Sarah Broom Macnaughtan
Essayist & Novelist | 1846-1916
Sarah Broom Macnaughtan (1864-1916) wrote perceptive and often hilarious novels of manners exploring how socio-economic status affects women’s choices in marriage. She herself never married, but lived a happily single life, supporting herself comfortably with her writing. Her best novels are perhaps The Expensive Miss DuCane (1901) and The Fortune of Christina M’Nab (1901). Macnaughtan was born in Partick and educated at home by her father. After her parents’ deaths, she moved to London, where she participated in the women’s suffrage movement and in efforts to relieve poverty in the east end. She travelled widely, visiting Canada, South America, the Second Boer War and, more extensively, during the Great War. My War Experiences in Two Continents (1919) was published after Macnaughtan’s death by her niece and is based on the journal kept by Macnaughtan during her Red Cross service in Belgium, France, and Armenia, where she set up soup kitchens, dressed wounds, and comforted the dying. By the time she reached Armenia, Macnaughtan was struggling with illness and overwork, and she returned to England only to die.