|
|
1862-1920
The novelist Florence Louisa Charlesworth was born on 2 December 1862. Her father was the Reverend Samuel Charlesworth who was the Rector of Limpsfield, Surrey. The family, consisting of her mother and father, her elder sister Annie, Florence and her younger sister Maud, moved to London in 1869. Florence is known to have been kept busy visiting the poor and singing at religious gatherings, something that stood her in good stead in her married life. In March 1881, at the age of eighteen, she married the Reverend Charles W. Barclay. During their honeymoon touring the Holy Land it is claimed that they discovered the true mouth of Jacob's Well, where Christ is thought to have rested. She became an accomplished public speaker and was to tour America giving lectures on her find in Palestine. The couple settled to parish and family life and she bore eight children.
Following ill health she turned to writing and her first work, from 1905, was a short novel called The wheels Of time. She sent this and her subsequent novel The rosary to her sister Maud who was living in America. It was Maud who arranged for their publication. The rosary (1909) found instant success, selling 150,000 copies in a year. It is a love story, extolling the benefits of wedded bliss, a theme she was to continue to use with similar popular success. She felt that her destiny was to write works that inspired people to live good honest lives without being introduced to sin and evil through the printed page.
Florence was an admirer of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, visiting the haunts of the poet including Wimpole Street in London and the Browning's villa in Italy. In May 1913 Florence attended an auction of the Browning's belongings at Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge in London and made several purchases, including a writing table and Elizabeth's favourite chair.
Several visits were made to Birmingham, giving lectures at the Digbeth and Boots' Institutes. A newspaper report from the Birmingham Daily Mail (quoted in her daughter's biography) notes that such was her charisma that the "queer flotsam and jetsam of humanity that floats upon the currents of the districts like Digbeth" that made up the audience on the former occasion were held by an address that was mainly religious in character. "It was the triumph of the woman and not of the writer".
Music played an extremely important part in her life. It has been noted that perhaps the most memorable event in her life was attending the Three Choirs Festival at Worcester in 1920, which included Elgar's Dream of Gerontius. She had loved the cathedral ever since, at a very young age, she had stood in the vast space with her mother. The organ suddenly began to be played, the choir sang and the little girl was overcome with emotion. Her father at that time was spending a few months in charge of a Worcestershire parish. Florence was to use Worcester as the setting for her romance of the twelfth century, The white ladies of Worcester (1917). Unlike her other work, this was, to a certain extent, an attempt to get away from the horrors of the First World War.
The following works are available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection:-
The broken halo (1913)
The following of the star (1911)
Guy Mervyn (1932) [completed by one of her
daughters]
The mistress of Shenstone (1910)
Returned empty (1920)
The rosary (1909)
Shorter works
Through the postern gate (1911)
The upas tree (1912)
The wall of partition (1914)
The wheels of time (1909)
The white ladies of
Worcester (1917)
A sample chapter and the complete text of the following are available on this website:-
The Life of Florence Barclay; a study in personality by one of her daughters (1921), referred to above, is available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection.
Page created 2 September 2001 and last
updated 4 January 2006
For your literary enquiries and comments please see the Who to contact page.
Please read the general terms and conditions and about accessibility on this site, including the use of the UK government accesskeys system. Further details on ICRA labelling, visitor counts and EnrichUK may be obtained by following these external links:-
|
|