Rose Macaulay

Dame Emilie Rose Macaulay, (1 August 1881 – 30 October 1958) was an English writer, most noted for her award-winning novel The Towers of Trebizond, about a small Anglo-Catholic group crossing Turkey by camel.

The story is seen as a spiritual autobiography, reflecting her own changing and conflicting beliefs. Macaulay's novels were partly influenced by Virginia Woolf. She also wrote biographies, travelogues and poetry.

Early years and education

Macaulay was born in Rugby, Warwickshire the daughter of George Campbell Macaulay, a classical scholar, and his wife, Grace Mary (née Conybeare). Her father was descended in the male-line directly from the Macaulay family of Lewis. She was educated at Oxford High School for Girls and read Modern History at Somerville College at Oxford University. In 1906 her father, George Campbell Macaulay, moved to Southernwood, a grand house in Great Shelford, near Cambridge. She spent much of her time in the company of the poet Rupert Brooke, a family friend. During the First World War, she worked as a land girl in Shelford. Here she was inspired to write a collection of poems called "On the Land 1916" recalling the hard work and companionship of those days.

Career

Macaulay began writing her first novel, Abbots Verney (published 1906), after leaving Somerville and while living with her parents at Ty Isaf, near Aberystwyth, in Wales. Later novels include The Lee Shore (1912), Potterism (1920), Dangerous Ages (1921), Told by an Idiot (1923), And No Man's Wit (1940), The World My Wilderness (1950), and The Towers of Trebizond (1956). Her non-fiction work includes They Went to Portugal, Catchwords and Claptrap, a biography of John Milton, and Pleasure of Ruins. Macaulay's fiction was influenced by Virginia Woolf and Anatole France.

Her dystopian novel What Not (1918) deals with eugenics and misinformation in a fictional version of England. It was first published in 1918, then withdrawn and republished in 1919 with some passages removed.

During World War I Macaulay worked in the British Propaganda Department, after some time as a nurse and later as a civil servant in the War Office. She pursued a romantic affair with Gerald O'Donovan, a writer and former Jesuit priest, whom she met in 1918; the relationship lasted until his death, in 1942. During the interwar period she was a sponsor of the pacifist Peace Pledge Union; however, she resigned from the PPU and later recanted her pacifism in 1940. In the same period, she found new audiences through broadcasts on the BBC, and as a columnist in journals such as The Spectator, The Listener, and Time and Tide. In January 1941, Macaulay wrote: "The pageant of life is enormously enriched by the presence of so many foreigners in our midst...the uniforms of Polish soldiers mingle with those of the Czechs, Norwegians, Dutch and Free French...And not only foreigners. Driving in the country, you are continually hailed by the rich accents of young men in battle-dress from Alberta and Montreal, who seldom know where they are, and always want to go somewhere else. They are as a rule enormously charming".

Her London flat was destroyed in the Blitz, and she had to rebuild her life and library from scratch, as documented in the semi-autobiographical short story, Miss Anstruther's Letters, which was published in 1942.

The Towers of Trebizond, her final novel, is generally regarded as her masterpiece. Strongly autobiographical, it treats with wistful humour and deep sadness the attractions of mystical Christianity, and the irremediable conflict between adulterous love and the demands of the Christian faith. For this work, she received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1956.

Personal life

Macaulay was never a simple believer in "mere Christianity", and her writings reveal a more complex, mystical sense of the Divine. That said, she did not return to the Anglican church until 1953; she had been an ardent secularist before and, while religious themes pervade her novels, previous to her conversion she often treats Christianity satirically, for instance in Going Abroad and The World My Wilderness.

Macaulay never married. She was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) on 31 December 1957 in the 1958 New Year Honours and died ten months later, on 30 October 1958, aged 77. She was an active feminist throughout her life.

Macaulay Avenue in Great Shelford is named after her.

Works

Fiction:

Abbots Verney (1906) John Murray

The Furnace (1907) John Murray

The Secret River (1909) John Murray

The Valley Captives (1911) John Murray

Views and Vagabonds (1912) John Murray

The Lee Shore (1913) Hodder & Stoughton

The Making of a Bigot (c 1914) Hodder & Stoughton

Non-Combatants and Others (1916) Hodder & Stoughton

What Not: A Prophetic Comedy (1918)

Potterism (1920) William Collins

Dangerous Ages (1921) William Collins

Mystery At Geneva: An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings (1922) William Collins

Told by an Idiot (1923) William Collins

Orphan Island (1924) William Collins

Crewe Train (1926) William Collins

Keeping Up Appearances (1928) William Collins

Staying with Relations (1930) William Collins

They Were Defeated (1932) William Collins

Going Abroad (1934) William Collins

I Would Be Private (1937) William Collins

And No Man's Wit (1940) William Collins

The World My Wilderness (1950) William Collins

The Towers of Trebizond (1956) William Collins

Poetry:

The Two Blind Countries (1914) Sidgwick & Jackson

Picnic: July 1917, with guns in France audible

Three Days (1919) Constable

Misfortunes, with engravings by Stanley Morison (1930)

Non-fiction:

A Casual Commentary (1925) Methuen

Some Religious Elements in English Literature (1931) Hogarth

Milton (1934) Duckworth

Personal Pleasures (1935) Gollancz

The Minor Pleasures of Life (1936) Gollancz

An Open Letter (1937) Peace Pledge Union

The Writings of E.M. Forster (1938) Hogarth

Life Among the English (1942) William Collins

Southey in Portugal (1945) Nicholson & Watson

They Went to Portugal (1946) Jonathan Cape

Evelyn Waugh (1946) Horizon