Catherine Carswell

-
CC is best known for her 1920 novel, Open the Door!, and her insightful critical biography of her close friend D. H. Lawrence . Her literary corpus consists of two novels, three biographies, and an unfinished autobiography, in addition to journalism and reviewing, co-editorship of several anthologies, and assistance with a historical study of the Abbey Theatre , Dublin. She also helped Susan Tweedsmuir prepare two books from the papers of her friend (and Tweedsmuir's husband) John Buchan .

Milestones

27 March 1879

Catherine Macfarlane (later CC ) was born on top of a steep, grey, stony hill in and overlooking that seat of discipline—as Henry James has called it—the city of Glasgow.
Carswell, Catherine. Lying Awake: An Unfinished Autobiography and Other Posthumous Papers. Editor Carswell, John, Secker and Warburg.
15
Royle, Trevor. The Macmillan Companion to Scottish Literature. Macmillan Reference Books.
61

1902

Catherine Macfarlane (later CC ) began reviewing novels for the Glasgow Herald while living in Glasgow; she later continued this work in London.
Carswell, John, and Catherine Carswell. “Introduction”. The Savage Pilgrimage: A Narrative of D. H. Lawrence, Cambridge University Press, p. v - xxxv.
vi, viii

23 June 1932

CC published a second biography, The Savage Pilgrimage: A Narrative of D. H. Lawrence. After brisk early sales, charges that it was libellous caused her publisher, Chatto and Windus , to remove it from the market.
Pilditch, Jan. Catherine Carswell. A Biography. John Donald.
142
Carswell, John, and Catherine Carswell. “Introduction”. The Savage Pilgrimage: A Narrative of D. H. Lawrence, Cambridge University Press, p. v - xxxv.
xxv
Carswell, Catherine. Lying Awake: An Unfinished Autobiography and Other Posthumous Papers. Editor Carswell, John, Secker and Warburg.
204-6

18 February 1946

CC died shortly before her sixty-seventh birthday, of pleurisy following pneumonia, in the Radcliffe Infirmary at Oxford.
Her son gave the date of her death at 19 March this year.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Todd, Janet, editor. Dictionary of British Women Writers. Routledge.
125
Carswell, John, and Catherine Carswell. “Introduction”. Lying Awake: An Unfinished Biography and Other Posthumous Papers, 1stst ed, Secker and Warburg, p. ix - xxi.
xviii
Royle, Trevor. The Macmillan Companion to Scottish Literature. Macmillan Reference Books.
62
Pilditch, Jan. Catherine Carswell. A Biography. John Donald.
173

Biography

Birth and Heritage

27 March 1879

Catherine Macfarlane (later CC ) was born on top of a steep, grey, stony hill in and overlooking that seat of discipline—as Henry James has called it—the city of Glasgow.
Carswell, Catherine. Lying Awake: An Unfinished Autobiography and Other Posthumous Papers. Editor Carswell, John, Secker and Warburg.
15
Royle, Trevor. The Macmillan Companion to Scottish Literature. Macmillan Reference Books.
61