Mary Agnes Hamilton

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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.

Milestones

8 July 1882
Mary Agnes Adamson (later MAH ) was born at 60 Parsonage Road in Withington, a suburb of Manchester, the eldest of her parents' six children.
Until recently her birth date was generally given as either one or two years later than this.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/, http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Probably late 1944
Mary Agnes Hamilton published Remembering My Good Friends, the first volume of her politically-charged memoirs; she had been writing it since 1939.
Fyfe, H. Hamilton. “Labour Member”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 2242, p. 33.
33
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Remembering My Good Friends. Jonathan Cape, 1944.
312
19 September 1958
The Times Literary Supplement carried a review by MAH of F. W. Hirst . By his Friends, a volume of reminiscences about a distinguished writer, journalist, and anti-war campaigner who had also been her employer.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. “Testament of Friendship”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 2951, p. 532.
532
10 February 1966
MAH died at a little past eighty, at 28 Kenilworth Road, Ealing, in West London.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/, http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Formative Influences

8 July 1882
Mary Agnes Adamson (later MAH ) was born at 60 Parsonage Road in Withington, a suburb of Manchester, the eldest of her parents' six children.
Until recently her birth date was generally given as either one or two years later than this.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/, http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

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