May Sinclair's The Creators: High-cultural celebrity and a failed comedy

English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920

Volumn 47, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 50-74

  Troy, Michele K ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HARTFORD   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61949254368     PISSN: 00138339     EISSN: 15592715     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2487/7301-3716-N00K-7Q54     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. May Sinclair, The Miss-May-Sinclair," Ms. Literature "S" - "Z," Box 4, New York Public Library. Suzanne Raitt speculates that Sinclair may have written this excerpt for her publisher at Constable, Otto Kyllmann, in late 1907 or early 1908.
2. See Raitt, May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 269. This would mean that Sinclair wrote the excerpt just prior to beginning work on The Creators, suggesting her preoccupation with this theme at the time.
3. "The Miss-May-Sinclair," Ms. Literature "S" - "Z."
4. Sinclair, "The - s: A Comedy, "Tms w/ revisions and notes, [13pp], n.d., May Sinclair Works, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin.
5. I use the phrase "relatively traditional" narrative form, since I would agree with Sinclair biographer Theophilus E. M. Boll that Sinclair attempts to represent characters' unconscious motivations anticipate modernist writers' use of symbolism. See Boll, Miss May Sinclair, Novelist: A Biographical and Critical Introduction (Rutherford, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1973), 203.
6. See also Jane Eldridge Miller, Rebel Women: Feminism, Modernism and the Edwardian Novel (London: Virago Press, 1994), 189-94. Miller also describes The Creators as a novel that marks the start of Sinclair's move into a more psychological, consciously experimental narrative style.
7. Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown: A History of Fame (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 23. I often use the terms "fame" and "celebrity" interchangeably to point out the ambiguous relationship between them. Braudy, for instance, notes that the Roman terms fama, rumor, ambitio, and celebritas were, even in Rome, used both positively and negatively. Certainly, Sinclair's protagonist, like many modernist authors, initially distinguishes between these terms, construing celebrity as the ugly underbelly of fame, a term which implies a worthier state. While many early twentieth-century critics make this distinction, they also often use the term "fame" in conjunction with "celebrity" to imply a transient visibility in the press.
8. Joyce Piell Wexler, Who Paid For Modernism?: Art, Money, and the Fiction of Conrad, Joyce, and Lawrence (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 1997), xv.
9. Sinclair, The Creators: A Comedy (New York: The Century Company, 1910), 1.
10. Richard Salmon, Henry James and the Culture of Publicity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 34.
11. Arthur Bartlett Maurice, "The Author's Full Dinner Pail," Bookman (December 1908), 326-39.
12. Salmon, 109.
13. Maurice, 326.
14. Violet Hunt, The Celebrity at Home (London: Chapman and Hall, 1904), 69.
15. "The Celebrity at Home," Athenaeum (23 April 1904), 526-27.
16. "The Celebrity at Home," Academy and Literature (2 April 1904), 66.
17. Winston Churchill, The Celebrity: An Episode (New York: The American News Company, 1899), 3, my emphasis.
18. Sinclair, The Creators, 4.
19. Raitt, 78.
20. C. C. Vemam, Letter to the board of Ainslee's Magazine, 1 June 1906, Macmillan Papers, Sinclair File, New York Public Library.
21. Sinclair, Letter to Richard Watson Gilder, 7 December 1908, Gilder Papers, New York Public Library.
22. Carter Irving, "Miss Sinclair's Creators: A Novel From Which We Learn Much About the Imaginary Writers of Wonderful Books," New York Times Book Review (22 October 1910), 584.
23. "Review of The Creators," Dial (16 October 1910), 288.
24. "Review of The Creators," Times Literary Supplement (29 September 1910), 350.
25. "Satire, Farce - and Cinderella: The Creators," Academy (8 October 1910), 347.
26. Sinclair, Letter to Hugh Walpole, 28 January 1913, May Sinclair Letters, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin.
27. Boll, 206. Hrisey Dimitrakis Zegger, May Sinclair (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976), 50.
28. Boll, 200.
29. Sinclair, "George Meredith," The Author (1 June 1909), 251.
30. In her introduction to the forthcoming edition of The Creators, Lyn Pykett further elucidates Sinclair's experimentation with Meredith's comic form, noting "The Creators is in its way a comedy of modern sexual manners. It is also a satire on the literary marketplace and those touched by the literary taint.' However, it is also a tragedy of the unfulfilled aims of the creators and its creator." See Pykett (ed.), The Creators (Birmingham: University of Birmingham Press, forthcoming 2004), ms. 16.
31. Qtd. in Boll 85.
32. Sinclair, Letter to Upton Sinclair, 18 December 1910, Stone Manuscripts, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington.
33. Irving, 584.
34. Sinclair, Letter to Richard Watson Gilder, 7 April 1909, May Sinclair Letters, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
35. Zegger, 50.
36. Raitt, 126-27.
37. Sinclair, Letter to Witter Bynner, 2 August 1909, Witter Bynner Papers, bMS Am 1891, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
38. Raitt, 127.
39. Charles Leonard Moore, "Personality Vs. Work," Dial (March 1908), 166-67.
40. Sinclair, Letter to Witter Bynner, 29 August 1905, Witter Bynner Papers, bMS Am 1891 766, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
41. Raitt, 9.
42. Moore, 166.
43. "We Nominate For the Hall of Fame... , " Vanity Fair (May 1921), 52.
44. Hugh Walpole, "Literary Close-Ups: V. May Sinclair. A Pen Portrait by a Friendly Hand," Vanity Fair (March 1920), 55.