Annie S. Swan
Annie S. Swan CBE | |
---|---|
Born | Annie Shepherd Swan 8 July 1859 Mountskip, Gorebridge, Scotland |
Died | 17 June 1943 Gullane, East Lothian, Scotland | (aged 83)
Pen name | Annie S. Swan, Annie S. Smith, David Lyall, Mrs Burnett-Smith |
Occupation | Writer, novelist, journalist |
Genre | Fiction, dramatic fiction, romantic fiction, non-fiction, advice, feminism, politics, religion, social commentary |
Notable works | Aldersyde (1884) |
Spouse | James Burnett Smith (1883–1927) |
Annie Shepherd Swan,
Early life
Swan was born on 8 July 1859 in Mountskip, Gorebridge, Scotland.[6] She was one of the seven children of Edward Swan (died 1893), a farmer and merchant, by his first wife, Euphemia Brown (died 1881). After her father's business failed, she attended school in Edinburgh, latterly at Queen Street Ladies College. Her father belonged to an Evangelical Union congregation, but she turned in adulthood to the Church of Scotland. She persistently wrote fiction as a teenager.[7]
Writings
Her first publication was Wrongs Righted (1881), as a serial in The People's Friend. This periodical she long saw as the mainstay of her career, although she contributed to many others.[8]
The novel that made her reputation was Aldersyde (1883), a romance set in the
Later successes such as The Gates of Eden (1887) and Maitland of Lauriston (1891) owed a debt to the fiction of Margaret Oliphant, who was among her critics, accusing Swan's novels of presenting a stereotypical, unrealistic depiction of Scotland. In a review of Carlowrie (1884), Oliphant went so far as to say Swan "presented an entirely distorted view of Scottish life."[8] Because of her dominance over Women at Home, editor-in-chief W. R. Nicoll often called it Annie Swan's Magazine. She became editor of the magazine from 1893 to 1917.[3] While writing for the British Weekly, she became acquainted with S. R. Crockett and J. M. Barrie, whose work like hers was given the unflattering epithet kailyard, an allusion to its parochialism and sentimentality.[7]
By 1898, Swan had published over 30 books,[2] mainly novels, many published serially. She also wrote poetry, stories and books on advice, politics and religion. In 1901, The Juridical Review reported that Swan's books were the most favoured by female inmates in Irish prisons.[10] In 1906, she was profiled in Helen Black's Notable Women Authors of the Day. She is named as the favourite novelist of William Morel's sweetheart Lily in D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers (1913).[11]
Swan used her maiden name for most of her career,
She was involved in the Women's Suffrage movement herself, and was arrested during a window smashing raid in London, alongside a number of other Scottish women. [15]
From 1924 Swan ran another penny weekly, The Annie Swan Annual. She also wrote several popular novels at this time including The Last of the Laidlaws (1920), Closed Doors (1926) and The Pendulum (1926).
Personal life
Swan married the schoolteacher James Burnett Smith (1857–1927) in 1883. They lived initially at
While in London they became friends and neighbours with the writer Beatrice Harraden and with Joseph and Emma Parker at a later date in Hampstead.[19][20] The family moved to Hertford in 1908, where her son Eddie died in a shooting accident in September 1910.[7]
Swan's autobiography My Life appeared in 1934[3] and was reprinted six times within a year.[5] Her final published work was an article for Homes and Gardens, "Testament of Age", in March 1943. She died of heart disease three months later at her home in Gullane, on 17 June 1943.[7] A collection of her personal correspondence, The Letters of Annie S. Swan (1945) edited by Mildred Robertson Nicoll appeared two years later.
Public life
During the
Swan was an active
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labour | John William Muir
|
13,058 | 47.3 | ||
Unionist | Sir William Mitchell-Thomson | 10,951 | 39.6 | ||
Liberal | Annie Burnett Smith | 3,617 | 13.1 | ||
Majority | 2,107 | 7.7 |
After her defeat, the Women's Freedom League claimed that Swan and other female candidates would have been elected under a system of proportional representation like those in Ireland, Netherlands and Germany.[25] She was also a founding member and one-time vice president of the Scottish National Party.[16][17]
Later life
Swan's husband died in 1927 and she and her daughter moved to
Posthumous reputation
In the years since her death, there has been little study of her life or work by literary historians. Articles such as Edmond Gardiner's "Annie S. Swan – Forerunner of Modern Popular Fiction" (1974) and Charlotte Reid's "A Cursory of Inspection to Annie S. Swan" (1990) point to her literary contributions. Several of her novels have reappeared.
References
- ISBN 0-8103-1249-2
- ^ ISBN 0-8047-1842-3, pp. 200–201.
- ^ ISBN 0-415-19544-6
- ^ ISBN 1-86232-082-9
- ^ a b Dickson, Beth (1997). "Annie S. Swan and O. Douglas: Legacies of the Kailyard". In Gifford, Douglas; Macmillan, Dorothy (eds.). A History of Scottish Women's Writing. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pp. 329–346.
- ^ The Glasgow Herald. 18 June 1943. p. 6. Retrieved 17 March 2017.
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/40374. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ ISBN 0-7091-5642-1
- ISBN 0-19-538623-X
- ^ Charles J. Guthrie, "Our Punishment of Crime – An Admitted Failure", The Juridical Review: A Journal of Legal and Political Science, Vol. XIII. Edinburgh: William Green & Sons, 1901, p. 139.
- ISBN 9780198117605.
- ISBN 0-7190-4860-5
- ISBN 0-415-23926-5
- ISBN 0-226-52677-1
- ^ "Votes for Women". 5 March 1912. p. 381.
- ^ ISBN 0-7486-0999-7
- ^ ISBN 0-7100-8866-3
- ^ Donald Macmillan, The Life of Robert Flint. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1914, p. 466–467.
- ISBN 0-595-36222-2
- ISBN 0-19-820677-1
- ^ "When I am M. P.". The Vote. 30 June 1922.
- ^ William George Lyddon, British War Missions to the United States, 1914–1918. Oxford University Press, 1938, p. 186.
- ^ "Glasgow's Poll. Labour wins ten seats. Prime Minister's return". The Glasgow Herald. 16 November 1922. p. 7. Retrieved 28 May 2017.
- ^ "Lady candidates. Two former Members returned". The Glasgow Herald. 17 November 1922. p. 9. Retrieved 29 May 2017.
- ISBN 1-86064-478-3
- ^ "Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood" (PDF). The Edinburgh Gazette. 6 June 1930. p. 651. Retrieved 28 May 2017.
Further reading
- Margaret Beetham, A Magazine of Her Own?: Domesticity and Desire in the Woman's Magazine, 1800–1914. London: Routledge, 1996. ISBN 0-415-04920-2
- Browning, DC; Cousin, John W (1969). Everyman's dictionary of literary biography. London: J. M. Dent & Sons.
- David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery. The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland: Professionalism and Diversity, 1880–2000. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007 ISBN 0-7486-1829-5
- Edmond F. Gardiner, "Annie S. Swan – Forerunner of Modern Popular Fiction", Library Review, 24.6 (1974)
- Charlotte Reid, "A Cursory Visit of Inspection to Annie S. Swan", ISSN 0264-0856
External links
- Works by Annie Shepherd Swan at Project Gutenberg
- "Appendix of Living Writers/Smith, Mrs. Burnett ("Annie S. Swan")", A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 1910, p. 449 – via Wikisource
- Papers of and relating to Annie S. Swan at University of Aberdeen
- Works by or about Annie S. Swan at Internet Archive
- Works by Annie S. Swan at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Annie S. Swan at The Orlando Project