George Egerton
Encyclopedia
Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright (14 December 1859 — 12 August 1945), better known by her pen name
George Egerton, was a "New Woman
" writer and feminist
. Widely considered to be one of the most important of the "New Woman" writers of the nineteenth century fin de siecle, she was a friend of George Bernard Shaw
, Ellen Terry
and J. M. Barrie
.
in 1859, to a Welsh Protestant mother, Isabel George, and an Irish Catholic father, Captain John J. Dunne. The earliest years of her life were marked by migration between Australia, New Zealand and Chile, but most of her formative years were spent in and around Dublin, and Egerton was to refer to herself throughout her life as "intensely Irish". Raised Catholic, she was schooled for two years in Germany as a teenager. There, she demonstrated a talent for art and linguistics. She reportedly learned to speak a variety of languages fluently, including German, French, Norwegian, Swedish and Russian.
As a young adult, Egerton emigrated to America and later spent two years in Norway with Henry Higginson, a married man with whom she had eloped. These were formative years for her in terms of her intellectual growth and artistic development. While in Norway she immersed herself in the work of Henrik Ibsen
, August Strindberg
, Ola Hansson
, Friedrich Nietzsche
, and Knut Hamsun
. Her brief romance with Hamsun serves as the inspiration for her 1893 short story "Now Spring Has Come". Hamsun would go on to win the Nobel prize for literature, and Egerton was the first to make Hamsun's work accessible to an English readership, with her translation of his first novel Hunger (Sult). A later marriage to Egerton Tertius Clairmonte was the impetus for her first attempts at writing fiction - instigated by his penniless status and her desire to alleviate the boredom she felt upon her return to rural Ireland. She chose the pseudonym "George Egerton" as a tribute to both her mother, whose maiden name was "George", and to Clairmonte. Asked how to say her pen name, she told The Literary Digest
it was pronounced edg'er-ton, adding "This name is pronounced this way, as far as I know by all bearers of the name in England."
Egerton's first book of short stories, Keynotes, was published by John Lane and Elkin Mathews of the Bodley Head in 1893. This volume was so successful (and notorious) on both sides of the Atlantic that Egerton was soon being interviewed in the leading magazines of the day, and was famously lampooned in Punch. In hopes of emulating the success of Keynotes, the Bodley Head published a "Keynotes" series of books which included titles by Grant Allen and Richard LeGallienne.
Keynotes was the high-water mark of Egerton's literary career. A subsequent volume of short stories, Discords, and her later efforts - including two additional short story volumes (Symphonies and Flies in Amber); two novels (Rosa Amorosa and The Wheel of God); and a book of Nietzschean parables (Fantasias) - met largely with failure. Her later incarnation as a playwright (Camilla States Her Case, 1925) and translator of plays (most notably from the French) generated only a few moderately successful productions.
Egerton's stylistic innovations, often termed "proto-modernist" by literary scholars, and her often radical and feminist subject matter have ensured that her fiction continues to generate academic interest in America and Britain. Egerton's experimentation with form and content anticipate the high modernism of writers like Joyce and Lawrence, and Egerton's The Wheel of God often reads as a sort of rudimentary template for Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Thomas Hardy acknowledged the influence of Egerton's work on his own, in particular on the construction of his "New Woman" character, Sue Bridehead, in Jude the Obscure. Perhaps most notably, Holbrook Jackson credits Egerton with the first mention of Friedrich Nietzsche in English literature (she refers to Nietzsche in Keynotes in 1893, three years before the first of Nietzsche's works was translated into English).
collected her letters and his reminiscences of her and published them in 1958 as A Leaf from the Yellow Book.
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
George Egerton, was a "New Woman
New Woman
The New Woman was a feminist ideal that emerged in the late 19th century. The New Woman pushed the limits set by male-dominated society, especially as modeled in the plays of Norwegian Henrik Ibsen . "The New Woman sprang fully armed from Ibsen's brain," according to a joke by Max Beerbohm...
" writer and feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
. Widely considered to be one of the most important of the "New Woman" writers of the nineteenth century fin de siecle, she was a friend of George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, Ellen Terry
Ellen Terry
Dame Ellen Terry, GBE was an English stage actress who became the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain. Among the members of her famous family is her great nephew, John Gielgud....
and J. M. Barrie
J. M. Barrie
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright...
.
