Unnecessary Rankings! Rose Macaulay

Time for some more rankings! Today is a very prolific writer – Rose Macaulay – so I’ve read 12 of her books, but barely dinted the surface. I have a lot more waiting on my shelves, and I’m not including Told By An Idiot, which I have started three times and always given up on… but if there are any other Macaulay novels that I shouldn’t miss, do let me know.

12. Staying With Relations (1930)
A story about going to an archeological dig, what I chiefly remember was being disappointed by how boring it was.

11. I Would Be Private (1937)
An ordinary couple have quintuplets and escape to a Caribbean island to avoid journalistic obsession with them. While apparently based on a real-life family, I question whether having quintuplets would create such unending fervour. The novel is very funny and enjoyably Macaulayish, but is low down the list for having no real sense of central motivation, and for a sizeable amount of racism.

10. Mystery at Geneva (1922)
A vigorous, silly satire of murder mysteries and the League of Nations – I think probably required you to be alive in 1922 to really appreciate what it’s doing, but Macaulay is clearly having fun.

9. Letters
I’ve read four collections of Macaulay’s letters, I think – published in exchanges with her sister, her cousin, and her spiritual advisor (three different people). All very interesting, but not especially memorable.

8. A Casual Commentary (1925)
The sort of light-hearted, ephemeral essay collection that every author was expected to write in the 1920s – good fun, and Macaulay manages to weave in some axes to grind, but it’s clearly not the sort of book she most enjoyed writing (and she does rather satirise the idea in some of her other 1920s books).

7. Personal Pleasures (1935)
A collection of things that Macaulay finds pleasurable – a fun sort of book to keep in the loo. ‘Departure of Visitors’ is a favourite of mine, and it’s a diverting book, but maybe done better by J.B. Priestley.

6. The World My Wilderness (1950)
Macaulay’s final two novels were for a long time her best-known, and find her in more serious, literary tone. As this list shows, I prefer her 1920s exhuberance, but her novel of life immediately post-WW2 is done extremely well. And kudos to her for making up a fake epigraph to borrow her title from.

5. The Towers of Trebizond (1956)
Her final novel often appears on lists of best opening lines: “Take my camel, dear”, said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass. It is an eccentric, well-crafted novel roaming over Turkey, Jerusalem, and the Soviety Union – a brilliant achievement, which I am ready to admit might be her best novel, but not my favourite.

4. Potterism (1920)
As my top four will show, I think Macaulay was on an extraordinary run in the 1920s. In all of them – including this look at journalism – she combines wit, whimsy, satire and fun into a magical cocktail that is a riot to read while also having searing things to say about contemporary society.

3. Keeping Up Appearances (1928)
In her sights in Keeping Up Appearances are middlebrow vs highbrow debates, class, and what constitutes literary taste. Two unlikely sisters live in different ‘brow’ worlds, and there is an early twist that she carries off brilliantly. Now back in print from the British Library.

2. Crewe Train (1926)
What a marvellous creation Denham is! She has lived entirely away from ‘culture’, and is essentially primitive when it comes to literature, art and society – until she founds herself whisked into the middle of it. And isn’t very impressed. Gloriously funny, and pin-sharp satire.

1. Dangerous Ages (1921)
I was delighted we managed to get Dangerous Ages into the British Library Women Writers series – it’s a bitingly funny, searingly precise look at women across different generations, from 20s to 80s, and the obstacles they face. Some are very 1920s (starting Freudian psychoanalysis simply to get someone to listen) and some feel extremely ahead of their time (a GP re-entering the workforce after years of being a full-time mother). It is all done with Macaulay’s trademark sharp humour, and has so much to say about life for women in the 1920s.