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May Sinclair papers
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Held at: University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts [Contact Us]3420 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6206
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
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May Sinclair was a popular British author of novels, poems, stories, essays, and philosophical studies. Between 1897 and 1927 she published twenty-four novels, two novellas, five volumes of short stories, two collections of verse, two volumes of philosophy, and many essays. Her work reflects the cutting edge in literature of her time. In 1918 Sinclair coined the phrase stream-of-consciousness in an essay, "The Novels of Dorothy Richardson." Sinclair pioneered the development of the psychological novel. The Three Sisters, published in 1914, is recognized as her first attempt at this form, although capturing the unconscious motivations of her characters is evident in her published writings of the 1890s.
Mary Amelia (May) St. Clair Sinclair was born August 24, 1863, to William and Amelia Sinclair. She was their last child and the only girl in a family of five boys. William Sinclair was a well-to-do shipowner, whose ships sailed from Belfast to the West Indies, Bombay, Barbados, the Baltic Sea, Leghorn, Aden, Malaya, China, Ceylon, and Australia. Around 1870, when May was seven years old, her father's business failed and he and his wife separated. As a result of the financial losses, the family scattered. The boys, now young adults, went out on their own, and Sinclair and her mother lived together in straitened circumstances. They relied on relatives and friends for assistance and moved frequently. Mr. Sinclair died of complications of alcoholism in 1881.
Mrs. Sinclair encouraged her sons (by now young adults) to regard themselves as gentleman and to pursue all the luxuries entitled to them. Despite her impoverished conditions, Mrs. Sinclair contributed to her sons' support and would make any financial sacrifice necessary to ensure their status as gentleman, and she expected her daughter to do the same. Sinclair's early education was a result of her active curiosity and self teaching. Using books and materials left behind by her brothers, she mastered Greek and German and developed a passion for philosophy. Sinclair's life with her mother was not easy. By all accounts, Mrs. Sinclair was a demanding, unyielding, and pious woman. Battles over Sinclair's philosophical beliefs and her repudiation of organized religion fostered frequent disagreements between mother and daughter, and although Sinclair acquiesced outwardly to her mother's expectations of social decorum, her inner self was untouchable. May's formal education consisted of one year at Cheltenham's Ladies College in 1881. Eighteen at the time, Sinclair was older than most students and her mind already opened to philosophical works and languages. The Cheltenham experience marked two critical milestones for Sinclair: she was separated from her mother for the first time and she met a woman who would become her mentor, Miss Dorothea Beale.
Dorothea Beale was Cheltenham's headmistress. An innovative educator, Beale argued for equal educational opportunities for women before the Royal Commission on Education in the late 1860s. Cheltenham offered history, literature, English language, geography, arithmetic, geometry, algebra, natural science, physics, physiology, chemistry, French, German, Latin, Greek, and calisthenics. Music, singing, dancing, drawing, and painting were offered as optional subjects. Miss Beale introduced Sinclair to idealism, a philosophy she would be committed to for the remainder of her life. Sinclair wrote two books on the subject, A Defence of Idealism (1917) and The New Idealism (1922). Miss Beale encouraged Sinclair to pursue the study of philosophy at Oxford. Although family obligations abruptly ended Sinclair's formal education after one year at Cheltenham, the friendship continued. After her departure from Cheltenham in 1882, Beale published May's essays in the Cheltenham Journal, promoted publication of her verse, and fostered her intellectual life through correspondence encouraging philosophical studies. In the 1890s Beale offered May a lectureship at the college, but by that time her writing and care for mother precluded accepting the offer.
At nineteen, Sinclair returned home to live with her mother. Despite Mrs. Sinclair's disapproval, she sustained a private intellectual life. In 1887 a book of verse, Nakiketa and Other Poems, was published under the pseudonym, Julian Sinclair. In 1892 another book of poems, Essays in Verse, was published. Neither book was successful, and to augment her meager income Sinclair translated German manuscripts for publication. Her transition from poet to novelist occurred in 1897 with the publication of Audrey Craven.
