May Sinclair

May Sinclair was the pseudonym of Mary Amelia St. Clair (24 August 1863 – 14 November 1946), a popular British writer who wrote about two dozen novels, short stories and poetry. She was an active suffragist, and member of the Woman Writers' Suffrage League. May Sinclair was also a significant critic in the area of modernist poetry and prose, and she is attributed with first using the term stream of consciousness in a literary context, when reviewing the first volumes of Dorothy Richardson's novel sequence Pilgrimage (1915–67), in The Egoist, April 1918.

Early life

She was born in Rock Ferry, Cheshire. Her father was a Liverpool shipowner, who went bankrupt, became an alcoholic, and died before she was an adult. Her mother was strict and religious; the family moved to Ilford on the edge of London. After one year of education at Cheltenham Ladies College, she acted as caretaker for her brothers, as four of the five, all older, were suffering from a fatal congenital heart disease.