S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

Sarah Broom Macnaughtan was a Scottish novelist, born in Partick near Glasgow in 1864. She was educated at home, later lived in England, and built a reputation for novels that closely observed social life, especially the pressures shaping women’s choices and ambitions.

Her writing life widened into travel and reportage. During the First World War, she volunteered for relief work and traveled to Belgium, Russia, and Armenia. Those experiences fed into the books she is now especially remembered for, including A Woman’s Diary of the War and the posthumously published My War Experiences in Two Continents.

Macnaughtan died in London in 1916 after illness contracted while abroad. What makes her stand out today is the range of her work: she could be funny and precise about society, but she also wrote with directness and sympathy about suffering she had seen for herself.