Free (Kindle) The Debate Continues by Marjorie Bowen [20th C Author Autobiography]

[ATDrake]

The Debate Continues: Being the Autobiography of Marjorie Bowen by the late English author Marjorie Bowen (Wikipedia), a prolific multi-genre novelist who wrote under many other pseudonyms during the early mid-20th century and had several works adapted to film, is her vintage autobiography, detailing her early life and troubled family relationships as well as her attempts at self-education, subsequent writing influences and career decisions, free for a limited time courtesy of publisher Endeavour Press.

This was originally published in 1939 by William Heinemann Ltd, and The Independent featured her in one of their “Forgetten Authors” articles, if you're interested.

Currently free @ Amazon (available to Canadians & in the UK and pretty much everywhere else Amazon sells worldwide, since this is being done via their KDP Select exclusive-or-else program)

Description
When she first published The Viper of Milan in 1906, Margaret Campbell was just 16 years old.

No one, least of all Campbell, her family or their friends could have imagined that it would go on to be as successful as it was.

She went on to write over 150 works in her career, including historical romances and supernatural horror stories, as well as popular history books and biographies.

The Debate Continues is her autobiography, acknowledging her most well-known pseudonym: Marjorie Bowen.

It spans elements of her personal life such as her childhood spent in poverty, her complex relationships with her family as well as her two marriages, before reaching the present, 1938 at the time of writing.

It also serves as an excellent reflection of the difficulties faced by women writers in the early twentieth century and explains how she came to publish so many works in genres where she believed she was unable to truly fulfil her potential.

Born to affluent parents who had squandered their wealth, Campbell and her sister grew up in poverty, moving addresses every few months to various different parts of London and occasionally the countryside.

Campbell’s alcoholic father left when she was still very young and she spent much of her early life being held at a distance by her playwright mother.

She spent much time among her mother’s bohemian theatre set who she despised, withdrawing instead into her own isolated world of writing.

She describes herself as neither pretty nor charming and as such was continuously discouraged by her mother and her theatre friends.

Being from a family who could not afford to fund studies, Campbell was primarily self-educated and even when her first novel was published to measurable success; many doubted she had written it herself.

This autobiography explores in depth the relationship between poverty and familial dependence. Her mother who had all but ignored her throughout childhood went on to resent her success, while still expecting her to be the family’s sole financial provider. Even after marrying and having children of her own, Campbell was still providing for her mother, sister and various members of the theatre set.

These memoirs capture the desperation of a family living in poverty and the great lengths Campbell went to in order to prevent them ever returning to that state.