Born September 4: Mary Renault

After receiving her degree from Oxford in 1928, Mary Renault became a nurse in Bristol, aiding soldiers injured at Dunkirk and later assisting in the brain surgery ward, leading to her first novel, Purposes of Love (1939), set in a contemporary hospital. She knew the subject well, having fallen in love with another nurse, Julie Mullard, who would be her life partner for fifty years. Renault’s first five novels each had contemporary settings and vaguely or overtly lesbian themes, the strongest are in her third novel, The Friendly Young Ladies (1943). Her fourth won her $150,000 from MGM, which Renault and Mullard used to leave the repressive, post-war, antigay atmosphere of England for the relative freedom of South Africa. (They participated in many Black Sash events, for white women against apartheid, begun in 1955.) Established there, Renault wrote The Charioteer (1953), her first novel with a male protagonist, a gay WWII soldier who discovers that his hidden love for an older former schoolmate is returned. Her artistic breakthrough came with her next novel, again with a gay male protagonist, but set in the more open world of Ancient Greece, which would be her hallmark for the rest of her writing career, in seven additional novels, a biography, and a study of the Persian Wars. Two of those novels tell the life story of Theseus, who in Greek mythology killed the Minotaur thanks to Ariadne’s help, and three other novels cover the life of Alexander the Great, including one narrated by his lover Bagoas, The Persian Boy (1972), her most praised work. It ranks 32nd on Publishing Triangle's list of the 100 best lgbt novels. In 2010, Renault was shortlisted for the Lost Booker prize for her 1970 novel about bisexual Alexander the Great, Fire from Heaven. (The award was given to another historical novel, J.G. Farrell's Troubles, about Ireland after WWI.)

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