S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

Born in 1864, Sarah Broom Macnaughtan was a Scottish writer known for novels, travel writing, and a strong independent streak. She also painted, and her life seems to have been marked by movement and curiosity, which fed naturally into her books and public reputation.

When the First World War began, she volunteered for relief work with the Red Cross and went east, eventually traveling through Russia and into Armenia. Those experiences became central to her later writing, giving it the immediacy of someone who had seen hardship and upheaval firsthand rather than from a distance.

Macnaughtan died in 1916. She is remembered not only as a novelist, but as a writer-adventurer whose work joined storytelling, travel, and witness in a way that still makes her life feel unusually vivid.