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
death Ray Strachey
The month before this she had quite calmly told Mary Agnes Hamilton that she had to have an operation that might prove a very big one. She then expected at most to be off work...
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, 1944.
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, 1991.
191
Babington Smith, Constance. Rose Macaulay. Collins, 1972.
100
Chosen by Royde-Smith as a...
Friends, Associates Ray Strachey
RS got to know Mary Agnes Hamilton in 1930, through giving evidence to the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, on which Hamilton served. Casual contact over shared suffrage work had not made them friends...
Friends, Associates Evelyn Sharp
Their many shared friends included Vera Brittain , Winifred Holtby , and the writer and politician Mary Agnes Hamilton . In 1940 Hamilton took Harry Gill , president of the Railway Clerks' Association and a...
Friends, Associates Lady Margaret Sackville
LMS became, according to Mary Agnes Hamilton , one of those [e]verybody who was anybody in the anti-war movement, who gathered around Lady Ottoline Morrell .
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Remembering My Good Friends. Jonathan Cape, 1944.
78
She was an occasional visitor at the Morrells'...
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...
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...
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...
Literary responses Beatrice Webb
Mary Agnes Hamilton later commented on the uncharacteristic lyricism of this book. Although it was hard to read, it was, she said, hungrily read. BW herself was delighted to meet a taxi driver who...
Literary responses Beatrice Webb
H. G. Wells caricatured her (along with Sidney, of course) in The New Machiavelli as Altiora Bailey.
Briggs, Julia. A Woman of Passion: The Life of E. Nesbit, 1858-1924. Hutchinson, 1987.
315
Her reputation has been first and foremost the political one which she shared with Sidney: as...
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.
qtd. in
Lefanu, Sarah. Rose Macaulay. Virago, 2003.
118
A few years later, however, Humbert Wolfe wrote of her poetry that...
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...
Literary responses Naomi Royde-Smith
Mary Agnes Hamilton later called the Problems page unique both in the ingenuity and standard of its competitions and in the calibre of the persons who felt it worth while to go in for them...

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.
Pankhurst, Sylvia. The Life of Emmeline Pankhurst. Kraus Reprint, 1969.
166
Palmer, Alan, and Veronica Palmer. The Chronology of British History. Century, 1992.
356
Davies, Emily. “Chronology, Introduction”. Collected Letters, 1861-1875, edited by Ann E. Murphy and Deirdre Raftery, University of Virginia Press, 2004, p. ix - xii, xix-lv.
xlviii
“The 1918 coupon general election”. Liberal Democrat History Group.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Remembering My Good Friends. Jonathan Cape, 1944.
92
“Houses of the Oireachtas—Where it began!”. Houses of the Oireachtas / Tithe an Oireachtas.

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.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Remembering My Good Friends. Jonathan Cape, 1944.
92-4

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

Writing climate item

Summer 1919

John Maynard Keynes published The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
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.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Remembering My Good Friends. Jonathan Cape, 1944.
105

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.
Messenger, Charles. World War Two Chronological Atlas: When, Where, How and Why. Bloomsbury, 1989.
15
Keegan, John. The Second World War. Viking, 1990.
242-3
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Remembering My Good Friends. Jonathan Cape, 1944.
230

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.
Red Clydeside: A History of the Labour Movement in Glasgow 1910-1932. 16 Mar. 2003, http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/redclyde/.

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.
Kimber, Richard. “UK General Elections since 1832”. Richard Kimber’s Political Science Resources: British Politics: Election Information.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Remembering My Good Friends. Jonathan Cape, 1944.
288

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.
Messenger, Charles. World War Two Chronological Atlas: When, Where, How and Why. Bloomsbury, 1989.
19
Keegan, John. The Second World War. Viking, 1990.
40-1
Messenger, Charles. World War Two Chronological Atlas: When, Where, How and Why. Bloomsbury, 1989.
19
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Remembering My Good Friends. Jonathan Cape, 1944.
304

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.
Briggs, Asa. The BBC: The First Fifty Years. Oxford University Press, 1985.
375
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Up-Hill All the Way. Cape, 1953.
103

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. Ancient Rome: The Lives of Great Men. Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1922.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. “Arthur Henderson”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 1818, p. 1016.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Arthur Henderson. W. Heinemann, 1938.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. British Trade Unions. Oxford University Press, 1943.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Dead Yesterday. Duckworth, 1916.
Dibelius, Wilhelm. England. Translator Hamilton, Mary Agnes, Jonathan Cape, 1930.
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. Greece. Clarendon Press, 1926.
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. Newnham: An Informal Biography. Faber and Faber, 1936.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Outlines of Greek and Roman History. Clarendon Press, 1913.
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.