Margaret St. Clair

Margaret St. Clair (17 February 1911 – 22 November 1995) was an American science fiction writer, who also wrote under the pseudonyms Idris Seabright and Wilton Hazzard.^[1]

St. Clair was born at Huchinson, Kansas. She married Eric St. Clair in 1932, whom she met while attending the University of California, Berkeley. In 1934 she graduated with a Master of Arts in Greek classics.^[1]

She started writing science fiction with the short story "Rocket to Limbo" in 1946. Her most creative period was during the 1950s, when she wrote such acclaimed stories as "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles" (1951), "Brightness Falls from the Air" (1951), "An Egg a Month from All Over" (1952), and "Horrer Howce" (1956). She largely stopped writing short stories after 1960. The Best of Margaret St. Clair (1985) is a representative sampler of her short fiction.

Apart from more than 100 short stories, St. Clair also wrote nine novels. Of interest beyond science fiction is her 1963 novel Sign of the Labrys, for its overt early use of Wicca elements in fiction. These elements may have derived from her reading of Robert Graves's book The White Goddess and of the writings of Gerald Gardner, with whom Margaret and her husband were put in touch by Raymond Buckland. It was Buckland who initiated the St Clairs into Gardnerian witchcraft. They were also influenced by reading the novels of Dion Fortune. ^[2]

Her interests included witchcraft, nudism, and feminism. She and her husband decided to remain childless.^[1]

She died at Santa Rosa, California, in 1995.

Works

Novels

• The Green Queen (1956)
• Agent of the Unknown (1956)
• The Games of Neith (1960)
• Sign of the Labrys (1963)
• Three Worlds of Futurity (1964)
• Message from the Eocene (1964)
• The Dolphins of Altair (1967)
• The Shadow People (1969)
• The Dancers of Noyo (1973)

Story collections

• Three Worlds of Futurity (1964)
• Change the Sky and Other Stories (1974)
• The Best of Margaret St. Clair (1985)

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} http://www.gwillick.com/Spacelight/st_clair.html
2. ^ ""Chasing Margaret" by Chas S. Clifton". Letters From Hardscrabble Creek. June 1997. http://www.chasclifton.com/columns/column17.html. Retrieved 2007-03-07. 

External links

• Margaret St. Clair at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Persondata
Name	Saint Clair, Margaret
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	17 February 1911
Place of birth
Date of death	22 November 1995
Place of death