On 22 February 1901, Mrs. Sinclair died at the age of seventy-nine. The death coincided with Sinclair's rise as a successful novelist and marked a turning point in her life. For the next thirty years, she lived as a self-supporting woman, alone and in control of her social and artistic life. Sinclair established herself in British literary circles through membership in organizations like the Women's Writers Society and the Society for Authors. Sinclair developed friendships with female authors Violet Hunt, Evelyn Underhill, and Katherine Tynan Hinkson. The relationships provided a personal and literary support system. Sinclair mentored young artists like Ezra Pound, Rebecca West, Charlotte Mew, and Richard Aldington and provided financial assistance and artistic support to T. S. Elliot. A feminist, she actively campaigned for women's suffrage, drove an ambulance in Belgium during the first World War, and was a founding member of the Medico-Psychological Clinic of London, the first facility in England to include psychoanalysis among the broad choice of methods of treatment of mental illness.
Sinclair's involvement in the feminist movement extended beyond participating in suffrage demonstrations and authoring published articles in support of the cause. Through her fiction she exposed the Victorian tenets of family and self-sacrifice, as a system of female oppression. A proponent of psychoanalysis, Sinclair believed that the "new psychology" could be put to use as a catalyst of revolt against the tyrannical principles of "Victorian Puritanism." She authored three psychological novels, The Three Sisters (1914), Mary Olivier (1919), and Life and Death of Harriett Frean (1920), under the influence of the theory. Current feminist studies recognize her for the use of this form to reveal the destruction of the female psyche caused by the hypocrisies of Victorian social structure.
In the early 1920s, at the height of her career, May Sinclair developed Parkinson's disease. By 1930 the progression of the illness forced her into seclusion. Sinclair lived in a vegetative state with her nurse companion until her death in 1946.
Sinclair's life reflects a quest for intellectual and literary freedom. She survived an emotionally repressive childhood and young adulthood and emerged in mid-life to become a successful author with an independent lifestyle. But today her work is almost entirely forgotten. Also lost is the story of a unique personality and rebellious spirit that sustained her intellectual, social and artistic ambition through difficult circumstances.
- Sinclair, May, 1863-1946Boll, Theophilus Ernest Martin, 1902-
The May Sinclair Papers housed at the University of Pennsylvania Library were discovered in 1959 by Theophilus Boll in a garage in Bierton, Great Britain. Boll, an associate professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, was in the midst of researching the details of the life of the late author for a possible biography. Letters to Sinclair's publishers led him to Harold L. Sinclair, the author's nephew and literary executor. Boll learned much about May Sinclair's personal life listening to the reminiscences of Harold and his wife, Muriel. From the initial visit a lasting friendship developed between Boll and Sinclair's surviving relations. The visit proved to be a momentous occasion for Boll, because it steered him to The Gables, a little cottage in Bierton, where May Sinclair lived for the last ten years of her life. The cottage was still occupied by Florence Bartrop, Sinclair's companion of twenty-seven years. Miss Bartrop led Boll to an outbuilding that had once been a stable and then a garage. The garage contained a number of cardboard cartons and an iron trunk, originally used by May Sinclair's brother Frank when he traveled to India as an artillery captain. Boll carried the boxes and trunks to the drying room of the cottage and for two weeks examined, organized, and labeled the papers. Boll convinced the Sinclairs to allow him to work with the materials in the United States, to see if there was enough material for a book about May Sinclair.
The product of Boll's work—Miss May Sinclair, Novelist—was published in 1972. The papers found in Bierton provided Boll with the core material for the biography. Subsequently, Boll contributed his own notes, letters, and documents derived from the research to accompany the collection.
May Sinclair published twenty-four novels, two novellas, five volumes of short stories, numerous essays and introductions to novels of other authors between 1895 and 1930. The Sinclair Papers include the author's work, from all of these areas. Among the papers are manuscripts of unpublished verse created by Sinclair as early as 1893; her first published short story, A Study from Life (1893); introductions to the work of the Brontës, novels created and published after 1914, and philosophical and psychological papers and articles. The papers also contain glimpses of Sinclair's personal life through correspondence, photographs, and financial statements.
The May Sinclair Papers comprises personal and professional correspondence; manuscripts, typescripts, and galleys of published and unpublished novels, short stories, critical reviews, and poetry. Sinclair's literary, philosophical, and psychological writings represent the majority of the collection. Also included is a series of workbooks containing Sinclair's work in the planning stages.
Gift of Harold L. Sinclair and Theophilus Boll, 1959 and 1976.
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- Publisher
- University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts
- Finding Aid Author
- Diane Sweeney
- Finding Aid Date
- 1998
- Access Restrictions
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This collection is open for research use.
- Use Restrictions
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Copyright restrictions may exist. For most library holdings, the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania do not hold copyright. It is the responsibility of the requester to seek permission from the holder of the copyright to reproduce material from the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts.