Catherine Carswell was a Glasgow novelist, biographer and journalist, one of the few women of the Scottish Renaissance, whose honest portraits of women’s lives and whose frank biography of Robert Burns made her both admired and attacked. Her finest work drew on the Glasgow she knew.
A Garnethill girl
Carswell was born in Glasgow in 1879 into a middle-class Free Church family, and brought up in Garnethill. She studied at the Glasgow School of Art and then English literature at the University of Glasgow, where she was a star pupil but, as a woman, could not be awarded a degree.
A life of trials
Her first marriage was a disaster: her husband, who was mentally ill, threatened her life and was confined for the rest of his, and in 1908 she won a landmark legal case to have the marriage annulled. She worked as a critic for the Glasgow Herald, and lost the post for daring to praise D. H. Lawrence’s banned novel The Rainbow. Lawrence became a lifelong friend.
The Glasgow novels
Carswell’s two novels, Open the Door! of 1920 and The Camomile of 1922, both drew on the Edwardian Glasgow of her youth and on women’s search for freedom. Open the Door! won a literary prize, but neither sold well, and both were half-forgotten until a feminist press revived them in the 1980s. They are now valued as landmarks of Scottish women’s writing and of the city’s culture.
The Burns row
She became famous only with her Life of Robert Burns in 1930, a frank and unsentimental portrait of the national poet that outraged his more devoted admirers. The Burns clubs denounced her, sermons were preached against her, and one furious reader even posted her a bullet. Her life of D. H. Lawrence, The Savage Pilgrimage, followed in 1932, and stirred a controversy of its own.
A Scottish voice
Carswell spent her last years in London, working on a life of John Buchan, and died in Oxford in 1946, leaving an unfinished autobiography. She stands today among the finest Scottish writers of her generation, a forerunner of figures such as Alasdair Gray and Liz Lochhead who would later carry the Glasgow voice forward.
Related questions
Who was Catherine Carswell?
A Glasgow novelist, biographer and journalist of the early twentieth century, one of the few women of the Scottish Renaissance.
What did Catherine Carswell write?
Two novels set in Glasgow, Open the Door! and The Camomile, and biographies of Robert Burns and of D. H. Lawrence.
Why was her Burns biography controversial?
Her 1930 Life of Robert Burns was a frank, unsentimental account that offended his devoted admirers. She was publicly attacked and even sent a bullet in the post.
Was Catherine Carswell from Glasgow?
Yes. She was born in Glasgow in 1879, grew up in Garnethill, and studied at the Glasgow School of Art and the University of Glasgow.