author
Rachel Hayward
b. 1886
An early 20th-century writer remembered today for a small, intriguing body of work, including the 1913 novel The Hippodrome and Letters From La-Bas. Her surviving books suggest a taste for vivid settings, travel, and lives caught up in larger political and social currents.
1 Audiobook
The Hippodrome
by Rachel Hayward
About the author
Very little biographical information about this author is easy to confirm, beyond the catalog record identifying her as Rachel Hayward, born in 1886. She appears in library and public-domain records as the author of The Hippodrome, published in 1913, and Letters From La-Bas, published around 1913–1914.
The Hippodrome is an early 20th-century novel set around performance life and political unrest in Barcelona, while Letters From La-Bas appears to draw on travel or observational writing connected with France. Taken together, these works give the impression of a writer interested in place, movement, and the human drama unfolding inside turbulent times.
Because so little firmly sourced personal history is readily available, her life remains partly obscure. That mystery is part of her appeal today: she survives through her books, which offer modern listeners a glimpse of a once-active literary voice from the years just before the First World War.