Background
Rose Macaulay was born Emilie Rose Macaulay on August 1, 1881, at Rugby, United Kingdom. She was the daughter of George C. Macaulay, a lecturer on English at Cambridge University.
( Hailed as "an utter delight, the most brilliant witty a...)
Hailed as "an utter delight, the most brilliant witty and charming book I have read since I can't remember when" by The New York Times when it was originally published in 1956, Rose Macaulay's The Towers of Trebizond tells the gleefully absurd story of Aunt Dot, Father Chantry-Pigg, Aunt Dot's deranged camel, and our narrator, Laurie, who are traveling from Istanbul to legendary Trebizond on a convoluted mission. Along the way they will encounter spies, a Greek sorcerer, a precocious ape, and Billy Graham with a busload of evangelists. Part travelogue, part comedy, it is also a meditation on love, faith, doubt, and the difficulties, moral and intellectual, of being a Christian in the modern world.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374533636/?tag=2022091-20
(In this book of tragedy and great beauty, Rose Macaulay's...)
In this book of tragedy and great beauty, Rose Macaulay's only historical novel, she reveals a lifelong passion for the seventeenth century. Here she interweaves the lives of Robert Herrick and other poets with those of a small group of fictional characters, setting them vividly in one of the most turbulent periods in English history. "The the great enrichment of the English language Miss Macaulay has chosen an historical subject....She has added something permanent to English letters."--Observer Rose Macaulay was a successful novelist whose works include Potterism and The Towers of Trebizond. Susan Howatch is the author of The Dark Shore and Penmarric.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0192813161/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000CHN05/?tag=2022091-20
Rose Macaulay was born Emilie Rose Macaulay on August 1, 1881, at Rugby, United Kingdom. She was the daughter of George C. Macaulay, a lecturer on English at Cambridge University.
Macaulay was educated at Oxford High School and at Somerville College, Oxford, United Kingdom.
Her first novel, Abbots Verney, appeared in 1906 and established her literary reputation. Subsequent novels included Potterism (1920), Told by an Idiot (1923), Keeping Up Appearances (1928), The World My Wilderness (1950), and The Towers of Trebizond (1956). She also wrote volumes of poems, essays, and literary criticism, most notably Some Religious Elements in English Literature (1931). In 1958 she was named dame commander of the British Empire.
( Hailed as "an utter delight, the most brilliant witty a...)
(In this book of tragedy and great beauty, Rose Macaulay's...)
Macaulay was never a simple believer in "mere Christianity"; however, and her writings reveal a more complex, mystical sense of the divine. That said, she did not return to the Anglican church until 1953; she had been an ardent secularist before and, while religious themes pervade her novels, previous to her conversion she often treats Christianity satirically, for instance in Going Abroad and The World My Wilderness.
Macaulay was an active feminist throughout her life.
Quotations:
At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.
It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them.
It was a book to kill time for those who like it better dead.
You should always believe what you read in the newspapers, for that makes them more interesting.
He felt about books as doctors feel about medicines, or managers about plays - cynical, but hopeful.
She never married, as a result of her lengthy and secret relationship with Gerald O'Donovan. They met in 1918 and the affair lasted until his death in 1942.
