Catherine Carswell: A Biography by Jan Pilditch
Catherine Carswell (1879–1946) was one of modern Scotland’s most remarkable novelists, an independently minded, self-determined woman who wrote two important novels – one, Open the Door!, a classic of Scottish literature and of women’s fiction – as well as an intimate and haunting autobiographical memoir called Lying Awake, and radical biographies of D. H. Lawrence, Boccaccio and Robert Burns. For daring to write about Burns she was sent a bullet in the post and told to desist!
Her life was as fascinating as her writing, moving from residence in Glasgow, which she knew deeply, to a London base and a long friendship with D. H. Lawrence, based on mutual respect, trust, liking and a rare recognition of the validity of each other’s vision of personal and social emancipation. It is fascinating to discover how much Lawrence valued Carswell’s first novel, with its exploration of the potential of its main character, the memorable Joanna; its excursions from Glasgow and the city’s School of Art through London and into Italy; and with its rhapsodic but wonderfully well-earned ending. The fact that Lawrence and Carswell were planning a collaborative novel suggests the degree to which her more famous contemporary appreciated her work.
Jan Pilditch’s biography of Carswell takes us through her life from the end of the nineteenth century and through two world wars, showing how she contributed to the history of women struggling for empowerment. In personal and intimate terms, Pilditch sensitively covers the breakdown of her first marriage, the death of her daughter, her happy marriage to Donald Carswell and her loss when he was killed in a car accident, as well as her spirit, engagement with ideas, and many friendships. Pilditch carefully evaluates Carswell’s loyalties to Glasgow and Scotland and her independent but allied role in the Scottish literary movement of the 1920s, as well as her friendship with Hugh MacDiarmid. She belonged to an older generation than MacDiarmid and was not in the group of political and cultural activists he led. Nevertheless, they were friends and after an initial crossing of swords, each recognised the other’s essential qualities of commitment and integrity. Pilditch’s book opens up the social, historical context for literary study which has generally been lacking in Scottish cultural explication, balancing the account of the power relations between the priorities and dispositions of the international modernists and the political imperatives of the Scots. Among both these overlapping groups, Carswell can now be seen in clear focus.
The book is a lucid account of a complex life in a period of immense cultural and political turmoil. It deserves a wide readership among all those interested in the vital matter of early twentieth-century literature.
Professor Alan Riach
Department of Scottish Literature
University of Glasgow
View cart
