What do you think?
Rate this book
Canongate Classics
Lying Awake
As a fine novelist, critic, and biographer Catherine Carswell led a passionate and various life, full of intellectual commitment and a wide range of social interests. She worked on this original, modest, and yet richly remarkable autobiography over a number of years, coming back to it again and again, almost as an act of meditation.
The younger daughter of a Glasgow shipping merchant, Catherine Macfarlane studied music in Frankfurt before returning to Glasgow and then moving to London where she worked as a literary and dramatic reviewer and met her second husband, Donald Carswell, and a wide circle of literary and cultural figures, including a succession of Soviet ambassadors, Lady Tweedsmuir, and D.H. Lawrence. In fact she became one of Lawrence's close friends, and it was he who encouraged her to write her first novel, Open the Door!, based on her own background and a sense of growing social and spiritual independence.
Carswell’s interests and enthusiasms encompassed (among others) Herzen, Dickens, T.S. Eliot, Rabelais, Burns, and Boccaccio, but Lying Awake is the distillation of her thoughts on her own life and indeed on the nature of identity and autobiography itself. Left unfinished when she died in 1946, the manuscript was edited by her son John and has not been reprinted since it was first published in 1950. Edited and introduced by John Carswell.
The younger daughter of a Glasgow shipping merchant, Catherine Macfarlane studied music in Frankfurt before returning to Glasgow and then moving to London where she worked as a literary and dramatic reviewer and met her second husband, Donald Carswell, and a wide circle of literary and cultural figures, including a succession of Soviet ambassadors, Lady Tweedsmuir, and D.H. Lawrence. In fact she became one of Lawrence's close friends, and it was he who encouraged her to write her first novel, Open the Door!, based on her own background and a sense of growing social and spiritual independence.
Carswell’s interests and enthusiasms encompassed (among others) Herzen, Dickens, T.S. Eliot, Rabelais, Burns, and Boccaccio, but Lying Awake is the distillation of her thoughts on her own life and indeed on the nature of identity and autobiography itself. Left unfinished when she died in 1946, the manuscript was edited by her son John and has not been reprinted since it was first published in 1950. Edited and introduced by John Carswell.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1950
27 people want to read
About the author
Catherine Carswell
22 books3 followersCatherine Roxburgh Carswell (née Macfarlane) was a Scottish author, biographer and journalist, and a contributor to the Scottish Renaissance. Her work is considered an integral part of Scottish women's writing of the early 20th century.
The daughter of a Glasgow merchant, Carswell was educated at the Park School. From 1901 to 1903 she attended classes in English Literature at Glasgow University. She went on to study music at the Schumann Conservatorium in Frankfurt am Main before taking up employment as reviewer and dramatic critic at the Glasgow Herald from 1907 until 1915. She was subsequently an assistant theatre critic for the Observer.
Carswell's first marriage, to Herbert Jackson in 1903, was annulled in 1908, and in 1915 she married Donald Carswell. Her first novel, Open the Door, was published in 1920, followed in 1922 by The Camomile. She developed a particular interest in the life and work of Robert Burns, publishing her celebrated The Life of Robert Burns in 1930: her unsentimental account of his life upset many Burns traditionalists. She was a close friend of DH Lawrence, and in 1932 she published The Savage Pilgrimage: a Narrative of DH Lawrence.
The daughter of a Glasgow merchant, Carswell was educated at the Park School. From 1901 to 1903 she attended classes in English Literature at Glasgow University. She went on to study music at the Schumann Conservatorium in Frankfurt am Main before taking up employment as reviewer and dramatic critic at the Glasgow Herald from 1907 until 1915. She was subsequently an assistant theatre critic for the Observer.
Carswell's first marriage, to Herbert Jackson in 1903, was annulled in 1908, and in 1915 she married Donald Carswell. Her first novel, Open the Door, was published in 1920, followed in 1922 by The Camomile. She developed a particular interest in the life and work of Robert Burns, publishing her celebrated The Life of Robert Burns in 1930: her unsentimental account of his life upset many Burns traditionalists. She was a close friend of DH Lawrence, and in 1932 she published The Savage Pilgrimage: a Narrative of DH Lawrence.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 28, 2024
Catherine Carswell's son finished this semi official autobiography. I found the mixture of introduction, autobiography & then fragments a bit odd. Interesting if you're interested in Catherine Carswell, I especially enjoyed her take on gender norms.
Displaying 1 of 1 review