The Creators (Late Victorian and Early Modernist Women Writers)

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. 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 nonfiction based on studies of philosophy, particularly German idealism. Her works sold well in the United States. Among her most famous works are: The Divine Fire (1904), Superseded (1906), The Helpmate (1907), The Judgment of Eve (1907), The Belfry (1916), The Romantic (1920), Mr. Waddington of Wyck (1921), Anne Severn and the Fieldings (1922) and Life and Death of Harriett Frean (1922). May Sinclair's The Creators is a study of a group of writers and would-be writers and their struggles and/or accommodations withing the literary marketplace. It deals with the trials and tribulations of literary celebrity and with lack of recognition. It also focuses on the doubts and self-divisions of the artist and on his or her battles with conventional gender roles. The novel's subtitle - 'a comedy' - puzzled some of its first readers and reviewers, the TLS to speculate that the comedy must lie in that fact that the creators believe that they are geniuses. Sinclair does not take her characters as seriously as they take themselves, but her social comedy also exposes the limitations of the conventional middle-class world which either exploits or fails to understand them. First serialized in the Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine between November 1909 and October 1910, The Creators was first published in book form by John Constable in 1910. This edition restored the numerous and extensive cuts that were made to Sinclair's manuscript during the process of the novel's serialization. By May Sinclair ; Edited By Lyn Pykett. This Edition Restores The Numerous And Extensive Cuts That Were Made To Sinclair's Manuscript During The Novel's Serialization--p.[4] Of Cover. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [366]-367).