The Rector's Daughter (Virago Modern Classics)

Product Information

I recently finished reading FM Mayor’s classic novel – ‘The Rector’s Daughter’, recently published by Persephone Books. Apart from the central plot, there were many details of the story that I enjoyed. Most of all the descriptions of the quiet life that Mary led – not completely devoid of pleasure. The books she read and her enjoyment of the passing of the seasons. There’s a particular paragraph that describes the books Mary enjoyed : How disappointing that you didn't like this one. I'd thought it sounded interesting but based on this review I might have to reconsider… I normally hate earnestness in all forms – but I didn't find this earnest. I just found it very honest, and deeply sad. Aside from the whole issue of romance and spinsterhood etc it's also about general life disappointment in the sense of not achieving your dreams and having to deal with the consequences of that. Flora Macdonald Mayor (20 October 1872, Kingston Hill, Surrey – 28 January 1932, Hampstead, London), was an English novelist and short story writer, who published under the name F. M. Mayor.

The Rector’s Daughter’ by F.M. Mayor | Bag Full Of Books ‘The Rector’s Daughter’ by F.M. Mayor | Bag Full Of Books

The Rector’s Daughter by the cruelly underrated FM (Flora Macdonald) Mayor is a book worthy to rank with anything that George Eliot or Jane Austen set their hand to. Published in 1924 by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, it is one of those curious novels in which a cauldron of suppressed emotion and unrequited love boils away behind a landscape in which, for all practical purposes, hardly anything happens. The Rector’s Daughter belongs to the finest English tradition of novel writing. It is like a bitter Cranford… Mary Jocelyn’s ‘nothing’ is a full and rich state of being.’ Sylvia Lund, Time and Tide, 18 July 1924Excellent review – it reminded me that I read the Virago edition years ago. It was very well written, but I thought very sad, so I don’t think I will be re-reading it in the near future.

Rectors Daughter by Mayor F M - AbeBooks Rectors Daughter by Mayor F M - AbeBooks

It seems as though your reaction is similar to mine when I read The Days of Abandonment last year. It sounded great, but it was not just earnest–and it had some humorous moments–but actually depressing. I felt miserable myself after reading it. That being said, it was interesting enough. (Hmm. Maybe our experiences weren't quite so similar as I'd imagined. TDoA is what immediately leapt to mind, though.) Reply Legget, Jane (2 March 1988). Local Heroines: A Women's History Gazetteer of England, Scotland and Wales. Pandora. ISBN 9780863580376– via Google Books. A robin flew up to greet them; a toad crawled forth and squatted on the path, turning his bright eyes to Mary while she talked to him… Mary and Dora stopped to look through the gap in the hedge at the view beyond, quiet, domestic, English scenery – a pond, meadows, and elm trees. These are the solace of the lonely in the country.” This is such a brilliant book, worthy of being a classic, really, in that it so perfectly encapsulates how limited unmarried women’s lives could be before the advent of feminism”– Rachel, Book Snob Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuthThe Rector’s Daughter (1924) concerns the life and ill-fated love of Mary Jocelyn, the rector’s daughter in question. She is motherless, and lives a life of obedient graciousness towards her father – who is deeply intellectual, but not able to show his love for his daughter. I think Mary was supposed to be in the mold of silently passionate women, having to be content with their lot. A bit like Jane Eyre, perhaps… but then I have always thought Jane Eyre a little overrated. Here she is: Flora Mayor’s lifelong poor health made her unable to fulfil much of her literary promise, sadly. However, she was a successful author with a three-book contract with Constable when she died of pneumonia in 1932, aged fifty-nine. In a recent piece for The Times, the writer D.J. Taylor describes The Rector’s Daughter as ‘one of those curious novels in which a cauldron of suppressed emotion and unrequited love boils away behind a landscape in which, for all practical purposes, hardly anything happens’ and says that as a novelist, F.M. Mayor ranks with Jane Austen and George Eliot. Yet, for all this, The Rector’s Daughter is still a novel that seems to exist just below the literary radar, much loved by its readers, but also, somehow, not widely read. Little has been written by scholars about this or F.M. Mayor’s other works, perhaps because she produced so few in her lifetime (a collection of her ghost stories, said to be admired by M.R. James, was published posthumously). Her two other novels, The Third Miss Symons (1913) and The Squire’s Daughter (1929), were also reissued by Virago Modern Classics in the 1980s. Sybil Oldfield’s Spinsters of this Parish: the life and times of F.M. Mayor and Mary Sheepshanks(Virago, 1984) is a well-researched dual biography that provides a fascinating social context for Mayor’s life and unsuccessful attempt to make a living as an actress. The chapter on her four years at Newnham College, Cambridge in the 1890s is particularly revealing, including the revelation that Mayor and her former tutor, Mary Bateson, remained close friends until Bateson’s early death in 1906. In 1903 she became engaged to a young architect, Ernest Shepherd, who died in India of typhoid before Mayor was able to travel out to join him. She never married, and lived closely with her twin sister Alice MacDonald Mayor (1872–1961). Perhaps my ennui can be attributed to spinster novel fatigue? I have read quite a few recently, and have to say that May Sinclair’s Life and Death of Harriett Frean attempts a similar type of novel rather more (for me) successfully. The public debate about unmarried women between the world wars (covered fascinatingly in a chapter of Nicola Beauman’s A Very Great Profession, and less fascinatingly in Virginia Nicholson’s Singled Out) was loud and often angry; the 1920s novels dealing with this issue were written at a time when the issue was contentious, as well as potentially tragic. Maybe I’ve just read too many, now?

The Rector’s Daughter by F. M. Mayor book review | The TLS

Mary liked the long Dedmayne winter evenings. In October, as regularly as the leaves fell, she began the winter habit of reading her favourite novels for an hour before dinner, finding in Trollope, Miss Yonge, Miss Austen, and Mrs Gaskell friends so dear and familiar that they peopled her loneliness.” Thank you so much for your comment. It is indeed a book that has the power to greatly move and change you. The sorrow I felt for Mary seemed to me very real – as if I was mourning the loss of a friend I knew well. One winter day when Dora Redland had come to stay with Ella, she and Mary met for a walk. Mary suddenly started the subject. “I wish you would tell me something about love. I should think no one ever reached my age and knew so little, except of love in books. Father has never mentioned love, and Aunt Lottie treated it as if it ought not to exist. There were you and Will, but I was so young for me age I never took it in.” It was such a poignant read that it is taking me a few days to mentally recover from reading about poor Mary’s life. Recover from reading about the depths and constancy of her love, devotion and emotions. Her deep-rooted devotion to her Father and the man that she loved with her heart and soul. S. Oldfield, Spinsters of this parish: the life and times of F.M. Mayor and Mary Sheepshanks (1984)Mary is thirty five years old when she meets the love of her life – a scholarly man, similar in this aspect to her Father – a man called Robert Herbert who becomes a close friend of the family. With Robert, Mary discovers an intelligent mind, a passion for reading and their friendship gradually develops into a very deep love – which consumes Mary in ways, she had not thought previously possible. As with all other things in life, Mary loves Robert passionately and in her mind contemplates a life with him, filled with love and light and family. But what happens to Mary is a fate too cruel to behold and as a reader we share Mary’s feelings of dismay and disappointment. But, Dora, don’t you think there is a Love ‘Which alters not with Time’s brief hours and days, / But bears it out even to the edge of Doom’?”