Ruth Manning-Sanders: Poet, writer, editor

Dr. Helga Kaschl

Ruth Vernon Manning-Sanders was a poet, novelist, collector and editor of folk tales, fables, ballads, ghost and fairy stories. She became known mainly for her children's and young adult books, in which she retold stories from around the world with great wit and humor.

Ruth was born in Swansea, Wales, in either 1886 or 1888 – the dates vary – the youngest daughter of Emma (née Browne Brock) and John Edmondson Manning, a Unitarian minister. Her understanding parents encouraged their three daughters' independent thinking by giving them free access to their large library; avid readers, the children soon began to write, and together they composed and performed plays. Ruth enjoyed a very happy childhood in Manchester, where the family moved in 1902, and often spent her holidays in the Scottish Highlands at a farm called "Shian," meaning "the place where elves lived." Granny Stewart, the eldest of the large farming family, told the children old folk tales and local stories; on her tenth birthday, by chance, a man came by with a dancing bear and, in return for an overnight stay, made it dance – perhaps the beginning of Ruth's passion for the circus.

After graduating from school, she received a Shakespeare scholarship and began studying English Literature and Drama at Manchester University; however, due to illness and subsequent recovery stays in Italy and Devon, she ended her studies early.

In Devon, she met the painter and later writer George Rawlings Sanders (1884/5–1952) and married him on May 22, 1911, in Totnes. As an expression of equality, Ruth Manning and George Sanders hyphenated their surnames, each adding their partner's name, and literally walked their path together: for two years, they traveled through Great Britain in a horse-drawn wagon, working in the Circus Rosaire, owned by Fred and Florence Ross (known as Count and Countess Rosaire). Ruth Manning-Sanders processed her experiences and impressions, and her love of the circus, in a series of non-fiction books, novels, and short stories.

With the birth of their daughter Joan in 1913, their circus period came to an end, and they moved to a cottage in Bude, Cornwall. However, their penchant for a nomadic life must have persisted, as the family—grown by the addition of their son David in 1915—lived from 1914 onwards in Newlyn, Cornwall; Midhurst, Sussex; Catchall, Cornwall; Grasse near Cannes; back to Catchall; and finally settled in Sennen Cove, Cornwall. They soon came into contact with the people in their community, many of whom were artists of the Newlyn School, and made their home a cultural hub. In 1918, Walter de la Mare spent some time with the Manning-Sanders in Sennen, and in 1932, the writer Mary Butts moved to Sennen and became their neighbor. This year they had moved into "Esther's Field" in Maria's Lane - above the bay - Mary Butts occupied "Sarah's Well", "Tebel Vos" (today "Namaste") and then "No Place".

The children—Joan and David—had a governess, Florence Bridge, who tutored them, recognized Joan's talent for drawing, and nurtured it. Joan was so gifted that family friends—Father Bernard Walke and his wife, the painter Annie Walke—commissioned her to paint six pictures for St. Hilary's Church, pictures that—along with works by Roger Fry, Annie Walke, and members of the Newlyn School—can still be seen today. Her parents had a studio right by the sea where Joan could paint. At just thirteen, she participated in an exhibition for young artists in London. The requirement for participation was a minimum age of eighteen, and her age of thirteen was mistakenly taken for eighteen. Her paintings caused a sensation and were subsequently shown at the Royal Academy and in all the major art exhibitions. She exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy afterward, but in 1936 her paintings were returned because they did not conform to the modern style. Joan then enrolled at Chelsea Art School, met and married Roderick Floyd, a fellow student; the couple moved to Paris, returned to Cornwall in 1940, had two sons—Christopher and John Floyd—and emigrated to Canada in 1949. After that, Joan stopped painting. Little is known of David Manning-Sanders' life; there are drawings or paintings by his sister, for example, of him as a schoolboy with a globe and as a young man; he probably died in the Second World War.

George Manning-Sanders was confined to a wheelchair by a serious illness, could no longer paint, and concentrated on writing: he published three autobiographical novels ("Drum and Monkey," "The Burnt Man," and "The Third Day") and a number of short stories; one of his texts was included in "The Best British Stories" in 1925. He died in an accident in 1952.

After her daughter returned from Canada – her husband had also passed away – Ruth Manning-Sanders lived with Joan and her sons in "Esther's Field" in Sennen; Joan helped with the research for her books, which she tirelessly wrote and published well into old age: her last book, "A Cauldron of Witches," was published six months before her hundredth birthday.

