May Sinclair

May Sinclair

May Sinclair c. 1912
Born (1863-08-24)24 August 1863
Rock Ferry, Cheshire
Died 14 November 1946(1946-11-14)
Buckinghamshire, England
Occupation Novelist and poet

May Sinclair was the pseudonym of Mary Amelia St. Clair (24 August 1863 – 14 November 1946), a popular British writer who wrote about two dozen novels, short stories and poetry.[1] 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.

Early life

She was born in Rock Ferry, Cheshire. Her father was a Liverpool shipowner, who went bankrupt, became an alcoholic, and died before she was an adult. Her mother was strict and religious; the family moved to Ilford on the edge of London. After one year of education at Cheltenham Ladies College, she acted as caretaker for her brothers, as four of the five, all older, were suffering from a fatal congenital heart disease.

Career

From 1896 she 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.[2] She also wrote non-fiction based on studies of philosophy, particularly German idealism. 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.[2] 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; she wrote about the experience in both prose and poetry.

She wrote early criticism on Imagism and the poet H. D. (1915 in The Egoist); she was on social terms with H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), Richard Aldington and Ezra Pound at the time. She also reviewed in a positive light the poetry of T. S. Eliot (1917 in the Little Review) and the fiction of Dorothy Richardson (1918 in The Egoist). It was in connection with Richardson that she introduced "stream of consciousness" as a literary term, which was very generally adopted. Some aspects of Sinclair's subsequent novels have been traced as influenced by modernist techniques, particularly in the autobiographical Mary Olivier: A Life (1919). She was included in the 1925 Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers.

Sinclair was a believer in Spiritualism,[2] and was also a member of the Society for Psychical Research from 1914.[2]

Sinclair wrote two volumes of supernatural fiction, Uncanny Stories (1923) and The Intercessor and Other Stories (1931).[2] E. F. Bleiler called Sinclair "an underrated writer" and described Uncanny Stories as "excellent".[3] Gary Crawford has stated Sinclair's contribution to the supernatural fiction genre, "small as it is, is notable".[2] Jacques Barzun included Sinclair among a list of supernatural fiction writers that "one should make a point of seeking out".[4] Brian Stableford has stated that Sinclair's "supernatural tales are written with uncommon delicacy and precision, and they are among the most effective examples of their fugitive kind."[5] Andrew Smith has described Uncanny Stories as "an important contribution to the ghost story".[6]

From the late 1920s she was suffering from the early signs of Parkinson's disease, and ceased writing. She settled with a companion in Buckinghamshire in 1932.

Works

Portrait of May Sinclair, by E. Huggins

References

  1. ↑ Bookrags biography
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Gary Crawford, "May Sinclair" in Jack Sullivan (ed) (1986) The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, Viking Press, 1986, ISBN 0-670-80902-0 (pp. 387-8).
  3. ↑ E. F. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction, Kent State University Press, 1983
  4. ↑ Jacques Barzun, "Introduction" to The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, (p. xxviii).
  5. ↑ Brian Stableford, "Sinclair, May" in David Pringle, ed., St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost and Gothic Writers. (Detroit: St. James Press, 1998) ISBN 1558622063 (pp. 538-539)
  6. ↑ Andrew Smith, Gothic Literature. Edinburgh; Edinburgh University Press, 2007 ISBN 0748623701 (p. 130)
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