| Main entry | Sime, Jessie Georgina |
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| Birth place | Ivy Cottage, Hamilton, Lanark County, Scotland |
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| Birth date | 12 February 1868 |
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| Death place | Edstone Hall, Wootton, Warren, England |
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| Death date | 13 September 1958 |
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| Identifier | 0362 |
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| Birth name | Jessie Georgina Sime |
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| Alternate names | Jacob Salviris; J. Georgina Sime |
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| Marital status | single |
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| Paid work | journalist |
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| Biography | Jessie Georgina Sime (1868-1958) grew up surrounded by writers and notable cultural figures. Her father, James Sime (1843-1935), was an historian and biographer, her mother, Jessie Aitken Wilson, was an author, the novelist Mrs. Margaret Oliphant was her mother's second cousin, and her mother's brother Sir Daniel Wilson was chancellor of the University of Toronto. Family friends included George Meredith and Thomas Hardy. Born in Scotland, Jessie grew up in London and was primarily educated at home before attending Queen's College School and Queen's College London and studying singing for a year in Berlin. She travelled extensively in France and Italy and served as secretary to American philosopher William James in Edinburgh, Scotland. She began her literary career as a reader for Nelson (work likely obtained through her father's relationship with Macmillan), and progressed to book reviewing for the ATHENAEUM and a weekly column for the PALL MALL GAZETTE, as well as translations and short stories, occasionally under the name "Jacob Salviris." In 1907 she moved to Montreal, which remained her official home for the rest of her life, despite occasional sojourns in England. Active in the literary life of the city, she was the Quebec vice-president of the Canadian Women's Press Club, president of the Montreal branch of the Canadian Authors Association, secretary of the Montreal branch of PEN, and president of the Montreal Centre of the International Club for Authors. In all, she published ten books of fiction and non-fiction, the last three in collaboration with Frank Nicholson. Many of her works feature feminist perspectives and demonstrate an interest in the working woman. One of these publications, a collection of stories titled SISTER WOMAN (1919), was recently reissued by Tecumseh Press. Reflected in her later books is an interest in the occult and dreams, developed during a period of experiencing vision impairment during the 1930s. Possibly sojourning in England for a brief time following the Second World War, her permanent address was still Montreal at the time of her death from arteriosclerosis in Wootton, England, in 1958. |
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| Travel | Scotland, 1912, 1913; England, 1933; Vienna |
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| Residences | Hamilton, Scotland (1868); Germany; (1868); London, England (1869); Edinburgh, Scotland (1871); Chiswick, England (1879); London (1881-); Berlin, Germany (c1885); London (-1907); Montreal, Quebec (1907-1958) |
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| Geographic regions | England; Quebec |
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| Primary genres | non-fiction; fiction; journalism |
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| Books | THE MISTRESS OF ALL WORK (1916); CANADA CHAPS (1917); SISTER WOMAN (1919); OUR LITTLE LIFE: A NOVEL OF TODAY (1921); THOMAS HARDY AND THE WESSEX NOVELS (1928); IN A CANADIAN SHACK (1937); THE LAND OF DREAMS (1940); ORPHEUS IN QUEBEC (1942); DREAMS OF THE WORLD OF LIGHT (1951); BRAVE SPIRITS (1952) with Frank Nicholson; A TALE OF TWO WORLDS (1953); INEZ AND HER ANGEL (1954) |
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| Periodicals | ATHENAEUM; CANADIAN BOOKMAN; CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL; NATIONAL REVIEW; PALL MALL GAZETTE; SATURDAY NIGHT |
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| Other publications | Anthologized in: Becker, GOLDEN TALES OF CANADA (1938) |
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| Organizations | Canadian Authors Association, Canadian Women's Press Club, PEN, Montreal Centre of the International Club for Authors |
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| Other arts | music (voice) |
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| Father's name | James Sime |
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| Life dates of father | 31 October 1843, Airdrie, Lanarkshire, Scotland - 20 March 1895, London, England; m. 1865 |
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| Father's note | gave up training for ministry to research Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller in Germany; historian; biographer; coffee room proprietor; reader for Macmillan of London |
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| Mother's name | Janet ("Jessie") Aitken Wilson |
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| Life dates of mother | c1826, Edinburgh, Scotland - after 1901; m. 1865 |
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| Mother's note | writer; sister of George Wilson, Professor of Technology at University of Edinburgh, and Director of Industrial Museum of Scotland |
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| Biographical references | DICTIONARY OF LITERARY BIOGRAPHY 92, pp. 356-61; FEMINIST COMPANION TO LITERATURE IN ENGLISH (1990); Campell & McMullen, NEW WOMEN: SHORT STORIES BY CANADIAN WOMEN, 1900-1920 (1991), pp. 323-25 |
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| Bibliographic references | Watters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), pp. 392, 577, 640, 939, 982 |
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| Research references | complete |
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| Archival references | correspondence, 1933-38, Harry Ransome Humanities Research Center, University of Texas; several items, 1929-37, Mackenzie King Papers, National Archives of Canada; correspondence, Macmillan Papers, McMaster University; two letters (1934), Lighthall papers, McGill University; several letters, Deacon papers, Fisher Library, University of Toronto. |
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| Image credits | Line drawing by Una Vernelli (Vancouver, British Columbia). |
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| Copyright | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Please cite Canada's Early Women Writers. SFU Library Digital Collections. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada. 1980-2014. |
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