Lesley McDowell - Editor
Lesley McDowell is the author of fiction, non-fiction, and short stories, and was formerly a literary critic for major newspapers.
Lesley has four published novels, The Picnic (Black & White Publishing), Unfashioned Creatures (Saraband), Clairmont (Wildfire) and Love and Other Poisons (Wildfire 2025), as well as a work of non-fiction, Between the Sheets: The Literary Liaisons of Nine 20th Century Women Writers (Overlook Duckworth 2010).
She is the recipient of three Creative Scotland awards, a Society of Authors grant, and was Writer in Residence at Gladstone’s Library in 2014. She has also been a judge for several literary awards, and chairs regularly at book festivals.
Prior to working as an editorial consultant, Lesley worked for many years as a literary critic, reviewing regularly for The Independent on Sunday, The Sunday Herald, the Scotsman, The Times Literary Supplement, and others.
You can find her on X at @LesleyMcDowell1, or on Instagram at lesleywrites.
If you’d like to work with Lesley, get in touch with our Writer Support team; tell us about your book and what you’d like support with, and we’ll help you identify your next steps.
Testimonials
- Susan M.
- R. Webster
- C. Bentley
- Christopher E.
- Paul H.
- Carolyn T.
- Chris S.
- David S.
- Julia O.
- Jim O'S.
Why we love Lesley
Lesley is our go-to editor for anything historical or women’s fiction. She enjoys working across historical periods, – whether your novel is set in BC or AD she might be the editor for you! Her knowledge of the market and publishing as a business shines in every report she does, as does her enthusiasm for the art of storytelling.
What Lesley says about editing
Having worked for twenty years as a literary critic and been solely concerned with the published, finished product, it’s a real delight to focus on the other end of novel writing – the stage where writers are finding out who they are and what kind of stories they want to tell, and helping them realise their goals. There are few things more exciting than reading a manuscript with real potential, and seeing through to recommendation to an agent publisher.
Because I did spend so much time professionally at the finished ‘end’, I have a good idea of what the market wants, and is prepared to feature in newspapers and magazines. I’d like to think I can see that finished product, which is important when you’re starting out – you want to be able to fix the small things, but you need an accurate vision of the final product, too.
My favourite topics are women-centred stories, preferably from the past. I like experimental work, too, but am equally happy with traditional novel forms. My favourite writers are Joyce Carol Oates, Shirley Jackson, and Marina Warner, but I also like crossover genres like literary crime, like Megan Abbott.
What Lesley works on
Manuscript Assessment
Developmental Editing
Agent Submission Pack assessment
Opening Section Review
Genres Lesley specialises in
Lesley's published books
Unfashioned Creatures
‘Monstrously good’ – Louise Welsh. A Fiction Hot Pick 2014 selection for The Literary Sofa. London, 1823. Mary Shelley’s real-life friend Isabella Baxter Booth is ‘disturbed in her reason’ – seeing ghosts and dependent on narcotics to escape a hellish life with an increasingly violent, deranged husband. Fearful of her own murderous impulses towards him, Isabella flees for her childhood home in Scotland, where she meets an ambitious young doctor, Alexander Balfour. He will stop at nothing to establish a reputation as a genius in the emerging science of psychiatry and he believes that Isabella could be the key to his greatness. But as his own torments threaten to overwhelm Alexander, is he really the best judge of which way madness lies?
The Picnic
One day in 1973, a woman mysteriously vanishes from a family picnic while on holiday in Toronto. The multilayered narrative of ‘The Picnic’ explores the effect this has on her daughter and granddaughter, who return home to Scotland without her.
Between the Sheets
Why did a gifted writer like Sylvia Plath stumble into a marriage that drove her to suicide? Why did Hilda Doolittle want to marry Ezra Pound when she was attracted to women? Why did Simone De Beauvoir pimp for Jean-Paul Satre? The list of the damages done in each of these sexual relationships between female writers and their male literary partners is long, but each relationship provokes the same question: would these women have become the writers they became without the experience of their own particular literary relationship?
Focusing on the diaries, letters, and journals of each woman, ‘Between the Sheets’ explores nine famous literary liaisons of the twentiety century. Lesley McDowell examines the extent to which each woman was prepared to put artistic ambition before personal happiness, and how dependent on their male writing partners these women felt themselves to be…
Clairmont
‘Beautifully written, Clairmont tells the sensuous hidden story of an influential historic woman.’ Sara Sheridan, author of The Fair Botanists Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year
‘An absorbing, intoxicating page-turner about a woman who deserves to be remembered.’ Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne and Atalanta
‘Riveting – a clever portrait of a fascinating, flawed heroine.’ Sunday Times
‘An intimate and enlightening tale of one of Romanticism’s forsaken muses – an artfully told story that lingers in the mind far beyond the last page’ Susan Stokes-Chapman, author of Pandora
1816. A massive volcanic eruption has caused the worst storms that Europe has seen in decades, yet Percy and Mary Shelley have chosen to visit the infamous Lord Byron at his villa on Lake Geneva. It wasn’t their idea: Mary’s eighteen year old step-sister, Claire Clairmont, insisted.
But the reason for Claire’s visit is more pressing than a summer escape with the most famous writers in the world. She’s pregnant with Byron’s child – a child Byron doesn’t want, and scarcely believes is his own.
Claire has the world in her grasp. This trip should have given her everything she ever dreamed of. But within days, her life will be in ruins.
History has all but forgotten her story – but she will not be silenced.
Love and Other Poisons
1857, Glasgow.
A young socialite named Madeleine Smith stands accused of murdering her lover. Thousands wait outside the court to hear the result. The scandalous nature of the affair, detailed explicitly in letters published in newspapers across the world, has made her case a worldwide sensation. But when the jury find themselves unable to decide whether she is guilty, they render a verdict of ‘Not Proven’ – and Madeleine is freed.
1927, New York.
Harry Townsend, a handsome Hollywood film scout believes he has found the woman once known as Madeleine Smith. He wants to tell her story on film for the new ‘talkie’ generation. Since her trial she has lived under many names, as a glamourous society hostess in bohemian Bloomsbury to the likes of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, George Bernard Shaw and William Morris. Until suddenly, in 1890, when she disappeared off the face of the earth.
Could this quiet, secretive widow of an Irish labourer be the same Madeleine Smith who once stood trial for murder and escaped?
She has one last secret to reveal. Will Harry persuade her to tell it?
