May Sinclair

The Romantic May Sinclair

The Romantic tells the story of Charlotte Redhead, a woman who, as the novel opens, has just been dropped by the married man with whom she was sexually involved. On a country walk she runs into John Conway, who, like her, is interested in learning to farm. Together they find jobs working on a farm in the Cotswolds, and gradually realize they have fallen in love with one another. Charlotte confesses that she has been with another man, and John tells her he is relieved, since, as an experienced woman, she will not need sexual initiation from him. They agree to be a couple, but not to become lovers. When the war breaks out, they form a small ambulance corps and leave for Belgium. John is initially thrilled by the sensation of danger, but it gradually becomes clear to Charlotte that he would rather abandon her and wounded men than risk his own life. May Sinclair was the pseudonym of Mary Amelia St. Clair, 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. 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, in The Egoist, April 1918. Sinclair wrote two volumes of supernatural fiction, Uncanny Stories and The Intercessor and Other Stories. Gary Crawford has stated Sinclair's contribution to the supernatural fiction genre, "small as it is, is notable". Jacques Barzun included mer among a list of supernatural fiction writers that "one should make a point of seeking out", and Brian Stableford stated that her "supernatural tales are written with uncommon delicacy and precision, and they are among the most effective examples of their fugitive kind."