Life
George Egerton was born Mary Chavelita Dunne in AustraliaAustralia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
in 1859, to a Welsh Protestant mother, Isabel George, and an Irish Catholic father, Captain John J. Dunne. The earliest years of her life were marked by migration between Australia, New Zealand and Chile, but most of her formative years were spent in and around Dublin, and Egerton was to refer to herself throughout her life as "intensely Irish". Raised Catholic, she was schooled for two years in Germany as a teenager. There, she demonstrated a talent for art and linguistics. She reportedly learned to speak a variety of languages fluently, including German, French, Norwegian, Swedish and Russian.
As a young adult, Egerton emigrated to America and later spent two years in Norway with Henry Higginson, a married man with whom she had eloped. These were formative years for her in terms of her intellectual growth and artistic development. While in Norway she immersed herself in the work of Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
, August Strindberg
August Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...
, Ola Hansson
Ola Hansson
Ola Hansson was a Swedish poet, prose writer, and critic.- Biography :...
, Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
, and Knut Hamsun
Knut Hamsun
Knut Hamsun was a Norwegian author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. He was praised by King Haakon VII of Norway as Norway's soul....
. Her brief romance with Hamsun serves as the inspiration for her 1893 short story "Now Spring Has Come". Hamsun would go on to win the Nobel prize for literature, and Egerton was the first to make Hamsun's work accessible to an English readership, with her translation of his first novel Hunger (Sult). A later marriage to Egerton Tertius Clairmonte was the impetus for her first attempts at writing fiction - instigated by his penniless status and her desire to alleviate the boredom she felt upon her return to rural Ireland. She chose the pseudonym "George Egerton" as a tribute to both her mother, whose maiden name was "George", and to Clairmonte. Asked how to say her pen name, she told The Literary Digest
Literary Digest
The Literary Digest was an influential general interest weekly magazine published by Funk & Wagnalls. Founded by Isaac Kaufmann Funk in 1890, it eventually merged with two similar weekly magazines, Public Opinion and Current Opinion.-History:...
it was pronounced edg'er-ton, adding "This name is pronounced this way, as far as I know by all bearers of the name in England."
Egerton's first book of short stories, Keynotes, was published by John Lane and Elkin Mathews of the Bodley Head in 1893. This volume was so successful (and notorious) on both sides of the Atlantic that Egerton was soon being interviewed in the leading magazines of the day, and was famously lampooned in Punch. In hopes of emulating the success of Keynotes, the Bodley Head published a "Keynotes" series of books which included titles by Grant Allen and Richard LeGallienne.
Keynotes was the high-water mark of Egerton's literary career. A subsequent volume of short stories, Discords, and her later efforts - including two additional short story volumes (Symphonies and Flies in Amber); two novels (Rosa Amorosa and The Wheel of God); and a book of Nietzschean parables (Fantasias) - met largely with failure. Her later incarnation as a playwright (Camilla States Her Case, 1925) and translator of plays (most notably from the French) generated only a few moderately successful productions.
Egerton's stylistic innovations, often termed "proto-modernist" by literary scholars, and her often radical and feminist subject matter have ensured that her fiction continues to generate academic interest in America and Britain. Egerton's experimentation with form and content anticipate the high modernism of writers like Joyce and Lawrence, and Egerton's The Wheel of God often reads as a sort of rudimentary template for Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Thomas Hardy acknowledged the influence of Egerton's work on his own, in particular on the construction of his "New Woman" character, Sue Bridehead, in Jude the Obscure. Perhaps most notably, Holbrook Jackson credits Egerton with the first mention of Friedrich Nietzsche in English literature (she refers to Nietzsche in Keynotes in 1893, three years before the first of Nietzsche's works was translated into English).
Personal life
She divorced Egerton Clairmonte in 1901 and married the dramatic agent Reginald Golding Bright. Her only child, her son George Clairmonte, was killed in World War I.Other
Her cousin Terence de Vere WhiteTerence de Vere White
Terence de Vere White was an Irish writer, lawyer and editor.Born in Dublin, he studied at Trinity College, Dublin where he qualified as a solicitor and became a partner in a leading Dublin law firm. He gave up law when he became the literary editor of The Irish Times from 1961 to 1977...
collected her letters and his reminiscences of her and published them in 1958 as A Leaf from the Yellow Book.
External links
- Selected Papers of Mary Chavelita Bright at Princeton University Library
- George Egerton's translation of Hunger at Google Book SearchGoogle Book SearchGoogle Books is a service from Google that searches the full text of books that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition, and stored in its digital database. The service was formerly known as Google Print when it was introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October...