Sinclair, May

May Sinclair was born in the English town of Rock Ferry in Cheshire . Her father, a Liverpool shipowner, went bankrupt, drank too much and died before she came of age. Mother, a strict and religious woman, moved the family to Ilford on the outskirts of London. After studying for a year at Cheltenham College for Women, she was forced to leave her education and take care of her five older brothers at home, each of whom had a congenital heart disease.

Since 1896 , May Sinclair began writing professionally to feed herself and her mother. In her work, she touched on topics related to the status of women and marriage. She also wrote and scientific works on philosophy, especially about German idealism . Her work became popular in the USA and sold well there.

Around 1913 , having visited the London Medical Psychological Clinic, May Sinclair became interested in psychoanalysis , and motifs related to the teachings of Sigmund Freud appeared in her novels. In 1914 , after the outbreak of World War I , she voluntarily went as a nurse to the war zone in Belgium . She was able to endure there for only a few weeks, but this experience was reflected in her prose and poetry.

May Sinclair wrote the first critical articles about Imagism and poetess Hilda Dolittle (Egoist magazine, 1915 ); at that time she was friendly with poets Richard Aldington , Hilda Doolittle and Elsa Pound . She wrote articles about the poetry of T. Eliot (Little Review magazine, 1917) and the prose of Dorothy Richardson (Egoist magazine, 1918 ). It was in connection with Richardson that she first used the term “ stream of consciousness ” in a literary context, and this term has successfully taken root. In subsequent Sinclair novels, the influence of modernist movements is noticeable, especially in her autobiographical novel, Mary Oliver: Life ( 1919 ). In 1925 , Sinclair was included in the Contact List of Contemporary Writers.

Since 1914 , May Sinclair was a member of the Society for the Study of the Psyche, which was engaged in the study of mental and paranormal phenomena and abilities. Under the influence of work in this society, supernatural motifs appear in Sinclair’s short stories.

In the late 1920s, May Sinclair began to suffer the first signs of Parkinson's disease and could no longer write. In 1932, she settled in Buckinghamshire , where she lived until the end of her life.

• Nakiketas and other poems (1886) under the pseudonym Julian Sinclair
• Essays in Verse (1892)
• Audrey Craven (1897)
• Mr and Mrs Nevill Tyson (1897) (also The Tysons)
• Two Sides Of A Question (1901)
• Divine Fire (also “Unquenchable Fire”) (1904)
• The Helpmate (1907)
• The Judgment of Eve (1907) storybook
• The Immortal Moment (1908)
• Outlines of Church History by Rudolf Sohm (1909)
• Creators (1910)
• The Flaw in the Crystal (1912)
• The Three Sisters of Bronte (1912)
• Feminism (1912)
• 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) storybook
• The Intercessor, and Other Stories (1931)

• Unquenchable fire // Anthology of science fiction literature. St. Petersburg: Amphora, 1999, p.525-540 ( Borges Personal Library)

• May Sinclair works in the Gutenberg project
• May Sinclair at the Internet Movie Database