Rosalind Wade

Rosalind Wade OBE (pen name, Catharine Carr; 1909-1989) was a British novelist and short story writer.[1][2] She was also the editor of The Contemporary Review for almost twenty years.

Biography

Born on 11 September 1909, Rosalind Herschel Wade was the daughter of an army officer.[3][4] She was educated in London, finishing at Bedford College.[4]

Wade married banker William Kean Seymour (who was also a writer); they had two sons, one of whom is the thriller writer Gerald Seymour.[3][5][6]

Beginning at the age of 22, Wade published some two dozen novels and many short stories.[7] Wade used her full birth name of Rosalind Herschel Wade for some of her early works but Rosalind Wade for the bulk of her writing and "Catharine Carr" for a couple of books.[3] Her novels are noted for their sometimes bleak examination of characters' emotional lives and troubles such as alcoholism.[3] Morning Break (1956), for example, centres on a pair of schoolteachers in an English industrial town and the difficulties they encounter, ranging from student vandalism to infidelity.[8] Treasure in Heaven (1937) is about a busy single woman who, at the age of 50, realizes she has been repressing her 'natural' desires and has thus missed out on crucial elements of a full life such as marriage and children.[9]

Children, Be Happy! (published by Gollancz in 1931 to good reviews) became the centre of a minor literary furore just before it was to be republished in America by Farrar & Rinehart. The story was set in a girls' school, and apparently Wade based some of her characters on real people, because several women brought lawsuits and won damages from Gollancz.[10] In one case, revolving on the fact that a minor character who lost her virginity outside marriage was based on an identifiable real woman, the plaintiff won more than just monetary damages. As part of the disposition of the case, the judge ordered the destruction of every copy of the book as well as the original manuscript. As a result the book has never been republished in either country.[11]

Among her short stories are many supernatural tales and ghost stories, collected in such anthologies as The Fourth Ghost Book (1965), Haunted Cornwall (1973), Tales from the Macabre (1976), More Tales from the Macabre (1979), After Midnight Stories (1985), and The Second Book of After Midnight Stories (1986).[3][4][12]

In 1970, Wade took the post of editor of the literary journal The Contemporary Review, for which she also wrote book reviews.[3][7] She held the post until 1989, when she was succeeded by Betty Abel.

Wade was active in writers' organizations, serving as president of the Society of Women Writers and Journalists (1965–89) and chair of the Alresford Historical and Literary Society (1968–70; 1972–73); she was also a founding member and vice-president of the West Country Writers Association.[3][4][7]

She taught courses in writing and literature with her husband at Moor Park College, an adult education college in Farnham, near where they lived.[4]

Awards and honours

Wade was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1985 in recognition of her contributions to literature.[4] She died on 25 January 1989.[3]

Books

As Rosalind Wade
  • Children, Be Happy! (1931)
  • Men Ask for Beauty (1936)
  • Treasure in Heaven (1937)
  • Fairweather Faith (1940)
  • A Man of Promise (1940)
  • Bracelet for Julia (1942)
  • Pride of the Family (1943)
  • Present Ending (1943)
  • As the Narcissus (1945)
  • The Widows (1946)
  • Present Ending (1948)
  • The Falling Leaves (1948)
  • The Raft (1948?)
  • Alys at Eadon (1951)
  • The Silly Dove (1951)
  • Cassandra Calls (1951)
  • Come Fill the Cup (1955)
  • Morning Break (1956)
  • The Grain Will Grow (1957)
  • The Will of Heaven (1958?)
  • The Ramerson Case (1959)
  • Mrs Jamison's Daughter (1960)
  • New Pasture (1963)
  • The Vanished Days (1965)
  • Ladders (1965)
  • The Umbrella (1970)
  • The Golden Bowl (1972)
  • Mrs Medland's Private World (1973)
  • Red Letter Day: Twelve Stories of Cornwall (1980)

As Catharine Carr
  • English Summer (1953?)
  • The Golden City (1963?)

References
  1. Room, Adrian. Dictionary of Pseudonyms: 13,000 Assumed Names and Their Origins, 5th ed. McFarland, 2010, p. 94.
  2. T.J. Carty (1 December 2015). A Dictionary of Literary Pseudonyms in the English Language. Taylor & Francis. p. 1911. ISBN 978-1-135-95585-4.
  3. Jones, Nick. "The Facts in the Case of Rosalind Wade (A Lewes Book Bargain Mystery) ". Existential Ennui (blog), 30 September 2010. Retrieved 19 Jan. 2016.
  4. "W". A Bit of History (website). Retrieved 19 January 2016.
  5. Anthony Powell (12 March 2015). Journals 1982. Random House. p. 265. ISBN 978-1-4735-3545-9.
  6. Muriel Spark; Elaine Feinstein (9 May 2014). Curriculum Vitae: A Volume of Autobiography. Carcanet Press, Limited. pp. 129–130. ISBN 978-1-78410-091-9.
  7. Gale, Thomson. The Writer's Directory, vol. 5. St. James Press, 1981, p. 971.
  8. Hutton, Geoffrey. "Even the Present Is Important." The Age, 12 January 1957, p. 16.
  9. Nicholson, Virginia. Singled Out: How Two Million British Women Survived Without Men After the First World War. Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 40.
  10. Higdon, David Leon. Wandering into Brave New World. Rodopi, 2013, p. 196.
  11. Waugh, Alec. A Year to Remember: A Reminiscence of 1931. A&C Black, 2011, n.p.
  12. Lynette Carpenter; Wendy K. Kolmar (28 January 2015). Ghost Stories by British and American Women: A Selected, Annotated Bibliography. Taylor & Francis. p. 22. ISBN 978-1-317-94352-5.
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