JAEGER, Muriel

(c1893-?)

   UK writer who took an English degree at Oxford and was a minor member of a group of women writers including Winifred HOLTBY and Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957). Her first sf work, The Question Mark (1926),depicts a UTOPIAN UK of 200 years hence (as witnessed by a waker from a cataleptic trance; SLEEPER AWAKES) and shows strongly the influences of H. G. WELLS and William MORRIS. In The Man with Six Senses (1927) a weaklyyouth, endowed with unrefined ESP talents, is helped towards maturity by a sympathetic girlfriend; the promise of originality shown in this novel was never realized, perhaps because of discouraging sales. Hermes Speaks (1933) follows the consequences, in the worlds of POLITICS and ECONOMICS,of adherence to the prophecies of a fake medium. Retreat From Armageddon (1936), a peripheral future- WAR novel in which a group of people withdrawfrom the ensuing conflagration to a remote country house where they philosophize on Man's shortcomings, is notable for its advocacy of GENETIC ENGINEERING. It, too, met with little success, and MJ stopped writingfiction.

   JE

   About the author: Dangerous by Degrees: Women at Oxford and the Somerville College Novelists (1989) by Susan J. Leonardi.

   See also: LEISURE; SUPERMAN.