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Dead Yesterday
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
408 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1916
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About the author
Mary Agnes Hamilton
57 books1 followerMary Agnes Hamilton was a journalist and author and the Labour MP for Blackburn from 1929 to 1931.
Mary Agnes Adamson, known as Molly, was the eldest of six children of Scottish parents: Robert Adamson, a professor of logic at Glasgow University, and his wife Margaret, née Duncan, a Quaker who had been a teacher of botany at Manchester High School for Girls before their marriage in 1881. The family moved back to Scotland in 1889.
She was educated at Aberdeen and Glasgow Girls' High Schools before attending the University of Kiel in 1901 for seven months to learn German. She went up to Newnham College, Cambridge (where her mother had also been a student) in 1901 to read Classics, then Economics as part of the History tripos, graduating in 1904 with first-class honours.
In September 1905 Adamson married Charles Joseph Hamilton, an economist colleague at the University of South Wales, Cardiff, where she had briefly been employed as a history tutor. She petitioned for and obtained a divorce in 1914.
Hamilton was a prolific writer. During the 1910s she supported herself through journalism, translating works from French and German, and publishing books on ancient history and American presidents for children. In 1916 she caused some controversy by writing an anti-war novel, Dead Yesterday.
In the 1920s, she wrote for journals including the Review of Reviews and Time and Tide. She moved in literary circles with Leonard and Virginia Woolf and the Strachey family; provided research assistance to Lawrence and Barbara Hammond in Hertfordshire; and met regularly with intellectuals and economists while living near Fleet Street during the 1920s, including John Reeve Brooke, Dominick Spring-Rice, Rose Macaulay, Naomi Royde Smith, and William Arnold-Forster.
Hamilton published short, sympathetic biographies of two women trade unionists, Margaret Bondfield and Mary Macarthur, and, under the pseudonym 'Iconoclast', a portrait of Ramsay MacDonald. In 1922, at MacDonald's instigation, she briefly and unhappily became assistant editor of the I.L.P.'s journal Labour Leader under the left-wing editor, H.N. Brailsford.
Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Mary Agnes Adamson, known as Molly, was the eldest of six children of Scottish parents: Robert Adamson, a professor of logic at Glasgow University, and his wife Margaret, née Duncan, a Quaker who had been a teacher of botany at Manchester High School for Girls before their marriage in 1881. The family moved back to Scotland in 1889.
She was educated at Aberdeen and Glasgow Girls' High Schools before attending the University of Kiel in 1901 for seven months to learn German. She went up to Newnham College, Cambridge (where her mother had also been a student) in 1901 to read Classics, then Economics as part of the History tripos, graduating in 1904 with first-class honours.
In September 1905 Adamson married Charles Joseph Hamilton, an economist colleague at the University of South Wales, Cardiff, where she had briefly been employed as a history tutor. She petitioned for and obtained a divorce in 1914.
Hamilton was a prolific writer. During the 1910s she supported herself through journalism, translating works from French and German, and publishing books on ancient history and American presidents for children. In 1916 she caused some controversy by writing an anti-war novel, Dead Yesterday.
In the 1920s, she wrote for journals including the Review of Reviews and Time and Tide. She moved in literary circles with Leonard and Virginia Woolf and the Strachey family; provided research assistance to Lawrence and Barbara Hammond in Hertfordshire; and met regularly with intellectuals and economists while living near Fleet Street during the 1920s, including John Reeve Brooke, Dominick Spring-Rice, Rose Macaulay, Naomi Royde Smith, and William Arnold-Forster.
Hamilton published short, sympathetic biographies of two women trade unionists, Margaret Bondfield and Mary Macarthur, and, under the pseudonym 'Iconoclast', a portrait of Ramsay MacDonald. In 1922, at MacDonald's instigation, she briefly and unhappily became assistant editor of the I.L.P.'s journal Labour Leader under the left-wing editor, H.N. Brailsford.
Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 1, 2019
this review is a work in progress as of June 7th, 2015
Dead Yesterday begins roughly a year prior to the beginning of World War I and initially concerns Nigel Strode, a man who acts younger than he is and spends much of his free time running with a "smart" set in London. Nigel, though, is profoundly bored with just about everything. Into the gaping void of his boredom comes romance first, followed by what could be most exciting thing of all for him - WWI. But as the story progresses, the picture fills out as we spend time in the heads of several other members of the cast, to include Nigel's would-be mother-in-law, his fiancee, and his room-mate, among others, and the true measure of Nigel begins to become clearer in ways that are not always rosy.
I start off with a synopsis since, as far as I can tell, one does not exist anymore. I find this truly unfortunate, as it speaks of how utterly obscure this gem has become in the years since publication - likely because at the time of its publication, in 1916, it caused quite a stir for harboring pacifist sympathies. I've seen it described as an anti-war book, and in a way it is, but I don't think its the most accurate description. Instead, it reads as a critique of the sort of people who were eager cheerleaders for the war even as they themselves more often than not had no intention, nor interest, in contributing in any other way than utilizing puffed-up rhetoric. In doing so, it is critical of the Great War, as well as of war generally, but the true critique reads as directed against shallow people who blindly promote things they have little stake in.
Dead Yesterday begins roughly a year prior to the beginning of World War I and initially concerns Nigel Strode, a man who acts younger than he is and spends much of his free time running with a "smart" set in London. Nigel, though, is profoundly bored with just about everything. Into the gaping void of his boredom comes romance first, followed by what could be most exciting thing of all for him - WWI. But as the story progresses, the picture fills out as we spend time in the heads of several other members of the cast, to include Nigel's would-be mother-in-law, his fiancee, and his room-mate, among others, and the true measure of Nigel begins to become clearer in ways that are not always rosy.
I start off with a synopsis since, as far as I can tell, one does not exist anymore. I find this truly unfortunate, as it speaks of how utterly obscure this gem has become in the years since publication - likely because at the time of its publication, in 1916, it caused quite a stir for harboring pacifist sympathies. I've seen it described as an anti-war book, and in a way it is, but I don't think its the most accurate description. Instead, it reads as a critique of the sort of people who were eager cheerleaders for the war even as they themselves more often than not had no intention, nor interest, in contributing in any other way than utilizing puffed-up rhetoric. In doing so, it is critical of the Great War, as well as of war generally, but the true critique reads as directed against shallow people who blindly promote things they have little stake in.
Displaying 1 of 1 review