Anna de Brémont was born in New York in 1849. While she was still very young her mother relocated the family to Cincinnati, Ohio where she would grow up. The move came at the tail end of a dark period for de Brémont as her father has passed away. His mother would eventually remarry to a man named Thomas Malloy.
Early Life
As a young woman de Brémont spent time working as a musician. At one point she was the principal singer of the Cincinnati Cathedral choir and then later a soloist at Henry Ward Beecher’s church, named for the famous abolitionist and clergyman, in Brooklyn, New York.
In the later part of the 1870s, de Brémont married Émile-Leon, the Count de Brémont. He was a medical doctor from France who has moved to New York to find work. The two were only married for a short period of time, approximately five years, before Émile-Leon died in May of 1882. It was at this pivotal point in her life that de Brémont moved to Europe. It was here, specifically in England, that she spent most of her life.
While in London she met and worked with, Brandon Thomas. He helped her develop a tour in which she visited a number of different continents, including Australia and Asia. She spent her time promoting herself as a musician and literary mind.
In the late 1800s, around the time that she was getting ready to publish her first collection, she was made a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn. This association, which was active in the late 1800s and early 1900s, was dedicated to the study and practice of the occult and paranormal activities.
Later Life
Her first collection of poetry was titled Love Poems, and was published in Cape Town, South Africa in 1889. It was followed two years later by The Gentleman Digger: a Study of Johannesburg Life. It was around this same period of time that she unsuccessfully tried her hand at acting, appearing on the stage of the Globe Theatre in As You Like It.
In the later parts of her life, she worked for St. Paul’s magazine in London and published her experiences of World War I in a novel called The Black Opal. By this time all of the money she had previously made in her career as a writer and musician was gone and she died penniless in Earl’s Court in 1922. She was seventy-three years old.
