Netta Syrett

English adult and children's novelist, playwright, and short fiction writer.

  • Born: March 17, 1865
  • Birthplace: Landsgate, Kent, England
  • Died: December 15, 1943
  • Place of death:London, England

Biography

Netta Syrett was born the daughter of British silk merchant Ernest Syrett, and she had four sisters and a brother. Ernest Syrett had progressive views on education, and he sent Netta to live at Myra Lodge and attend North London Collegiate School for Girls when she was eleven years old. After finishing at North London, Netta Syrett attended Cambridge Training College and there earned a teaching certificate in one only year. (The program was designed to take three years.) She taught English at a Swansea, Wales, school for two years before moving to London to live with four of her sisters. In London, she initially taught at the Polytechnic School for Girls.

By the time she was around thirty, however, Syrett was focusing more on her literary career. She had struck up a friendship with fellow teacher Mabel Beardsley at the Polytechnic School, and Beardsley’s brother Aubrey, an artist, subsequently introduced Syrett to his community of friends. Through this group, Syrett established a relationship with Henry Harland and then the prestigious publishing company Bodley Head. Harland published three of Syrett’s stories in the Yellow Book. Her first published story, “Thy Heart’s Desire,” appeared in July, 1894. This story was one of several of Syrett’s publications to center on a woman who had reluctantly entered into an unhappy marriage to escape financial burden, loneliness, or other troubles. The women then typically rebelled against the constraints imposed on them, whether constraints by parents, society, profession, or spouse. Three other stories to feature such characters were “Her Wedding Day,” published in Quarto in 1896, “Far above Rubies,” published in Yellow Book in 1897, and “Madame de Meline,” included in Acorn in 1905.

Syrett’s literary circle continued to expand, as she met Ella D’Arcy and Evelyn Sharp, among others, during her work with the Yellow Book. Syrett’s first book, Nobody’s Fault, appeared in 1896. Also a writer of children’s stories and fairy tales, Syrett introduced folklore into her adult fiction for the first time in 1909 in A Castle of Dreams. The novel features another insightful and determined female protagonist, this time one surrounded by the fantastic and supernatural. Other books were decidedly realistic and autobiographical. The God of Chance, published in 1920, reveals how lonely and mundane a teacher’s life can be, and The Victorians: The Development of the Modern Woman (1915), republished as Rose Cottingham, was a bildungsroman with a female lead.

Syrett is also known for one of the last of several books she wrote: Judgment Withheld (1934), published when the author was nearing seventy years old. One of the book’s foremost and reader-friendly characters, Mimi Landsfeld, is a lesbian. Creating such a character was bold for Syrett, given the hailstorm of criticism that had fallen on Radclyffe Hall for the lesbian-themed The Well of Loneliness just six years earlier.

Author Works

Children’s and Young Adult Literature:

The Garden of Delight: Fairy Tales, 1898

A School Year, 1902

The Magic City, and Other Fairy Tales, 1903

Six Fairy Plays for Children, 1903

The Castle of Four Towers, 1909

The Vanishing Princess, 1910

Old Miracle Plays of England, 1911

Robin Goodfellow, and Other Fairy Plays for Children, 1918

Godmother’s Garden, 1918

Rachel and the Seven Wonders, 1921

Toby and the Odd Beasts, 1921

The Fairy Doll, and Other Plays for Children, 1922

Magic London, 1922

Tinkelly Winkle, 1923

Girls of the Sixth Form, 1934

Drama:

The Finding of Nancy, pr. 1902

Two Domestics: A Play for Women in One Act, pr. 1922

Two Elizabeths, pr. 1924

Long Fiction:

Nobody’s Fault, 1896

The Tree of Life, 1897

Rosanne, 1902

The Day’s Journey, 1905

Women and Circumstance, 1906

The Child of Promise, 1907

Anne Page, 1908

A Castle of Dreams, 1909

Olivia L. Carew, 1910

Drender’s Daughter, 1911

Three Women, 1912

Barbara of the Thorn, 1913

The Jam Queen, 1914

The Victorians: The Development of the Modern Woman, 1915 (also known as Rose Cottingham)

Rose Cottingham Married, 1916

Troublers of the Peace, 1917

The Wife of a Hero, 1918

The God of Chance, 1920

Cupid and Mr. Pepys: A Romance of the Days of the Great Diarist, 1923

Lady Jem: A Novel, 1923

The Path to the Sun, 1923

The House in Garden Square, 1924

As the Stars Come Out, 1925

The Mystery of Jennifer, 1927

Julian Carroll, 1928

The Shuttles of Eternity, 1928

Portrait of a Rebel, 1929

Strange Marriage, 1930

The Manor House, 1932

Moon out of the Sky, 1932

Who Was Florriemay?, 1932

Aunt Elizabeth, 1933

The Farm on the Downs, 1933

The House That Was, 1933

Judgment Withheld, 1934

Linda, 1935

The Farm on the Downs, 1936

Angel Unawares, 1936

Fulfilment, 1938

. . . As Dreams Are Made On, 1939

Gemini, 1940

Nonfiction:

The Story of Saint Catherine of Siena, 1910

Sketches of European History, 1931

The Sheltering Tree, 1939

Short Fiction:

The Endless Journey, and Other Stories, 1912

Stories from Mediaeval Romance, 1913

Bibliography

Ardis, Ann. “Netta Syrett’s Aestheticization of Everyday Life: Countering the Counterdiscourse of Aestheticism.” Women and British Aestheticism, edited by Talia Schaffer and Kathy Alexis Psomiades, UP of Virginia, 1999, pp. 233–50. Discusses Syrett role in British aestheticism.

“Toward a Redefinition of ‘Experimental Writing’: Netta Syrett’s Realism, 1908–1912.” Famous Last Words: Changes in Gender and Narrative Closure, edited by Alison Booth, UP of Virginia, 1993, pp. 259–79. Discusses realism in Syrett’s work.

Nelson, Carolyn Christensen, editor. “Netta Syrett.” A New Woman Reader: Fiction, Articles, Drama of the 1890s, Broadview Press, 2001. Presents a brief biography of Syrett.

Owens, Jill T. “Netta Syrett: A Chronological, Annotated Bibliography of Her Works, 1890–1940.” Bulletin of Bibliography, vol. 45, no. 1, 1988, pp. 8–14. Provides an annotated bibliography of Syrett’s works.

Owens, Jill T. “A Merging of the Real and the Supernatural in the Fiction of Netta Syrett.” Publications of the Mississippi Philological Association, 1985, pp. 18–24. A critical study of the supernatural in Syrett’s fiction.

Owens, Jill T. “Netta Syrett’s Sister and ‘Uncle’: A Biographical Note on the Nineties.” University of Mississippi Studies in English, no. 4, 1983, pp. 191–92. Provides biographical information about Syrett.