Reviewed by Rob Spence, 28 January 2025
One of the most welcome developments in literary studies over recent years has been the rediscovery of works by previously neglected women writers of the early twentieth century. The publishers Virago led the way, of course, and Persephone Press has also championed authors of this type. Middlebrow writing by women authors of the first half of the twentieth century has been a mainstay of the Dean Street Press list. There seems to be an almost bottomless well of material, and the volume under consideration here is an example of early writing by a female figure of importance in the modernist movement, whose work and worth has never really received the attention it deserved.
May Sinclair, born in 1863, had a difficult home life: her alcoholic father squandered the family fortune and died when she was young, and her mother never really recovered. The traumas of her family life are reflected in her intense short novel, The Life and Death of Harriett Frean, which is a brilliant psychological study of self-sacrifice. Sinclair’s other key novel, Mary Olivier, is clearly at least semi-autobiographical, a bildungsroman about a woman’s intellectual development.
It’s good, therefore, to see May Sinclair’s very first publication back in print. This collection of poems, first published when she was in her early twenties in 1886, was originally issued under the name Julian Sinclair, for the obvious reasons. It uses as a motto an extract from Shelley’s Adonais, and the influence of Shelley and other Romantics is plain to see. Having said that, the reader with knowledge of Sinclair’s later work will see plenty of evidence of her typical concerns in this youthful production. The volume consists of three long narrative poems, and six shorter pieces. The title poem, “Nakiketas” is a retelling of a story found in the Katha Upanishad, one of the ancient Sanskrit texts that are the foundational to Hinduism. Sinclair was not alone in finding inspiration in this ancient material – T.S. Eliot, for example, used the Upanishads in The Waste Land – and she sticks closely to the original story. Nakiketas is a young seeker after spiritual truth, condemned by his father to seek out Yama, the lord of death. His dialogue with Yama touches on fundamental principles of belief and self-knowledge, providing the reader with much to consider. Sinclair writes in careful and correct blank verse, that owes something to Wordsworth, and quite a lot to Shelley in its declarative dramatic tone.
The second long poem, also in blank verse is “Helen”, whose titular heroine is led into a disastrous marriage by the man who ruined her father’s business. There’s more than a hint of Sinclair’s own background in the narrative, and some of the themes of Harriett Frean are in play here too. In truth, this poem, over forty pages in this edition, is too long. The long descriptions of domestic life might usefully have been shortened, but nevertheless, as a document of female oppression, it is the first example in Sinclair’s work of a theme she would return to on numerous future occasions. The verse is subtle too, using slant rhyme quite often, anticipating Wilfred Owen’s use of it fifty years later.
The final long poem, “Apollodorus”, takes classical Greece as its inspiration, and recounts the literal and emotional journey of the eponymous bard. As with “Helen”, modern readers might find some passages rather melodramatic, but it certainly holds the attention, as the poet wonders in search of a lost love, only to encounter her as he dies:
And Death, advancing, lifted up the veil –
Then his dim eyes beholding scarce endured
The mingled splendour of the twain, transformed,
And seen as one – his first and latest love;
Of mystery unspeakable, yet bright
With an immortal brilliance that consumed
The shade of Death beside her…George Eliot, who had died a few years before, is the subject of the next poem, and it is striking how this appreciation of Eliot again homes in on Sinclair’s over-riding concern with the place of women in society, and woman’s struggle for agency. At the same time, this is such a good summary of Eliot’s genius: hers is an art
...that takes the commonplace, the dull,
The homely form and speech, the trivial thing
Of everyday, making it beautiful;
Not for this only – but that thou didst know
The heart’s still tragedy of strife and pain,
And woman’s hopeless wrong and suffering,
Vague yearnings and lame motions after good,
Ardour, devotion – ay, for this we deem
Thee great.
In the other poems, Sinclair uses some traditional Romantic imagery and themes, in one case, “Christapollo,” explicitly evoking the spirit of Shelley. These poems are clearly the work of someone who has immersed herself in the poetry of the early nineteenth century, but who is gradually finding her own voice. This collection documents an important moment in the development of a writer who deserves more attention, both from the ordinary reader and the literary critic.
Rob Spence’s home on the web is at robspence.org.uk
May Sinclair, Nakiketas and Other Poems (Michael Walmer, 2024) 978-0645751949, 109pp., hardback.
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