The child is father to the manuscript: Sinclair Ross and his women

Abstract

Writers create worlds for themselves in their books; they tell parables; they offer allegories of the self. When they express these in the form of fiction or poetry or drama we have the work of a transfiguring imagination which uses symbolic statement and myth to disguise autobiography. (Leon Edel. Stuff of Sleep and Dreams. Experiments in Literary Psychology. New York: Harper and Row, 1982, 60.) Experience largely controls the imagination. Not only does the writer’s life give us important insights into her or his work, but the text reveals important truths about the author’s life experiences of which he or she may not be fully cognizant. A consideration of Sinclair Ross’s fiction demonstrates the significant extent to which his fiction and his life illuminate each other.