ABSTRACT
May Sinclair’s rich and complex oeuvre is not easily summarized, nor is her relationship to a wide range of ideas and influences from modernist, fin de siècle, and nineteenth-century intellectual periods. The diversity of her work goes some way towards demonstrating the breadth of her interests. She wrote 24 novels, all in their way depicting scenes of social and psychological realism, and over 40 short stories, some quite experimental in content. She contributed articles to journals and movements on feminism, psychology, and literary criticism; logged her experiences of the First World War in a journal; translated texts from German to English early in her career; completed two works of philosophy; and wrote poetry. Because of the diversity of her work, Sinclair had a wide acquaintance in the intellectual circles of her time, her literary circle only increasing as her career progressed. Clearly, she had opportunity aplenty to join literary groups or to affiliate herself with literary styles. And yet on the whole, she preferred to operate independently. Perhaps as a result of this independence, her writings are often demonstrably modernist yet simultaneously difficult to place when categorizing modernisms.1 The question arises then, why, when she had such a wide range of contacts and potential opportunities for affiliation, might Sinclair have shown a particular interest in the ideas and objectives of the Imagists? Why did Sinclair risk her considerable reputation and her independence of thought and style by supporting the Imagists and their often frowned-upon ideas, even to the extent of adapting some of their poetic strategies within her own work?
