Catherine Carswell

Catherine Carswell (1879 – 1946) was born in Glasgow, one of the four children of the wealthy shipping merchant George MacFarlane. On leaving school she attended classes in English literature at Glasgow University, but could not in those days be admitted for a degree. In 1907, after her first husband was declared mentally insane, Carswell began legal proceedings for the annulment of her marriage. She won the case, making legal history. Carswell moved from Glasgow to London and 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 sense of growing social and spiritual independence.