The Camomile: An Invention
First published in 1922, The Camomile opens with Ellen and her brother Ronald living under the strict oversight of their religious aunt in Glasgow. Her confidence bolstered, having spent three years studying music in Germany, Ellen finds a position teaching music, and uses this position to rent a room away from home.
Published seven years ahead of A Room of One’s Own, and often compared to Woolf’s masterpiece, The Camomile is a stirring and fascinating work that exposes the difficulties for women to make it in the creative arts, and it still resounds with truth today.
‘Catherine… [was] integral to the both the suffrage movement in Glasgow and Scotland’s literary Renaissance.’ — Glasgow Times
‘Her second, equally unique novel, The Camomile… is modernist in both subject and technique.’ — Alan Riach, The National