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Cover of Mary Olivier: A Life

Fiction

Mary Olivier: A Life

A gifted young woman born into a strict upper middle class Victorian family struggles for decades to balance duty to her controlling mother with a driving need to learn and to create her art.

First published
1919
Length
118,979 words
Reading time
About 8 hr 16 min
Language
English (UK)

About the book

Mary Olivier’s life, interior and exterior, is presented from infancy through middle age. We watch as she forms her first impressions of her family and her place in it, and as she grapples with what she’s taught about the Anglican God and His requirements. As she grows, her insatiable curiosity and hunger for knowledge put her at odds with Victorian England’s expectations for women, its tolerance for alternative spiritual beliefs, and especially with what’s acceptable to her mother.

May Sinclair was the pen name of Mary Amelia St. Clair, a pioneer of modernist poetry and prose, with the autobiographical Mary Olivier: A Life being a particular example of the latter.

the Read4Max reading text contains approximately 118,979 words arranged in 40 navigable sections.

About the author

May Sinclair

May Sinclair (1863–1946) is described by Wikidata as British novelist 1863-1946, with citizenship or national association recorded as United Kingdom.

Recorded occupations include writer, poet, literary critic, and novelist. Languages recorded for May Sinclair include English. Wikidata lists Life and Death of Harriett Frean among May Sinclair's notable works. Open Library identifies The tree of heaven as a leading work in its author record. Open Library catalogs 65 works under this author record. The Read4Max catalog currently includes Mary Olivier: A Life under May Sinclair's authorship.

Reading options

  • A complete text with direct section navigation in the browser reader.
  • A downloadable EPUB for phones, tablets, desktop reading apps, and compatible ereaders.
  • Book and contributor metadata are checked against the source edition before indexing.

Themes and ideas

  • Domestic fiction
  • Bildungsromans
  • Mothers and daughters

Table of contents

Open reader
Show all 40 sections
  1. Book I
  2. Chapter I
  3. Chapter II
  4. Chapter III
  5. Chapter IV
  6. Chapter V
  7. Book II
  8. Chapter VI
  9. Chapter VII
  10. Chapter VIII
  11. Chapter IX
  12. Chapter X
  13. Chapter XI
  14. Book III
  15. Chapter XII
  16. Chapter XIII
  17. Chapter IV
  18. Chapter XV
  19. Chapter XVI
  20. Chapter XVII
  21. Chapter XVIII
  22. Chapter XIX
  23. Book IV
  24. Chapter XX
  25. Chapter XXI
  26. Chapter XXII
  27. Chapter XXIII
  28. Chapter XXIV
  29. Chapter XXV
  30. Chapter XXVI
  31. Chapter XXVII
  32. Chapter XXVIII
  33. Chapter XXIX
  34. Chapter XXX
  35. Book V
  36. Chapter XXXI
  37. Chapter XXXII
  38. Chapter XXXIII
  39. Chapter XXXIV
  40. Chapter XXXV