Ruth Manning-Sanders was an extremely prolific writer who, at the beginning of her career, mainly wrote poems and verse narratives, and then switched to prose, narrative and non-fiction for adults and children; in total she published about one hundred books, which were repeatedly reprinted.

In a 1918 anthology, "Twelve Poets. A Miscellany of New Verse" (Selwyn and Blount / archive.org), three of her poems were printed: "Song from 'Loki'," "Night," and "Age." The collection also included poems by W.H. Davies, Vivian Locke Ellis, A. Hugh Fisher, Robin Flower, John Freeman, James Guthrie, J.C. Squire, Rowland Thirlmere, Edward Thomas, W.J. Turner, and Walter de la Mare, who encouraged her work. Both de la Mare and Davies also published texts in *The Living Age * in December 1919, and in the same year, Ruth Manning-Sanders' first collection of thirty-four poems, "The Pedlar and Other Poems," was published .

In 1921, she sent a manuscript to the Hogarth Press, hoping for publication. Virginia Woolf—"a new long poem by a little fat poet"—decided to publish it; she described the author as "a woman with a bobbed haircut, a wide mouth, in a velvet dressing gown, plump, auburn, with wide-set brown dog eyes," rather shabby, shabby, and full of compassion, sympathetic. In May 1922, the 43-page volume "Karn" appeared in the Hogarth Press; it was bound in gold-colored cardboard, had a red label with black printing, and a print run of 200 copies. "Karn," as well as the subsequent collection of poems, did not sell particularly well; "Martha Wish-You-Ill"—typeset by Virginia Woolf herself—appeared in July 1926, bound in multicolored marbled paper with a cream-colored label printed in black. The slim volume, only 16 pages long, had a print run of 280 copies. Poems from the collection appeared in 1926 in *Poetry* (Vol. 27, No. 5, Poetry Foundation, Chicago): Legend / Martha Wish-You-Ill, Hands / Eleven Saved / Solitary Peaces. In August 1927 (Vol. 30, No. 5), *Poetry* published five of her poems under the title "Monstrous Happenings" (Darkness / One Two Three and Four / Mr. Benny / The Poultry Farm / Away); other contributions included works by Dorothy Richardson and John Rodker, a friend of the Manning-Sanders family. Also in 1927, the verse narrative "The City," dedicated to Virginia Woolf, was published. One critic considered it one of the best written in the previous thirty years, and it earned her the Blindman Poetry Prize, an award from the Poetry Society of South Carolina that was discontinued. After "The City," Ruth Manning-Sanders published no further poems.

After publishing "The Twelve Saints," an ironic look at an artists' colony in Cornwall, in 1925, she followed this with books almost annually, including "Waste Corner," a novel about English country life, "Selina Pennaluna," "Hucca's Moor," "The Crochet Women"—a novel that delighted her neighbor in Sennen, the writer Mary Butt—"The Growing Trees," "She was Sofia," "Run Away," "Mermaid's Mirror," "The Girl Who Made an Angel," "Children by the Sea," "Elephant: The Romance of Laura," "Luke's Circus"—dedicated to Flo and Fred Rosaire—and "Mystery of Penwarth," a mysterious story for young people.

In the following years, Ruth Manning-Sanders worked primarily on non-fiction books, publishing "The West of England" in 1949, a book with old photographs and maps through which she wanted to convey her very personal view of Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset. "The Swan of Denmark," a captivating and affectionate biography of Hans Christian Andersen, with illustrations of Andersen's life by Astrid Walford, also appeared in 1949. In "Seaside England," she recounted the history and evolution of seaside holidays, from the 17th century to the mid-20th century; the cover features Randolph Caldecott's painting of Scarborough in 1818, and the frontispiece a watercolor by J.M. Whistler. With "The River Dart," she wrote the first book about one of England's most beautiful rivers. And her love for the circus, her experiences with Circus Rosaire, are reflected in her book "The English Circus," a comprehensive history of the circus in England, its great directors and artists, with chapters on the various disciplines—from clowns to trapeze artists—as well as on the animals and their trainers. The novel "The Golden Ball," published three years later, again deals with the circus and draws parallels to the life of the famous circus artist Leon LaRoche.

