Mary Agnes Hamilton

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Standard Name: Hamilton, Mary Agnes
Birth Name: Mary Agnes Adamson
Nickname: Molly
Married Name: Mary Agnes Hamilton
Pseudonym: Iconoclast
MAH published during the first half of the twentieth century, writing to support herself after a disastrous marriage and during a distinguished career in politics and the civil service. Many of her novels provide fictional treatments of topics that concerned her in public life: political charisma, pacifism, women's access to political activity. Her non-fiction includes books of history and geography, political analyses of the Labour Party the Trade Unions, and life-writing, most notably two successive volumes of autobiography, and the biographies of politicians including women who deserve to be better known for their activism. She calls her book about Newnham College a biography as well.
Black and white, head-and-shoulders photograph of Mary Agnes Hamilton, taken from the side but turning her face to the camera. Her blouse or jacket looks silky; her dark hair is in coils over her ears.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Rose Allatini
Meanwhile the Times Literary Supplement saw the novel as well-written—evidently the work of a woman. The reviewer judged that as a frank and sympathetic study of certain types of mind and character, it is of...
Friends, Associates Phyllis Bentley
At the Ministry of InformationPB worked with politician and writer Mary Agnes Hamilton , who admired Bentley's superb warmth and strength of feeling, but felt them to be a drawback for this kind of...
Textual Production Phyllis Bentley
Mary Agnes Hamilton felt that PB 's superb strength of feeling gave fire and force to her writing.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Up-Hill All the Way. Cape.
114
Bentley herself wrote in "O Dreams, O Destinations" that her ambition had been to write a...
Friends, Associates E. M. Delafield
EMD had many literary friends, some of whom were associated with Time and Tide magazine, including Lady Rhondda, Winifred Holtby , L. A. G. Strong , A. B. Cox , Mary Agnes Hamilton , and...
Intertextuality and Influence Laurence Hope
In addition to adaptations of her poetry for music, two films adapted Hope's work: Less than the Dust (1916, with Mary Pickford and David Powell ) and The Indian Love Lyrics (1923). Less than the...
Textual Production Storm Jameson
Jameson had been approached by the Ministry of Information once the USA had entered World War II, for suggestions on how to cement Anglo-American relations.
Jameson, Storm. Journey from the North. Harper and Row.
524
The resulting volume includes work by Phyllis Bentley ,...
Literary responses Vernon Lee
One of the first and most appreciative readers of VL 's work was John Addington Symonds , a leading cultural historian of the time. Her book also brought her the notice and friendship of other...
Reception Vernon Lee
Interest in her work was waning by 1937 when some of her letters were first privately printed (though Mary Agnes Hamilton in Remembering My Good Friends, 1944, noted her extreme subtlety and acuteness of...
Friends, Associates Marie Belloc Lowndes
A younger friend, Mary Agnes Hamilton , used to dine with MBL during the interwar years: early because Lowndes liked to begin writing as early as 5 a.m.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Remembering My Good Friends. Jonathan Cape.
296
Hamilton reported that her friend was...
Friends, Associates Rose Macaulay
In 1921 RM was spending several nights a week in a room she rented in the large house of writer Naomi Royde-Smith at 44 Prince's Gardens, Kensington.
Emery, Jane. Rose Macaulay: A Writer’s Life. John Murray.
191
Babington Smith, Constance. Rose Macaulay. Collins.
100
Chosen by Royde-Smith as a...
Literary responses Rose Macaulay
The volume was much praised. The Athenæum called RMone of the most interesting of contemporary poets and a very accomplished metrist.
Lefanu, Sarah. Rose Macaulay. Virago.
118
A few years later, however, Humbert Wolfe wrote of her poetry that...
Textual Production Rose Macaulay
Mary Agnes Hamilton wrote that RM explained her motives for writing as a love of playing with words: to find new ones, right ones, fresh uses for old ones: to make them dance: to make...
Residence Naomi Royde-Smith
After the First World War she lived in a flat at the top of a large house at 44 Prince's Gardens in Kensington (an address later remembered by Mary Agnes Hamilton as in nearby Exhibition...
Occupation Naomi Royde-Smith
She covered drama criticism for two years, but remained literary editor for a decade.
Eliot, T. S. The Letters of T.S. Eliot. Editor Eliot, Valerie, Faber and Faber.
1: 149n1
Mary Agnes Hamilton wrote later: she was a wonderful editor, whose discoveries were endless.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Remembering My Good Friends. Jonathan Cape.
137
Her list of...
Friends, Associates Naomi Royde-Smith
NRS was a close friend of Rose Macaulay , with whom in the immediate postwar period she shared entertaining duties at her flat, in something similar to a salon. They apparently met through Macaulay contributing...

