Mary Olivier: a Life

May Sinclair traces a single woman’s inner life from infancy to middle age, following Mary Olivier as she grows up in a comfortable but stifling Victorian family. Written in an early stream-of-consciousness style, the novel stays close to Mary’s sensations and thoughts as she contends with a possessive mother, the deaths of her brothers, thwarted love, and a hunger for philosophy and independence that her world does not welcome in a daughter. Sinclair, who helped bring the phrase stream of consciousness into English criticism, makes ordinary domestic life feel dense with feeling and quiet rebellion. Semi-autobiographical and formally daring, it stands among the first English novels to render consciousness so directly. First published in 1919. Free to read here in PDF and EPUB.