From the late 1950s onward, Ruth Manning-Sanders primarily wrote children's and young adult books, collecting folk tales, fables, ballads, ghost stories, and fairy tales from around the world, retelling them, and publishing a large number of anthologies. Her first anthology, "Peter and the Piskies," contains 34 Cornish fairy tales illustrated by Raymond Briggs and was an enormous success. In "A Bundle of Ballads," she collected over sixty ballads and songs, rewriting them for accessibility; William Stobbs received the Kate Greenaway Medal in 1959 for his illustrations. Over the next thirty years, more than twenty anthologies appeared, featuring fairy tales and stories from around the world, animal stories, poems about animals from Chaucer to Blake, circus stories, holiday tales, and just as many novels and stories for young adults, some with a historical backdrop, such as "The Smugglers," "The Extraordinary Margaret Catchpole," and "The Spaniards are Coming!"

Ruth Manning-Sanders also became very popular with her series "A Book of...", published by Methuen/Children's Books in twenty-three volumes. The series began in 1962 with "A Book of Giants" and ended in 1988 with "A Book of Magic Horses." In between were books about dwarves, dragons, witches, wizards, mermaids, ghosts, princes, princesses, kings, queens, and beings from magical worlds. The entire series was illustrated by Robin Jacques, who greatly valued his collaboration with Ruth Manning-Sanders on twenty-five books.

Besides Robin Jacques, other well-known artists illustrated her books; these included Victor G. Ambrus, Scoular Anderson, Eileen Armitage, Raymond Briggs, Donald Chaffin, Jo Chesterman, Brian Froud, Lynette Hemmant, James Hodgson, Harold Jones, Annette MacArthur-Onslow, Constance Marshal, Kilmeny Niland, William Papas, Rita Parsons, Trevor Ridley, Jacqueline Rizvi, Mary Shepard, Leon Shtainmets, William Stobbs, Astrid Walford and Jenny Williams.

Ruth Manning-Sanders: August 21, 1886/88 – October 12, 1988

https://www.schreibfrauen.at/

Bibliography and list of sources:

J. Howard Woolmer: A Checklist of the Hogarth Press. 1917–1946. Woolmer/Brotherson Ltd., Revere, Pennsylvania 1986

Virginia Woolf: Letters 1. 1888–1927. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2006

Virginia Woolf: Diaries 2, 1920–1924, S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1994

Nathalie Blondel: Mary Butts. Scenes from the Life. McPherson & Company, Kingston, New York 1998

Joan Manning Sanders. A Young Artist. With an introduction by Helen Ferris. The Junior Literary Guild, New York 1931 (Archive.org)

Melissa Hardie (Ed.): 100 Years in Newlyn: Diary of a Gallery. Hypatia Publications, 1995, p. 82 (Joan sends picture to RA)

William Murray: The English Circus, by Ruth Manning-Sanders. The Saturday Review , April 3, 1954, p. 14

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Manning-Sanders

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, Veronica Hurst: Sanders, Ruth Vernon Manning- (oxfordnb.com/view/article/58989)

www.modernistarchives.com/person/ruth-manning-sanders

www.papergreat.com/search/label/Ruth%20Manning-Sanders

www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/27/5#!/20575390

www.wilson-history.co.uk/html/rosaire_family.html

cornwallartists.org/cornwall-artists/joan-manning-sanders

savependarvesquoitgiantswoods.weebly.com/natural-thinking.html


 

Ruth Manning-Sanders - Publications (selection):

The Pedlar And Other Poems. Selwyn & Blount, London 1919 / archive.org

Karn. Hogarth Press, London 1922

Pages from the History of Zachy Trenoy - Sometime Laborer in the Hundred of Penwith. Christophers, London 1923

The Twelve Saints. Christopher's, London 1925

Martha Wish-You-Ill. Hogarth Press, London 1926

The City. Ernest Benn, London 1927

Waste Corner. Christopher's, London 1927

Selina Pennaluna. Christopher's, London 1927

Hucca's Moor. Faber & Gwyer, London 1929

The Crochet Woman. Faber & Faber, London 1930

The Growing Trees. Faber & Faber, London 1931

She was Sofia. Cobden-Sanderson, London 1932

Run Away. Cassell & Co., London 1934

Mermaid's Mirror. Cassell & Co., London 1935

The Girl who Made an Angel. Cassell & Co., London 1936

Children by the Sea. Collins, London 1938
 

Elephant: The Romance of Laura. Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York 1938

