Sally Carson (author)
Sally Carson | |
|---|---|
| Born | Sylvia Mary Margaret Carson 30 September 1902 Thornton Heath, Croydon, England |
| Died | 21 June 1941 (aged 38) Leeds, England |
| Occupation | Novelist, playwright |
| Language | English |
| Notable works | Crooked Cross |
Sylvia Mary Margaret Carson (30 September 1902–21 June 1941), known as Sally Carson, was an English author whose acclaimed 1934 novel, Crooked Cross, foretold the Nazi threat in Germany. The novel was republished in April 2025.
Early life
Carson, who had two older sisters, was born on 30 September 1902 in Thornton Heath, Surrey, England.[1][2] Her father, Arthur Louis Carson, died four years later and her mother, Charlotte Winstanley Stratford, brought up the family in Dorset. As a young woman, Carson taught dance, while also working as a publisher’s reader and spending her holidays in Bavaria with friends.
Literary work
Carson's most famous novel Crooked Cross was the first of a trilogy, together with The Prisoner (1936) and A Traveller Came By (1938). She began to write Crooked Cross[a] after visiting Bavaria, Germany. The book "charts the growing disaffection of a group of German youth who feel lost and ignored, and so turn towards a new authoritarian leader" and it "predicted the scale of the Nazi threat".[4] It covers "a six-month period of momentous political change: Hitler became chancellor, the Nazis gained an effective majority in the Reichstag, Dachau was opened, and Jews were barred from public-service jobs".[5]
The book was published in 1934, a year after the events it recounts. It was well reviewed, Madeline Linford, founder of the Manchester Guardian’s women’s page, chose it as a book of the year.
A dramatised version of Crooked Cross premiered at Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1935, produced by Herbert Prentice.[b][6][7] In 1937 it was performed at the Westminster Theatre, in London's West End, starring Anne Firth.[8] The play was published in a volume on its own in 1938. It was revived in New York in 2025.[9]
Nicola Beauman, the founder of Persephone Books, happened upon Carson’s work while researching pre-Second World War British women writers. She tracked down a remaining copy and republished it in April 2025, ahead of the 80th anniversary of the end of the war.[10][11]
Personal life
Carson married the publisher Eric Humphries (1894–1968; his second marriage),[12] son of the eponymous co-founder of Lund Humphries, in London in 1938. They lived in Thorpe, North Yorkshire[12] and had three children, twins Tamsin and David, and another daughter, Sorel.[13] She died of breast cancer on 21 June 1941, aged 38,[14][15] at a nursing home in Leeds.[16]
Notes
- ^ Crooked Cross refers to the shape of the Nazi swastika.[3]
- ^ Prentice's prompt book and a letter to him from Carson are held by the New York Public Library.[6]
References
- ^ "Family tree of Sylvia Mary Margaret (Sally) Carson". Geneanet.
- ^ "Sylvia Mary Margaret (Sally) Carson - Ancestry®". www.ancestry.com. Retrieved 19 October 2025.
- ^ Wood, Heloise (16 December 2024). "Persephone Books reprints Sally Carson's 'forgotten masterpiece'". The Bookseller. Retrieved 8 February 2025.
- ^ Thorpe, Vanessa (8 February 2025). "Rediscovered, a young English novelist's warning of the Nazi threat". The Observer. Retrieved 8 February 2025.
- ^ Higgins, Charlotte (18 October 2025). "A prophetic 1934 novel has found a surprising second life – it holds lessons for us all". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 18 October 2025.
- ^ a b Elkind, Elisabeth. Guide to the Herbert M. Prentice papers 1925–1960 (PDF). The New York Public Library Billy Rose Theatre Division.
- ^ Evening Dispatch, "Spring Plays At The 'Rep.'", Tuesday, 11 December 1934, 3.
- ^ "'Crooked Cross' in London; Play by Sally Carson Concerns Love Tragedy of Nazi Regime". The New York Times. 14 January 1937. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 8 February 2025.
- ^ "Crooked Cross". Theatre Row. New York. October 2025. Retrieved 10 December 2025.
- ^ "Forgotten literary masterpiece about rise of fascism, Crooked Cross, published by Persephone Books" (Press release). Midas PR. 16 December 2024. Retrieved 8 February 2025.
- ^ McHugh, Clare (7 May 2025). "The lost 1934 novel that gave a chilling warning about the horrors of Nazi Germany". BBC News. Retrieved 8 May 2025.
- ^ a b Behrens, Steven. "Family tree of Eric Beresford Humphries MC OBE [SIC]". Geneanet. Retrieved 8 February 2025.
- ^ "Death Notice: Tamsin Humphries". Oxford Mail. 12 January 2011. Retrieved 10 December 2025.
- ^ The Yorkshire Observer, Monday, 23 June 1941, 2, "Deaths".
- ^ "Sally Carson". Persephone Books. Retrieved 8 February 2025.
- ^ Calendar Made in The Probate Registries of the High Court of Justice in England for 1941, 486.