May Sinclair was the pseudonym of Mary Amelia St. Clair (1862 - 1946), a popular British writer. She was known for two dozen novels, short stories and poetry. She was an active suffragist, and member of the Woman Writers' Suffrage League. She was also a significant critic, in the area of modernist poetry and prose; the term stream of consciousness, in its literary sense, is attributed to her. A pseudonym (Greek: false name) is a fictitious name used by an individual as an alternative to their legal name (whereas an allonym is the name of another actual person assumed by one person in authorship of a work of art; e. ... 1862 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... 1946 was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... Suffragette with banner, Washington DC, 1918 The title of suffragette was given to members of the womens suffrage movement in the United Kingdom and United States, particularly in the years prior to World War I. The name was the Womens Social and Political Union (founded in 1903). ... This article focuses on the cultural movement labeled modernism or the modern movement. See also: Modernism (Roman Catholicism) or Modernist Christianity; Modernismo for specific art movement(s) in Spain and Catalonia. ... In psychology and philosophy stream of consciousness, introduced by William James, is the set of constantly changing inner thoughts and sensations which an individual has while conscious, used as a synonym for stream of thought. ...

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 carer for her brothers (four of five, all older and all suffering from a fatal congenital heart disease). This article is about the English county. ... Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough on Merseyside in north west England, on the north side of the Mersey estuary. ... Ilford is a town in the London Borough of Redbridge in East London. ...

From 1896 she wrote professionally, to support herself and her mother, who died in 1901. She treated a number of themes relating to the position of women, and marriage. She also wrote non-fiction based on studies of philosophy, particularly German idealism. Her works sold well in the United States. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

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 for ambulance duty in Belgium, at the start of World War I. She was able to endure only a few weeks at the front; she wrote about the experience in both prose and poetry. Psychoanalysis is the revelation of unconscious relations, in a systematic way through an associative process. ... Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud (May 7, 1856 – September 23, 1939; ) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology, based on his theory that unconscious motives control much behavior, that particular kinds of unconscious thoughts and memories, especially sexual and aggressive ones, are the source of... Ambulance An ambulance is a vehicle designated for the transport of sick or injured people. ... World War I was primarily a European conflict with many facets: immense human sacrifice, stalemate trench warfare, and the use of new, devastating weapons - tanks, aircraft, machineguns, and poison gas. ...

She wrote early criticism on Imagism and the poet H. D. (1915 in The Egoist); she was on social terms with H. D., Richard Aldington and Ezra Pound at the time. She reviewed positively also 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. Ezra Pound, one of the prime movers of Imagism. ... H.D. in the mid 1910s Hilda Doolittle (September 10, 1886 - September 27, 1961), better known by the pen name H.D., was an American poet, novelist and memoirist. ... The Egoist was a London literary magazine published from 1914 to 1919, during which time it published early modernist works, including those of James Joyce. ... Richard Aldington (July 8, 1892 – July 27, 1962) was an English writer and poet. ... Ezra Pound in 1913. ... T.S. Eliot (by E.O. Hoppe, 1919) Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965) was an Anglo-American poet, dramatist, and literary critic, whose works like The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land and Four Quartets, are considered major achievements of twentieth-century... Dorothy Miller Richardson (17 May 1873 - 17 June 1957) was the first writer to publish a novel using what was to become known as the stream-of-consciousness technique. ...

She was a member of the Society for Psychical Research from 1914. Some supernatural fiction devices appear in her shorter fiction. The Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882 by three dons of Trinity College, Cambridge (including Frederic William Henry Myers) because of their interest in spiritualism. ... Supernatural fiction is a classification of literature used to describe fiction exploiting or requiring as plot devices or themes some contradictions of the commonplace natural world and materialist assumptions about it. ...

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. Buckinghamshire (abbreviated Bucks) is a county in South East England. ...

Works

• Nakiketas and other poems (1886) as Julian Sinclair
• Essays in Verse (1892)
• Audrey Craven (1897)
• Mr and Mrs Nevill Tyson (1897) also The Tysons
• Two Sides Of A Question (1901)
• The Divine Fire (1904)
• The Helpmate (1907)
• The Judgment of Eve (1907) stories
• The Immortal Moment (1908)
• Outlines of Church History by Rudolf Sohm (1909) translator
• The Creators (1910)
• The Flaw in the Crystal (1912)
• The Three Brontes (1912)
• Feminism (1912) pamphlet for Women’s Suffrage League
• The Combined Maze (1913)
• The Three Sisters (1914)
• The Return of the Prodigal (1914)
• A Journal of Impressions in Belgium (1915)
• The Belfry (1916)
• Tasker Jevons: The Real Story (1916)
• The Tree of Heaven (1917)
• A Defense of Idealism : Some Questions & Conclusions (1917)
• Mary Olivier: A Life (1919)
• The Romantic (1920)
• Mr. Waddington of Wyck (1921)
• Life and Death of Harriet Frean (1922)
• Anne Severn and the Fieldings (1922)
• The New Idealism (1922)
• Uncanny Stories (1923)
• A Cure of Souls (1924)
• The Dark Night: A Novel in Unrhymed Verse (1924)
• Arnold Waterlow (1924)
• The Rector of Wyck (1925)
• Far End (1926)
• The Allinghams (1927)
• History of Anthony Waring (1927)
• Fame (1929)
• Tales Told by Simpson (1930) stories
• The Intercessor, and Other Stories (1931)

References

• Theophilus Ernest Martin Sinclair-Boll (1973) Miss May Sinclair: Novelist; A Biographical and Critical Introduction
• Suzanne Raitt (2000) May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian

External links

• A 2001 essay by Leigh Wilson (University of Westminster), from The Literary Encyclopedia
• Works by May Sinclair from Project Gutenberg