Luke's Circus. Collins, London 1939

Mystery at Penmarth. Illustration by Anne Bullen. Collins, London 1941

Circus: Book in Color Photography. Drawings by Patric O'Keeffe, Photographs by John Hinde, John Markham and W. Suschitzky. Collins, London 1947

The West of England. BT Batsford, London 1949

Swan of Denmark: The Story of Hans Christian Andersen. Heinemann, London 1949

Seaside England. BT Batsford, London 1951

The River Dart. Westaway Books, London 1951

The English Circus. Laurie, London 1952

Mr. Portal's Little Lions. Robert Hale, London 1952

The Golden Ball: A Novel of the Circus. Robert Hale, London 1954

Melissa. Robert Hale, London 1957

Peter and the Piskies: Cornish Folk and Fairy Tales. Oxford University Press, London 1958

A Bundle of Ballads. Oxford University Press, London 1959

Circus Boy. Oxford University Press, London 1960

Red Indian Folk and Fairy Tales. Oxford University Press, London 1960

Animal Stories. Oxford University Press, London 1961

Birds, Beasts, and Fishes. Oxford University Press, London 1962

The Smugglers. Oxford University Press, London 1962

The Red King and the Witch: Gypsy Folk and Fairy Tales. Oxford University Press, London 1964

Damian and the Dragon: Modern Greek Folk Tales. Oxford University Press, London 1965

The Crow's Nest. Antelope Books, Hamish Hamilton, London 1965

Slippery Shiney. Hamish Hamilton, London 1965

The Extraordinary Margaret Catchpole. Heinemann, London 1966

The Magic Squid. Methuen, London 1968

Stories from the English and Scottish Ballads. Heinemann, London 1968

The Glass Man and the Golden Bird: Hungarian Folk and Fairy Tales. Oxford University Press, London 1968

Jonnikin and the Flying Basket: French Folk and Fairy Tales. Oxford University Press, London 1969

The Spaniards are Coming! Heinemann, London 1969

Gianni and the Ogre. Methuen, London 1970

A Choice of Magic. Methuen, London 1971

The Three Witch Maidens. Methuen, London 1972

festivals. Heineman, London 1973

Stumpy: A Russian Tale. Methuen, London 1974

Grandad and the Magic Barrel. Methuen, London 1974

Old Dog Sirko: A Ukrainian Tale. Methuen, London 1974

Sir Green Hat and the Wizard. Methuen, London 1974

Tortoise Tales. Thomas Nelson, USA 1974

Ram and Goat. Methuen, London 1974

Young Gabby Goose. Methuen, London 1975

Scottish Folk Tales. Methuen, London 1976

Fox Tales. Methuen, London 1976

The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse: Aesop's Fable Retold. Angus & Robertson, London / Sydney 1977

Robin Hood and Little John. Methuen, London 1977

Old Witch Boneleg. Angus & Robertson, London / Sydney, 1978

The Cock and the Fox. Angus & Robertson, London / Sydney 1978

Boastful Rabbit. Methuen, London 1978

Folk and Fairy Tales. Methuen, London 1978

The Haunted Castle. Angus & Robertson, London / Sydney 1979

Robin Hood and the Gold Arrow. Methuen, London 1979

Oh really, rabbit! Methuen, London 1980

Hedgehog and Puppy Dog. Methuen, London 1982

Tales of Magic and Mystery. Methuen, London 1985

A Cauldron of Witches. Methuen, London 1988

Methuen Children Books: "A Book of ...." series:

A Book of Giants, 1962

A Book of Dwarfs, 1963

A Book of Dragons, 1964

A Book of Witches, 1965

A Book of Wizards, 1966

A Book of Mermaids, 1967

A Book of Ghosts and Goblins, 1968

A Book of Princes and Princesses, 1969

A Book of Magical Beasts, 1970 (Editor)

A Book of Devils and Demons, 1970

A Book of Charms and Changelings, 1971

A Book of Ogres and Trolls, 1972

A Book of Sorcerers and Spells, 1973

A Book of Magic Animals, 1974

A Book of Monsters, 1975

A Book of Enchantments and Curses, 1977

A Book of Kings and Queens, 1977

A Book of Marvels and Magic, 1978

A Book of Spooks and Specters, 1979

A Book of Cats and Creatures, 1981

A Book of Heroes and Heroines, 1982

A Book of Magic Adventures, 1983

A Book of Magic Horses, 1984