Timeline

14 December 1918: The post-war general election (sometimes...

National or international item

14 December 1918

The post-war general election (sometimes called the coupon election) was the first in which some British women (those over thirty with a property qualification of their own or their husband's) voted.

26 December 1918: US President Woodrow Wilson (who had already...

National or international item

26 December 1918

US President Woodrow Wilson (who had already been in Paris in connection with the peace conference which did not officially convene until 18 January following) was received in London with intense enthusiasm.

Summer 1919: John Maynard Keynes published The Economic...

Writing climate item

Summer 1919

John Maynard Keynes published The Economic Consequences of the Peace.

30 May 1929: Labour came in twenty-six votes ahead of...

National or international item

30 May 1929

Labour came in twenty-six votes ahead of the Conservatives in the first general election with full women's suffrage: the prospect of voting by women under thirty brought the demeaning nickname of the Flapper Election....

19 September 1931: The Japanese invasion of Manchuria began,...

National or international item

19 September 1931

The Japanese invasion of Manchuria began, signalling a shift of the balance of power from the Emperor to the escalating military machine.

30 July 1932: The Independent Labour Party, increasingly...

National or international item

30 July 1932

The Independent Labour Party , increasingly disillusioned with the Labour Party 's movement towards the centre, took a decision to disaffiliate from its own larger and more successful offspring.

14 November 1935: A general election was held in Britain. The...

National or international item

14 November 1935

A general election was held in Britain. The Conservative Party polled most votes, and the National Coalition government was returned to power.

29 September 1938: The Munich Pact (associated with the name...

National or international item

29 September 1938

The Munich Pact (associated with the name of Neville Chamberlain , who travelled to Munich to sign it for Britain) granted the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Hitler 's Germany.

19 May 1940: Winston Churchill made his first BBC radio...

National or international item

19 May 1940

Winston Churchill made his first BBC radio broadcast as wartime coalition Prime Minister.

August 1940: A Ministry of Information pamphlet appeared...

National or international item

August 1940

A Ministry of Information pamphlet appeared under the title Loss of Eden. A Cautionary Tale. Re-issued in 1941 more openly called If Hitler Comes, it dealt with the possible scenario of successful Nazi

Texts

Hamilton, Mary Agnes. “Arthur Henderson”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 1818, p. 1016.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Arthur Henderson. W. Heinemann, 1938.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Dead Yesterday. Duckworth, 1916.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Follow My Leader. J. Cape, 1922.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Folly’s Handbook. Jonathan Cape, 1927.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Full Circle. Collins, 1919.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. In America To-Day. H. Hamilton, 1932.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. John Stuart Mill. H. Hamilton, 1933.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. La Démocratie anglaise en guerre. Ministry of Information, 1945.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Less than the Dust. Heinemann, 1912.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Life Sentence. H. Hamilton, 1935.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Margaret Bondfield. L. Parsons, 1924.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Mary Macarthur. L. Parsons, 1925.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Murder in the House of Commons. H. Hamilton, 1931.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Remembering My Good Friends. Jonathan Cape, 1944.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Sampson Low, Marston, 1933.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Special Providence. George Allen and Unwin, 1930.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. “Testament of Friendship”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 2951, p. 532.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes, editor. The Boat Train: By Fifteen Travellers. G. Allen and Unwin, 1934.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. The Last Fortnight. W. Collins Sons, 1920.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. The Man of To-morrow: J. Ramsay MacDonald. Leonard Parsons, 1923.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Thomas Carlyle. L. Parsons, 1926.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Up-Hill All the Way. Cape, 1953.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Women at Work. G. Routledge, 1941.