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177 MAY SINCLAIR: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WRITINGS ABOUT HER By Kenneth A. Robb (Bowling Green State University) In their surveys of the English novel, Walter Allen and Lionel Stevenson afford May Sinclair (1865?-1946) little more than casual, rather dismissive, mention¡ however, in their later books on twentieth-century fiction, both critics discuss several of Sinclair's novels at length, with seriousness and with what sounds like sincere admiration (in contrast to the clever and inaccurate discussion devoted to The Three Sisters and Mary Olivier by William York Tindall in his .Forces in Modern British Literature 1885-1956). There are too many variables involved to enable one to say that between volumes Allen and Stevenson saw the light, and those variables also prevent one from gauging today's critical opinion of Sinclair, for only in Tindall, Allen, and Stevenson, among surveys of the novel written since World War II, is Sinclair discussed at length, and there is a paucity of articles on her and her work. Although her first novels were occasionally noticed and praised in English periodicals, it was not until the publication of The Divine Fire in the United States in 1904 that Sinclair gained her audience. From then on, both her fiction and non-fiction works were extensively reviewed by periodicals and newspapers in England and the United States. After The Divine Fire brought her renown, Sinclair's earlier works were published in the United States and reviewed in the light of the later one - of course, they usually showed the promise that was fulfilled in The Divine Fire. For some critics, such as Frederic Taber Cooper, Sinclair never again reached the heights of The Divine Fire, but that probably reflects the bent of the critic rather than the quality of the novelist. Sinclair was always controversial, both in matter and manner. Evelyn Underhill's able defense of the early The Helpmate is echoed by C. A. Dawson Scott's less forceful but firm and defensive explanation, in her 1921 article, "May Sinclair," of what Sinclair was doing in Mary Olivier and The Romantic. Early critics frequently found the topics she treated intensely alarming , but continued to praise her style, as will be seen in the following bibliography. As time wore on and Sinclair continued to experiment in various directions, it seemed to many that her matter had been reduced to airy thinness and her basic method had become too rigid and repetitious. The tone of Joseph Wood Krutch's reviews of the later works in the Nation is interestingly complex, seeming to reflect anticipation every time he opened one of her novels, disappointment at what he found, and nostalgia for the earlier Sinclair novels which he could admire with very few reservations. Besides the novels, May Sinclair wrote verse unsuccessfully both at the very beginning of her career and toward the end; she con- 178 tributed a suffragist pamphlet to the Cause in 1912; her two philosophical works were well received by Bertrand Russell, among others, and cited for the wit and keen intelligence with which she criticized her opponents and for the freshness of her style; her biography of the Brontes was viewed, despite its faults, as furnishing a needed corrective to Bronte studies and as opening up new possibilities for investigation; she did some translating, wrote critical pieces on Sinclair Lewis, H. D., Ezra Pound and others, and finally, a "journal" recording her impressions during a brief period of service at the front during World War I. Her interests were wide-ranging, and her circle of acquaintances encompassed most of the writers of the early twentieth century with whom ELT is concerned. She seems to have been exceptionally modest and timid, however, and the outline of her life, combined with inferences from her novels, leads me to believe that T.E.M. Boll has undertaken a formidable task indeed in writing her biography. The two articles Boll has so far published , however, give evidence that the biography when it appears will be meticulously accurate and exhaustive ; it bids fa

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