May Sinclair was a central figure in the modernist movement, and this collection, the first on Sinclair's career and writings, provides valuable insights into Sinclair's complex texts. Individual essays engage with the cultural and literary phenomena Sinclair critiqued and influenced: the literary marketplace, changing sexual and social mores, the developing fields of psychology, the women's suffrage movement, and World War I.

Contents: Introduction, Michele K. Troy and Andrew J. Kunka. Part 1 May Sinclair and Literary Modernism: A very 'un-English' English writer: May Sinclair's early reception in Europe, Michele K. Troy; 'A sort of genius': love, art, and classicism in May Sinclair's The Divine Fire, Diana Wallace; Miss Sinclair and the priest of love, Jane Eldridge Miller; Unresolved mourning and the Great War in May Sinclair's The Tree of Heaven and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, George M. Johnson; 'Imagism ... is a state of soul': May Sinclair's imagist writing and Life and Death of Harriett Frean, Laurel Forster; May Sinclair's supernatural fiction, Richard Bleiler; The Dark Night: 'the novel into some other form', Jane Dowson. Part 2 May Sinclair and the Modern World: May Sinclair and the Brontës: 'virgin priestesses of art', Jane Silvey; The 'genius of enfranchised womanhood': suffrage and The Three Brontës, Philippa Martindale; 'Physiological emergencies' and 'suffragitis': Miss May Sinclair, writer, versus Sir Almroth Wright, MD, FRS, Diane F. Gillespie; Mary Olivier: new women and Victorian values, Cheryl A. Wilson; 'He isn't quite an ordinary coward': gender, cowardice, and shell shock in The Romantic and Anne Severn and the Fieldings, Andrew J. Kunka. Index.