ABSTRACT
Buried in the “S” file at the archives of the New York Public Library lies an unpublished, undated playlet by early-twentieth-century British novelist and critic May Sinclair, who only cryptically identifies herself on the cover page as “The most impertinent author in the world.” Those familiar with Sinclair’s generally earnest writing might be surprised to recognize her handwriting here, in the nine pages of a tongue-in-cheek booklet entitled “A Comedy of Errors.” Here is no dramatic attack on the commercialization of the publishing world, as in her novel The Divine Fire, the work that first catapulted her into the public eye in 1904. Nor is there, as in much of her fiction, any attempt to rouse readers’ sympathies for the dilemmas of protagonists slowly breaking free of the frayed net of societal convention: such as Jane Holland of The Creators (1910) and the heroine of Mary Olivier: A Life (1919), who both demonstrate a sexual and intellectual independence uncharacteristic of women of their day.
