Bibliographic information:
ISBN: 9781804471517
Paperback • 224pp • £8.99
129 mm x 198 mm
7 July 2025
Thema: JBSF11, FBC, 1DDU-GB-S

Territory: World English

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The Camomile

An Invention

Catherine Carswell

Paperback

224pp

Publication date: 7 July 2025

ISBN: 9781804471517

£8.99

PRE-ORDER

 

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 Carswell

Catherine Roxburgh Carswell (1879–1946) was a Scottish author, biographer and journalist, and one of the few women associated with the Scottish Renaissance. She was the author of two novels that highlight women’s lives in Glasgow, Open the Door! (1920) and The Camomile (1922), but it was her 1930 biography of Robert Burns that put her name on the map, arousing controversy for its no-nonsense approach and for demystifying the biography of the feted national poet. Although her novels are still little known, Carswell is today considered a wildly important figure on the Scottish modernist literature scene.