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Macbeth, Madge

Main entryMacbeth, Madge
Birth placePhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Birth date6 November 1878
Death placeOttawa, Ontario
Death date20 September 1965
Identifier0432
Birth nameMadge Hamilton Lyons
Alternate namesGilbert Knox, W.S. Dill
Married nameMacbeth
Marital statusmarried
Religious affiliationborn Jewish; Anglican
Paid workmandolinist; journalist
BiographyBorn in Philadelphia, the eldest daughter of Bessie Maffit (1856-1932) and Hymen Hart Lyons (1852-1888), Madge Hamilton Lyons (1878-1965) exhibited literary tendencies at a young age. At the age of three, she attempted to revise the Bible, in addition to writing and producing neighbourhood plays in Philadelphia. After losing her father to tuberculosis in 1888, Madge moved with her family to various locations in Maryland. Interested in journalism, she created and ran juvenile papers, including the already-established school paper at Helmuth College in London, Ontario, the girls' school she attended beginning in her early teens. Upon graduation, she was briefly employed as a touring mandolinist from 1899 until her 1901 marriage to civil engineer Charles William Macbeth, with whom she lived in Detroit and then Ottawa. Widowed after Charles lost his battle with tuberculosis in 1908, Madge had to support her two sons. So that she could still attend to her children, she turned to writing as a career, eventually publishing her first two stories in CANADA WEST and the CANADIAN MAGAZINE. She soon became known for her interviews with Members of Parliament. In 1910, she published her first novel, THE WINNING GAME. While in Ottawa, she resumed her theatrical activities as well, becoming one of the founding members of the Ottawa Little Theatre, and participating in all aspects of amateur productions throughout her life. Her travels to such exotic locations as Paris, Spain, South America, Yugoslavia, and Palestine were documented in her books and articles. As a professional who, as she put it, wrote "everything but hymns," Madge authored anything that came her way, from a series of publicity brochures for the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1920s, to advertisements, magazine fiction, local history, and newspaper journalism, including her column in the OTTAWA CITIZEN titled "Over My Shoulder," which maintained her presence as a local personality. Her need to write for all markets quenched neither her implicit feminism (most evident in her novel SHACKLES) nor her gift for political satire displayed in the two novels issued under her well-protected pseudonym, Gilbert Knox. From 1939 to 1941, she was President of the Canadian Authors Association. By her death in 1965, Madge had become well known as an Ottawa literary personality and as the first woman president of the Canadian Authors Association.
TravelParis; Spain; South America (1936); Dominican Republic or Panama (1937); Palestine (1938); England (1956)
Other notesSon John Douglas Macbeth was author of SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND: WAR LETTERS OF A CANADIAN OFFICER ON OVERSEAS SERVICE (1941). Madge Macbeth has recently been the focus of literary criticism in Jody Mason's "Anti-modernist Paradox in Canada: The Graphic Publishers (1925-32) and the Case of Madge Macbeth" in JOURNAL OF CANADIAN STUDIES 45.2 (Spring 2011).
ResidencesPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania (1878-); Asheville, North Carolina (1880); Baltimore et al., Maryland (late 1880s); London, Ontario (1890s); Baltimore, Maryland (1900, 1901); Detroit, Michigan (1901-1903); Ottawa (1904-); Franklin, Muskoka, Ontario (1911); Ottawa (-1965)
Geographic regionsOntario
Primary genresfiction; journalism; life-writing
BooksTHE WINNING GAME (1910); KLEATH (1917); THE PATTERSON LIMIT (1923); BUNGALOW CAMPS IN CANADA (1923); THE LAND OF AFTERNOON: A SATIRE (1924) as Gilbert Knox; THE DEVIL'S GAP IN PARADISE (1924); FRENCH RIVER BUNGALOW CAMP (1924); NIPIGON BUNGALOW CAMP (1924); GLACIER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADIAN PACIFIC ROCKIES (N.P. 1925); EMERALD LAKE BRITISH COLUMBIA (1925); CURIOSITY REWARDED: A DIALOGUE BETWEEN GILBERT KNOX AND THE CURIOUS PUBLIC (1926); THE LONG DAY: REMINISCENCES OF THE YUKON (1926) as W.S. Dill; SHACKLES (1926); THE GREAT FRIGHT, ONESIPHORE, OUR NEIGHBOR (1929) with A.R. Conway; OVER THE GANGPLANK TO SPAIN (1931); THE GOOSE'S SAUCE: A COMEDY IN ONE ACT (1935); THE KINDER BEES (1935) as Gilbert Knox; WINGS IN THE WEST (1937); SHREDS OF CIRCUMSTANCE (1947); LOST: A CAVALIER (1947); OVER MY SHOULDER (1953); THREE ELYSIAN ISLANDS: GRAND CANARY, LANZAROTE, FUERTEVENTURA (c1956); BOULEVARD CAREER (1957); THE LADY STANLEY INSTITUTE FOR TRAINED NURSES (1959); VOLCANO: A NOVEL OF THE ECUADOREAN ANDES (1963)
PeriodicalsCANADA WEST; CANADIAN BOOKMAN; CANADIAN COURIER; CANADIAN GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL; CANADIAN MAGAZINE; CHATELAINE; CURTAIN CALL; DALHOUSIE REVIEW; MACLEAN'S; MAYFAIR; OTTAWA CITIZEN; SATURDAY NIGHT; TORONTO STAR WEEKLY; WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
OrganizationsCanadian Authors Association, Canadian Women's Press Club, Ottawa Drama League, Ottawa Little Theatre
Other artsacting (theatre)
Father's nameHymen Hart Lyons
Life dates of father6 December 1852, South Carolina - 7 July 1888, Asheville, North Carolina
Father's notePioneer Jewish-American family; businessman; druggist (?); died of TB
Mother's nameAnn Elizabeth ("Bessie") Maffit
Life dates of mother4 December 1856, Massachusetts - 17 August 1932, Ottawa
Mother's noteDaughter of Louisa Hart Maffitt, one of first professional American press women
Spouse 1Charles Macbeth
Life dates of spouse 1c1876, Ontario - 3 January 1908, Ottawa, Ontario
Spouse 1 noteCivil engineer; fraternity brother of William Lyon Mackenzie King; died of TB
Marriage 1 date26 October 1901
Marriage 1 placeBaltimore, Maryland
Children number2
Children's names and datesJohn Douglas (26 September 1901 - 4 January 1951), m. to Millicent Ann Gilmour; Charles Lyons (11 June 1905 - 27 February 1976), m. to Claudia W. Cloristine
Biographical referencesDictionary of Literary Biography 92; Campbell & McMullen, NEW WOMEN: SHORT STORIES BY CANADIAN WOMEN, 1900-1920 (1991), pp. 213-14; Gerson, "Macbeth, Madge" in ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LITERATURE IN CANADA, ed. New (2002), p. 687; 1880 United States Federal Census; 1900 United States Federal Census; 1911 Census of Canada; New Orleans Passenger Lists, 1820-1945; UK Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960
Bibliographic referencesWatters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), pp. 331, 440, 535, 882, 972
Research referencescomplete; 02
Archival referencesletters to J.G. Bourinot, Bourinot Papers, National Library of Canada; extensive correspondence, Lorne and Edith Pierce collection, Queen's University Archives; correspondence, Queen's University Archives; correspondence, W.A. Deacon Papers, Fisher Library, University of Toronto; correspondence, MacMillan Papers, McMaster University; correspondence, manuscripts, 1.65 m of textual records, Madge Macbeth Fonds, National Archives of Canada; miscellaneous, Madge Macbeth Collection, Special Collections, Ottawa City Archives, Ottawa; letters and stories, Newton McTavish papers, North York Public Library
Image creditsLine drawing by Una Vernelli (Vancouver, British Columbia).
CopyrightThis 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.