Mary Renault: A Biography

by David Sweetman (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1993

  $3.26

  In her novels The Last of the Wine , The Bull from the Sea and The Persian Boy , Mary Renault wrote so frankly about homosexuality that some readers thought she must be a man. In fact Renault was the pseudonym for Mary Challans, a remarkable and private woman. Born in London, she spent most of her life in South Africa. She began as a bookish, withdrawn child and became a standard bearer for the sexual revolution. She abandoned the academic world for nursing and when she won an MGM award she embarked for South Africa wih her friend and lifelong companion, Julie Mullard. She never returned. This is her biography.

• Used

  Paperback
  1994

  $5.82

  Mary Renault wrote so sympathetically and with such candour about the male world of Ancient Greece that many readers believed the author of The Last of the Wine and The Persian Boy must be a man. In reality, Mary Renault was a pseudonym for a surprising and intensely private woman born in a genteel London suburb. Hers was a life of marked contrasts and adventurous changes. She began as a bookish, withdrawn child of disappointed parents and became a standard bearer of the sexual revolution. A seemingly conventional Englishwoman who loved the English countryside, in 1947 she embarked for South Africa with her lifelong friend, Julie Mullard, never to return. David Sweetman combines her richly textured life and an analysis of the novels with an unusual love story.