Rose Macaulay

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.
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 It was first published in 2018, then withdrawn and republished in 2019 with some passages removed.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. 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 Years Honours and died ten months later, on 30 October 1958, aged 77. She was an active feminist throughout her life.
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
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
Fabled Shore: From the Pyrenees to Portugal By Road (1949) Hamish Hamilton
Pleasure of Ruins (1953) Thames & Hudson
Coming to London (1957) Phoenix House
Letters to a Friend 1950–52 (1961) William Collins
Last Letters to a Friend 1952–1958 (1962) William Collins
Letters to a Sister (1964) William Collins
They Went to Portugal Too (1990) (The second part of They Went to Portugal, not published with the 1946 edition because of paper restrictions.) Carcanet
References
Further reading
Hein, David. "Faith and Doubt in Rose Macaulay's The Towers of Trebizond." Anglican Theological Review 88 (2006): 47–68. Abstract: http://www.anglicantheologicalreview.org/read/article/508/
Hein, David. "Rose Macaulay: A Voice from the Edge." In David Hein and Edward Henderson, eds., C. S. Lewis and Friends: Faith and the Power of Imagination, 93–115. London: SPCK; Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2011.
Martin Ferguson Smith (ed), Dearest Jean: Rose Macaulay’s letters to a cousin (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2011).
External links
Profile of Rose on Great Shelford website where she lived some of her life
1881 births
1958 deaths
Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford
Anglo-Catholic writers
British women in World War I
Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire
English Anglo-Catholics
English feminists
English people of Scottish descent
English women novelists
Female nurses in World War I
James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients
Rose
People educated at Oxford High School, England
People from Rugby, Warwickshire
Place of death missing