Mary Olivier’s life, interior and exterior, is presented from infancy through middle age. We watch as she forms her first impressions of her family and her place in it, and as she grapples with what she’s taught about the Anglican God and His requirements. As she grows, her insatiable curiosity and hunger for knowledge put her at odds with Victorian England’s expectations for women, its tolerance for alternative spiritual beliefs, and especially with what’s acceptable to her mother.

May Sinclair was the pen name of Mary Amelia St. Clair, a pioneer of modernist poetry and prose, with the autobiographical Mary Olivier: A Life being a particular example of the latter.