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These books were written under a number of pseudonyms Some of these books can be downloaded free of charge |
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SUBLUNARY Published 1932 This is a first novel with freshness and distinction. The author handles two generations with uncanny understanding. A tormented intellectual parson, like the undergraduates discussing reality in the early works of E.M. Forster, attempts to root himself in kind earth by marrying Ellen out of the village shop. He dies, leaving Ellen to a vigorous middle-age. Their son, one of the few convincing vagabonds in fiction, is alive as a spark in brushwood; and his brief passion for Cathie (who also has come to "root herself in reality" by leaving her Putney family and her typewriter to run the Post Office in a country village) leads up to the gay vigour of the novel's end. Review Miss Martin possesses a powerful and original imagination .......Sublunary inspires the reader with mingled far, admiration, and respect, and he awaits the author's next book with interest. (L.P. Hartley, Week-end Review) Download "Sublunary" (pdf - 31 Mb) |
TURN AGAIN Download "Turn Again" (pdf - 48 Mb) |
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ESSAY ON MARRIAGE by Anne Finch This 'essay' should be read by everyone about to marry, and by all those who have entered the married state. Here is warning, instruction, and entertainment, set out with both wit and insight. The dedication reads: TO Download "Essay on Marriage" (pdf - 131 kb) |
LAUGH OR CRY by Mary Crawford Mary Crawford has successfully drawn a picture of a group of men and women and their problems which is worldly wise and yet done with feeling. It s narrator is a lively and resourceful woman married to a busy and successful barrister with political ambitions. Their daughter is almost grown-up and their marriage under the strain of divergent interests, has reached a difficult phase. It is true too of the marriage of their friends Stephen and Claudia. An attraction which has long been latent now intensifies, and the consequence is a situation far less elementary than the usual marriage. As she tells her love-story, the narrator at first persuades herself the classic conflict between love and duty can be resolvedby a series of compromises. But an ironic discovery reveals that she has not been so successful as she liked to think and sets the conflict itself in a new light. For it appears that her affections are divided, and that her good intentions have been vitiated by vanity and self-love. Finality, when she despairs of herself and her future, the influence of the younger generation makes itself felt, and the balance of several lives is resotred. Download "Laugh or Cry" (pdf - 904 kb) |
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ROSES ARE RED by Mary Crawford Alicia, a self-willed, gifted, and energetic woman, unknowingly victimizes her husband and children. The prospect of returning to the stage, where once she had a great success, fascinates and frightens her. She assumes that if other people behave as she expects, they will solve her conflicts for her, and takes refuge in illness when they fail. They, meanwhile, have problems of their own. Her husband, who loves her, fears that she has no more use for him. Her good-natured daughter makes excessive sacrifices for the sake of family peace; ad her brilliant son sulks over his uncertain future. The situation intensifies though a series of lively incidents and, after reaching a point of complete frsutration for everyone, disentangles. Two young people make a good recovery from a broken engagement, another finds a career, another finds a husband, and Alicia herself plays the lead in a new London production. Her vigorous character does not change, but in a new setting shows new facets. Roses are Red is an unusual type of psychiatric story - a comedy, not a tragedy. Though it runs true to the textbooks, it develops entirely in domestic terms. No psychiatrists appear, and a striking cure is effected by the ordinary forces of circumstance. Download "Roses are Red" (pdf - 623 kb) |
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ITSELF TO PLEASE by Mary Crawford Although this is a novel of Oxford in the late nineteen-thirties, it must not be imagined as simply another account of undergraduate life. Andrew, the young man whose sentimental education is a part of the pattern, is an undergraduate, but it is friendship with the kind, distrait Elizabeth and her family, who have little direct connections with academic life, that leads him and them into exploration of the complexities and paradoxes of love, responsibility and anxiety. The coming war throws its shadow behind it, as it were; all the people in the book are aware of it and react to the thought of it in their individual ways. Less clearly they are aware too of the confusion and dissolution of social classes in which each has a share. Yet the story is in essence a comedy; its elements of the tragic are mostly those of wasted possibilities, in private life and in the world at large. Throughout, there is again the freshness, lightness of touch and accuracy of feeling that will be remembered from this author's earlier novels. "The scene moves from town to country, from studio to drawing-room. The writing is subtle, restrained and economical; the characters spring to life at a touch. The narrator unconsciously reveals herself as slightly self-complacent, and this is duly brought home to her at the close of the most enjoyable novel I have read for some time.' Sunday Times Download "Itself To Please" (pdf - 83 Mb) |
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NO BEDTIME STORY by Mary Crawford Jacko is a schoolboy in a country where Freedom is something that people talk about. His father often talks about it, in a strange, angry way, and in grown-up language that does not seem to Jacko to mean anything very much. His mother teaches him a song that has something to do with it, too, but he understands that he must not sing this in the streets. Then one day Jacko realises that people are trying to do something about this Freedom, and the first results for him seem to be that life becomes very much more complicated, and worrying, and difficult. For one thing, he is left to look after his four-year-old sister, Vicky, alone. Christine soon comes to help, and has to stay when her own home gets knocked down by a tank. And then her friend Banger arrives, and they, being a few years older than Jacko, get the food and make plans. But Banger is mostly busy with fighting. The fighting intensifies and soon becomes a full-scale battle; and when the air raids start Jacko has his own moment of anger, and violence, and horror. Many innocent people, up and down the earth, have suffered in the long war between the world powers. Jacko, who lives only in an imaginary country, speaks for them all. |
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DEAR MISS WEAVER (a life of Harriet Shaw Weaver) by Jane Lidderdale and Mary Nicholson 
In 1932 T. S. Eliot dedicated
his Selected Essays to Harriet Shaw Weaver 'in gratitude, and in recognition
of her services to English letters'. This well-deserved dedication
drew attention, though quietly (as was characteristic of both author
and recipient), to a remarkable woman who played an essential part
behind the scenes in the early presentation of many of the great names
of contemporary literature. First she kept going practically single-handed
not only the magazine The Egoist but also The Egoist Press, whose
short list included works by Ezra Pound, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot,
Wyndham Lewis, Richard Aldington and Jean Cocteau (illustrated by
Picasso). But there was more to it than that: Harriet Weaver, who radiated goodness and sincerity, was a natural rebel and in her gentle but determined way worked for many causes, including women's rights and the Communist Party. And the whole story of her long life is an intensely fascinating one. It is fortunate indeed that her god-daughter, Jane Lidderdale, undertook to write her biography; it proved a formidable task, taking some eight years and Miss Lidderdale soon enlisted the help of a friend, Mary Nicholson, who is join author. Mrs. Nicholson is a novelist under the name of Mary Crawford. The result is an absorbing book, brilliantly executed, and a delight to read from beginning to end. It stands comparison with the very best biographies of recent years. In addition to the biographical chapters of the main text, there is a detailed examination of the accounts of The Egoist and the Egoist Press. |
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MEMOIRS OF AN UNEDUCATED LADY (Lady Allen of Hurtwood) by Marjory Allen
and Mary Nicholson |
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IS THIS? A version of the Gospel story for older children The Story of Jesus of Nazareth by MARY CRAWFORD This book is a paraphrased version of the story told in the Four Gospels, with some explanatory additions. Its object is to present, in a form that is attractive to look at and agreeable to handle, a brief consecutive narrative for readers whose knowledge of the original is vague or patchy. It is in no sense a substitute, but an introduction. It provides a context for passages already familiar and by the free use of current idiom emphasizes the vigour and realism of the story. It is particularly intended for:
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