May Sinclair

The Helpmate (eBook, ePUB)

'She had lain in that uncomfortable position, motionless, irremediably awake''

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Mary Amelia St. Clair was born on the 24th August 1863 in Rock Ferry, Cheshire.

Her father was a Liverpool shipowner who, after being made bankrupt, became an alcoholic and died whilst May was still a child. The family then moved to Ilford, just outside London and, after a solitary year of education, May was required to stay home and help look after her older brothers, four of whom were suffering from fatal congenital heart disease.

Despite this difficult start May was determined to pursue a literary career. From 1896 May wrote professionally to support herself and her mother. By the turn of the century she was producing not only poetry volumes but short stories, novels and some non-fiction. She was an active feminist and supporter of the Suffrage Movement, her literary talents help to shred ideas that the suffragists were driven by sexual frustration because of the shortage of men.

Her 1913 novel 'The Combined Maze', the story of a London clerk and the two women he loves, was highly praised by many, including George Orwell, while Agatha Christie considered it one of the greatest English novels of its time.

In 1914, she volunteered to join the Munro Ambulance Corps on the Western Front in Flanders. Although her time there was short-lived the experience was later reflected in both prose and poetry.

She published several poetry volumes as well as writing early criticism on Imagism and several poets of the movement. Her novels were now also influenced by modernist techniques and her supernatural short stories are increasingly seen as valuable additions to the genre.

From the late 1920s, she suffered from the onset of Parkinson's disease, and her writing career was effectively over.

May Sinclair died on the 14th November 1946. She was 83 and buried at St John-at-Hampstead's churchyard, London.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Copyright Group
• Erscheinungstermin: 12. Juni 2023
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781803549392
• Artikelnr.: 68327495

Autorenporträt

May Sinclair was the pseudonym of Mary Amelia St. Clair (1863 - 1946), a popular British writer who wrote about two dozen novels, short stories and poetry. She was an active suffragist and member of the Woman Writers' Suffrage League. May Sinclair was also a significant critic in the area of modernist poetry and prose and she is attributed with first using the term stream of consciousness in a literary context, when reviewing the first volumes of Dorothy Richardson's novel sequence Pilgrimage (1915-67), in The Egoist, April 1918. From 1896 Sinclair wrote professionally to support herself and her mother, who died in 1901. An active feminist, Sinclair treated a number of themes relating to the position of women and marriage. Her works sold well in the United States. Around 1913, at the Medico-Psychological Clinic in London, she became interested in psychoanalytic thought and introduced matter related to Sigmund Freud's teaching in her novels. In 1914, she volunteered to join the Munro Ambulance Corps, a charitable organization (which included Lady Dorothie Feilding, Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm) that aided wounded Belgian soldiers on the Western Front in Flanders. She was sent home after only a few weeks at the front. Her 1913 novel The Combined Maze, the story of a London clerk and the two women he loves, was highly praised by critics, including George Orwell, while Agatha Christie considered it one of the greatest English novels of its time.