American-born Madge Macbeth (1878-1965) became a Canadian citizen after marrying Canadian engineer Charles William Macbeth. Charles died of tuberculosis in 1908, leaving Macbeth with two children. She lived the rest of her long life in Ottawa, where she parlayed her talent and her social connections into a successful literary career. A writer who circulated in the American and Canadian upper classes, friend to prime ministers and govenors-general, Macbeth fictionalized the politics of her class in The Land of Afternoon (1924) and The Kinder Bees (1935), and she wrote articles on diplomats, princesses, and debutantes for Canadian Courier and Mayfair magazines. Her world view combined the assertiveness of the New Woman with the tradition of maternal feminism. Macbeth moved between the private and public spheres - travelling around the world, supporting her family by writing, volunteering in several Canadian cultural organizations. A founding member of the Canadian Authors Association, Macbeth was also actively involved in the Canadian Women´s Press Club and the Ottawa Drama League. She was a prolific writer, authoring countless articles and short stories, two serialized novels, two memoirs, radio and stage drama, a history, and twenty novels.

    Macbeth´s fifth novel, Shackles, a pivotal work of early twentieth-century Canadian literature, recounts a vibrant period of first-wave feminism in Canada. First published in 1926, Shackles revovles around a middle-class Canadian woman, Naomi Lennox, and her search for acceptance and respect as a writer. Besides the protagonist´s struggle for the autonomy in which write Shackles portrays many of the major issues in Canadian public discourse of 1900-1930: the rise of the maternal feminist, the New Woman´s role in Canadian society, the conflict between free thinkers and the established churches, power relations in heterosexual unions, contradictions and tensions between domestic and public spaces, and appropriate roles for working- and middle-class women. This new edition of Madge Macbeth´s controversial novel includes an overview of her life and work in the Introduction, Explanatory Notes, a Bibliography, reviews of the first edition, and three key articles by Macbeth.