Long Fiction:
Audrey Craven, 1897
Two Sides of a Question, 1901
The Divine Fire, 1904
The Helpmate, 1907
The Creators, 1910
The Three Sisters, 1914
Tasker Jevons, 1916 (pb. in U.S. as The Belfry, 1914)
The Tree of Heaven, 1917
Mary Olivier: A Life, 1919
Mr. Waddington of Wyck, 1921
Anne Severn and the Fieldings, 1922
The Life and Death of Harriet Frean, 1922
A Cure of Souls, 1924
The Rector of Wyck, 1925
Short Fiction:
The Judgment of Eve, 1908 (pb. in U.S. as The Return of the Prodigal, 1914)
Uncanny Stories, 1923
The Intercessor, and Other Stories, 1931
Poetry:
The Dark Night, 1924
Nonfiction:
The Three Brontës, 1912
The New Idealism, 1922
May Amelia St. Clair Sinclair was an unusual British author in that her work found a wider, more enthusiastic audience in the United States than it did in her native England. Born in Cheshire in 1863, she was educated at home and at Ladies’ College, Cheltenham. As a girl she wrote poetry and philosophical criticism, some of which was published. Her first published short story appeared in 1895, and her first novel, Audrey Craven, in 1897. Real fame as a novelist waited for almost a decade, until the publication of The Divine Fire in 1904. A biography, The Three Brontës, published in 1912, was followed by another successful novel, The Three Sisters, which showed the influence of her Brontë studies.
During World War I Sinclair, who was then and throughout her life unmarried, served with an ambulance unit on the front in Belgium and worked with the Hoover Relief Commission. After the war she lived a quiet life that was unbroken except for several visits to the United States. Sinclair worked steadily, producing more than a dozen books, until physical problems (she was an invalid in her later life) made writing impossible. Outstanding among her later books are Mary Olivier and Anne Severn and the Fieldings. Uncanny Stories is a volume of short fiction reflecting her interest in the supernatural and spiritualism. Her lifelong interest in philosophy, especially idealism, resulted in the study The New Idealism. In the 1920’s she wrote several light satirical comedies of manners; Mr. Waddington of Wyck and A Cure of Souls belong to this genre. The Dark Night is a long narrative poem.
As early as the writing of Mary Olivier, Sinclair had begun using the subconscious in her fiction, very much in the manner of Dorothy Richardson, and she has been termed one of the pioneers in the stream-of-consciousness technique. As a young woman she was a suffragist, and throughout her life she maintained an interest in feminist movements.