# Mary Oliver

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/may-sinclair/mary-oliver/9780860681052

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![Mary Oliver](https://quivercdn.com/covers/virago/may-sinclair/mary-oliver_978-08-6068-105-2.jpg?v=2026-05-19%2007%3A22%3A00)

- Book: [Mary Oliver](https://www.bookquiver.com/may-sinclair/mary-oliver) ([Mary Oliver.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/may-sinclair/mary-oliver.md))
- Authors: [May Sinclair](https://www.bookquiver.com/may-sinclair)
- Publisher: virago
- ISBN: 978-08-6068-105-2
- Published: 1980-04-14
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

Born in 1865, Mary Olivier is the youngest of four children. Mamma dominates this Victorian household, idolising the boys, rejecting the independent love of her only daughter: the archetype of all women who control by weakness and suffering. Mary adores her mother- and she hates her. Ferociously intelligent, she vacillates between a passionate quest for her own artistic and sexual identity. This is one of the first novels ever written about a mother and daughter relationship, and the eternal conflict engendered by the deepest of ties. But it is a celebration too: for though Mary sacrifices her life- and her lover- to the demands of duty, she emerges victorious, finding in the discovery of her intellectual and feminine self an inner freedom, a perfect happiness.