hugh Waddell remarried before taking his four younger children and new wife back to Japan.
Mrs Waddell struggled with alcoholism and, as her health deteriorated in her later years, Helen had to bear the physical work of caring for her while shielding the family from the social stigma current at the time.
[1] As the daughter of a Presbyterian minister and missionary, Helen Wadell's religious faith was profound, and she applied her skills in translating Latin theological writing and poetry with the devotion of a critical believer.
The biography by Felicitas Corrigan lays great stress on the importance of Helen's faith in influencing the choices she made in her life, and the standards for how she chose to live.
From 1923 to 1925, Waddell held the Lady Margaret Hall's Susette Taylor Fellowship,[2]: 48 a travelling scholarship that allowed her to conduct research in Paris.
Among her circle of friends in London, where she was vice-president of the Irish Literary Society, were W. B. Yeats, Virginia Woolf, Rose Macaulay, Max Beerbohm and George William Russell.
[8] Waddell received honorary degrees from the universities of Columbia, Belfast, Durham and St. Andrews and won the Benson Medal of the Royal Society of Literature.