May Sarton is the pen name

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...

 of Eleanore Marie Sarton (May 3, 1912 – July 16, 1995), an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 poet, novelist, and memoir

Memoir

A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...

ist.

Biography

Sarton was born in Wondelgem

Wondelgem

Wondelgem used to be a village in East Flanders, Belgium. It is now part of the city of Ghent.-History:In the 9th century the Carolingian emperors owned a large estate in Wondelgem. Ghent has a total population of about 230,000, of which about 12,407 people live in Wondelgem.-External links:...

, Belgium

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 (today a part of the city of Ghent

Ghent

Ghent is a city and a municipality located in the Flemish region of Belgium. It is the capital and biggest city of the East Flanders province. The city started as a settlement at the confluence of the Rivers Scheldt and Lys and in the Middle Ages became one of the largest and richest cities of...

). Her parents were science historian

History of science

The history of science is the study of the historical development of human understandings of the natural world and the domains of the social sciences....

 George Sarton

George Sarton

George Sarton was a Belgian chemist and historian who is considered the founder of the discipline of history of science. He left Belgium because of the First World War and settled in the United States where he spent the rest of his life researching and writing about the history of science...

 and his wife, the English

English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

 Mabel Eleanor Elwes. In 1915, her family moved to Boston, Massachusetts. She went to school in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

, and started theatre lessons in her late teens.

In 1945 she met her partner for the next thirteen years, Judy Matlack, in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...

. They separated in 1956, when Sarton's father died and Sarton moved to Nelson, New Hampshire

Nelson, New Hampshire

Nelson is a town in Cheshire County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 729 at the 2010 census. Nelson includes the village of Munsonville.-History:...

. Honey in the Hive (1988) is about their relationship. In her memoir At Seventy, she reflected on how her Unitarian Universalist upbringing shaped her.

Sarton later moved to York, Maine

York, Maine

York is a town in York County, Maine, United States at the southwest corner of the state. The population in the 2000 census was 12,854. Situated beside the Atlantic Ocean on the Gulf of Maine, York is a well-known summer resort. It is home to three 18-hole golf clubs, three sandy beaches, and...

. She died of breast cancer

Breast cancer

Breast cancer is cancer originating from breast tissue, most commonly from the inner lining of milk ducts or the lobules that supply the ducts with milk. Cancers originating from ducts are known as ductal carcinomas; those originating from lobules are known as lobular carcinomas...

 on July 16, 1995. She is buried in Nelson, New Hampshire

Nelson, New Hampshire

Nelson is a town in Cheshire County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 729 at the 2010 census. Nelson includes the village of Munsonville.-History:...

.

Works and themes

Despite the quality of some of her many novels and poems, May Sarton's best and most enduring work probably lies in her journals and memoirs, particularly Plant Dreaming Deep (about her early years at Nelson, ca. 1958-68), Journal of a Solitude (1972-1973, often considered her best), The House by the Sea (1974-1976), Recovering (1978-1979) and At Seventy (1982-1983). In these fragile, rambling and honest accounts of her solitary life, she deals with such issues as ageing, isolation, solitude, friendship, love and relationships, lesbianism, self-doubt, success and failure, envy, gratitude for life's simple pleasures, love of nature (particularly of flowers), spirituality and, importantly, the constant struggles of a creative life. Sarton's later journals are not of the same quality, as she endeavoured to keep writing through ill health and often with the help of a tape recorder.

May Sarton often emphasized in her journals that she didn't see herself as a "lesbian" writer, but wanted to touch on what is universally human about love in all its manifestations. When publishing her novel Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing in 1965, she feared that writing openly about lesbianism would lead to a diminution of the previously established value of her work. "The fear of homosexuality is so great that it took courage to write Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing," she wrote in Journal of a Solitude, "to write a novel about a woman homosexual who is not a sex maniac, a drunkard, a drug-taker, or in any way repulsive, to portray a homosexual who is neither pitiable nor disgusting, without sentimentality ..." (Journal of a Solitude, 1973, pp. 90-91).

Margot Peters' controversial biography (1998) revealed May Sarton as a complex human being who often struggled in her interpersonal relationships.

Poetry books

• Encounter in April (1937)
• Inner Landscape
• The Lion and the Rose
• The Land of Silence
• In Time Like Air
• Cloud, Stone, Sun, Vine
• A Private Mythology
• As Does New Hampshire
• A Grain of Mustard Seed
• A Durable Fire
• Collected Poems, 1930-1973
• Selected Poems of May Sarton (edited by Serena Sue Hilsinger and Lois Brynes)
• Halfway to Silence
• Letters from Maine
• Coming Into Eighty (1994) Winner of the Levinson Prize
• May Sarton's Well (edited by Edith Royce Schade)

Nonfiction

• I Knew a Phoenix: Sketches for an Autobiography
• Plant Dreaming Deep
• Journal of a Solitude
• A World of Light
• The House by the Sea
• Recovering: A Journal
• At Seventy: A Journal
• Writings on Writings
• After the Stroke
• May Sarton: A Self-Portrait
• Encore: A Journal of the Eightieth Year
• At Eighty-Two

Novels

• The Single Hound
• The Bridge of Years
• Shadow of a Man
• A Shower of Summer Days
• Faithful are the Wounds
• The Birth of a Grandfather (1957)
• The Fur Person
• The Small Room (1961)
• Joanna and Ulysses
• Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing
• Miss Pickthorn and Mr. Hare
• The Poet and the Donkey
• Kinds of Love
• As We Are Now
• Crucial Conversations (1975)
• A Reckoning
• Anger
• The Magnificent Spinster
• The Education of Harriet Hatfield
• The Poet And The Donkey
• The Return of Corporal Greene

Children's books

• Punch's Secret
• A Walk Through the Woods'
• "Who is Eva From As We Are Now?"

External links

- Shrine by Purple Glitter May Sarton at Find A Grave

Find A Grave

Find a Grave is a commercial website providing free access and input to an online database of cemetery records. It was founded in 1998 as a DBA and incorporated in 2000.-History:...