Muriel Jaeger

23 May 1892 - 21 November 1969

MJ began her book-publishing career with four novels during the 1920s and 30s; she is one of the least known amongst the Somerville novelists who attended Oxford together at the time of the First World War. Her fiction belongs primarily to the genres of science fiction and fantasy. She moved on to plays, radio plays, and nonfiction about politics, psychology, biography, and history. Her last work is a book of memoirs about her literary life.

BirthName: Muriel Jagger
Nicknames: Jim, James, Jimmy
These nicknames were given to MJ by the members of the Mutual Admiration Society at Somerville College .
Self-constructed: Jaeger
It was her father who decided to spell the family name this way.
UKBMD. http://www.ukbmdcertificateordering.co.uk/certapp.php?type=marriages&data=JAGGER%7cJohn%20E%7cHOLLINGSWORTH%7cFrances%20E%7cSout.
Pseudonyms: H. Hunter
MJ signed H. Hunter (for heresy hunter, using an English translation of her father's version of their surname) on a letter tangling with a theological critic of Dorothy Sayers's Catholic Tales and Christian Songs. Hunter, without the initial, stuck for longer.
Reynolds, Barbara. “"‘Dear Jim’ The Reconstruction of A Friendship”. Seven: An Anglo-American Literary Review, Vol.
17
, Marion E. Wade Center of Wheaton College, 2000, pp. 47-59.
51
; M. James
MJ wrote as M. James to contradict the views she had put forward as H. Hunter.
Reynolds, Barbara. “"‘Dear Jim’ The Reconstruction of A Friendship”. Seven: An Anglo-American Literary Review, Vol.
17
, Marion E. Wade Center of Wheaton College, 2000, pp. 47-59.
51

Milestones

23 May 1892

MJ was born at 14 Victoria Street, Barnsley, Yorkshire, a daughter of John Edward and Frances Emma Jagger or Jaeger.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

1929

MJ 's second novel, The Question Mark, again published by the Hogarth Press , is a dystopian science-fiction set in the twenty-second century.

British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

Leonardi, Susan J. Dangerous by Degrees: Women at Oxford and the Somerville College Novelists. Rutgers University Press, 1989, 254 p.

110

By early June 1956

MJ published a work of history entitled Before Victoria, dedicated to her first reader and friendly critic,

Jaeger, Muriel. Before Victoria. Chatto & Windus, 1956.

prelims

Margaret A. Pyke .

Margaret Amy Pyke, née Chubb, is remembered for her birth-control activism. She was secretary to the National Birth Control Council from its formation in 1930, and from 1939 to the Family Planning Association, into which it evolved. She chaired the association from 1954 until her death in 1966.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

under Margaret Pyke

TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.

2832 (8 June 1956): 344

British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

21 November 1969

MJ died at the age of seventy-seven, unmarried, at her home, 4 Nevill Park at Tunbridge Wells in Kent.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Family

23 May 1892

MJ was born at 14 Victoria Street, Barnsley, Yorkshire, a daughter of John Edward and Frances Emma Jagger or Jaeger.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.