Main entry | Macbeth, Madge |
Birth place | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA |
Birth date | 6 November 1878 |
Death place | Ottawa, Ontario |
Death date | 20 September 1965 |
Identifier | 0432 |
Birth name | Madge Hamilton Lyons |
Alternate names | Gilbert Knox, W.S. Dill |
Married name | Macbeth |
Marital status | married |
Religious affiliation | born Jewish; Anglican |
Paid work | mandolinist; journalist |
Biography | Born 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. |
Travel | Paris; Spain; South America (1936); Dominican Republic or Panama (1937); Palestine (1938); England (1956) |
Other notes | Son 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).
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Residences | Philadelphia, 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 regions | Ontario |
Primary genres | fiction; journalism; life-writing |
Books | THE 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) |
Periodicals | CANADA 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 |
Organizations | Canadian Authors Association, Canadian Women's Press Club, Ottawa Drama League, Ottawa Little Theatre |
Other arts | acting (theatre) |
Father's name | Hymen Hart Lyons |
Life dates of father | 6 December 1852, South Carolina - 7 July 1888, Asheville, North Carolina |
Father's note | Pioneer Jewish-American family; businessman; druggist (?); died of TB |
Mother's name | Ann Elizabeth ("Bessie") Maffit |
Life dates of mother | 4 December 1856, Massachusetts - 17 August 1932, Ottawa |
Mother's note | Daughter of Louisa Hart Maffitt, one of first professional American press women |
Spouse 1 | Charles Macbeth |
Life dates of spouse 1 | c1876, Ontario - 3 January 1908, Ottawa, Ontario |
Spouse 1 note | Civil engineer; fraternity brother of William Lyon Mackenzie King; died of TB |
Marriage 1 date | 26 October 1901 |
Marriage 1 place | Baltimore, Maryland |
Children number | 2 |
Children's names and dates | John 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 references | Dictionary 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 references | Watters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), pp. 331, 440, 535, 882, 972 |
Research references | complete; 02 |
Archival references | letters 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 credits | Line drawing by Una Vernelli (Vancouver, British Columbia). |
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. |