Gamel Woolsey: A Bohemian American spirit in Malaga

On Gamel Woolsey's grave in the English Cemetery in Malaga appears a quote from a poem by William Shakespeare, taken from his play Cymbeline: 'Fear no more the heat o' the sun.' The American writer and poet is buried next to her husband, the English Hispanist and author, Gerald Brenan.

Born Elizabeth Gammell Woolsey in South Carolina in 1895, in later years she took her middle name which she shortened to Gamel. She moved to New York in 1921 where she had dreams of becoming an actress or a writer and it is where she met the British novelist Llewelyn Powys, with whom she would have a stormy relationship but it was with him that she moved to England.

Woolsey met Brenan in London and the couple married in Rome in 1931 and at the end of 1934 they moved to Spain and bought a house in Churriana. However, two years later they were forced to leave as Malaga was in the grips of the Civil War. They stayed away until 1953.

In her book Malaga Burning, Woolsey explains how the war affected them: "We tried to forget the war, but all the while it lay heavy and sore at the bottom of our minds," she says.

Although a writer and poet in her own right, Woolsey spent much of her time typing and editing Brenan's manuscripts and she never left his side, despite the numerous infidelities in their relationship.

Woolsey wrote six books of poems which have never been published in Spain even though some of them refer to her time in Malaga, such as Alba, in which she pays tribute to Churriana.

The couple were visited by contemporaries including Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf and E. E. Cummings and had a busy social life while living in Malaga.

Gamel Woolsey died of cancer in January 1968. Brenan's diaries reveal that her final days were marked by great pain and the doctor, afraid of being accused of euthanasia, would not allow her to be sedated.