Mary Renault

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MR , who published her first book in 1939, is best known for her historical novels, and is also noted for her strong interest in same-sex love. In her present-day novels, a large proportion of characters have sexually-ambiguous names which reflect the ambivalence of their orientations. Biographer David Sweetman claims that her historical novels helped many people to come to terms with their sexuality, giving lesbians and male homosexuals a historical past while offering non-homosexuals a sympathetic world where heterosexuality was neither the only, nor the dominant, sexual type.
Sweetman, David. Mary Renault: A Biography. Chatto and Windus, 1993.
xii
MR 's writing has been acclaimed by critics past and present: Bernard Dick has called her one of the most creative historical novelists of our era and the only bona fide Hellenist in twentieth-century fiction.
Dick, Bernard. The Hellenism of Mary Renault. Southern Illinois University Press, 1972.
124
Aside from her fiction, MR wrote several short stories, articles, and introductions.
Black-and-white close-up photo of Mary Renault, 1946. Her hair is very short and she is wearing a collared shirt. The background is dappled            with blurred light.
"Mary Renault" by Bettmann/Contributor, 1946-08-06. Retrieved from https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/new-york-new-york-mary-renault-english-author-graduate-of-news-photo/514957456. This image is licensed under the GETTY IMAGES CONTENT LICENCE AGREEMENT.

Milestones

4 September 1905
MR was born at Dacre Lodge, Plashet Road, Forest Gate, London.
Sweetman, David. Mary Renault: A Biography. Chatto and Windus, 1993.
6-7
Wolfe, Peter. Mary Renault. Twayne, 1969.
chronology
May 1927
MR had a poem published in the Oxford undergraduate magazine Fritillary.
Sweetman, David. Mary Renault: A Biography. Chatto and Windus, 1993.
31
February 1939
MR 's first novel, Purposes of Love, has been called by critic David Sweetmanthe first novel dealing with bisexuality to reach a large and appreciative public.
Sweetman, David. Mary Renault: A Biography. Chatto and Windus, 1993.
76
It treats the lives of hospital nurses.
Sweetman, David. Mary Renault: A Biography. Chatto and Windus, 1993.
60-4, 74
5 October 1953
MR published the last of her six contemporary novels, The Charioteer, which portrays homosexual love in England during the First World War.
Sweetman, David. Mary Renault: A Biography. Chatto and Windus, 1993.
139, 146
July 1958
MR published in the US her second historical novel, The King Must Die, depicting the early life of the legendary Greek hero Theseus.
Sweetman, David. Mary Renault: A Biography. Chatto and Windus, 1993.
169, 188
1959
MR 's novel The Charioteer was published in New York by Pantheon , six years after its appearance in Britain.
Sweetman, David. Mary Renault: A Biography. Chatto and Windus, 1993.
310
13 December 1983
MR died in a nursing home in Cape Town, South Africa, of lung cancer.
Who Was Who. A. and C. Black, 1897.
Sweetman, David. Mary Renault: A Biography. Chatto and Windus, 1993.
301-4

Biography

Birth and Influences

4 September 1905
MR was born at Dacre Lodge, Plashet Road, Forest Gate, London.
Sweetman, David. Mary Renault: A Biography. Chatto and Windus, 1993.
6-7
Wolfe, Peter. Mary Renault. Twayne, 1969.
chronology