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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