Yesterday was Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Woolson never visited New Orleans, which is a shame. She wrote such amazing stories about post-Reconstruction Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. I would love to see what her keen, sympathetic eye would have seen in 1870s New Orleans. She noted many times how foreign Florida, in particular, seemed. How foreign would New Orleans have been! Woolson…
Most photographs of Woolson were taken with her turned away from the camera. She was exceptionally self-conscious about her appearance. But she was no George Eliot. No one ever reported that she was unattractive. All images of her indicate that she had a pleasant appearance. That she didn’t like her own looks is understandable, though. How many women have felt the same way? What…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6ZnjOMsND-I I was just reading a letter in which Woolson writes about walking every afternoon through the streets of Florence or up the hillsides surrounding the city. And as she walked, she heard the church bells ringing out Ave Maria. So I did a google search and found this video. She loved the way the church bells in Italy swung out from side…
When I was in Rome last fall, I visited the Non-Catholic Cemetery where Constance is buried. The Protestant Cemetery, as it was known in the nineteenth century, is the resting place of two of the most famous writers of all time: Keats and Shelley. Although Woolson died in Venice, had lived longest in Florence, and hadn’t visited Rome for over ten years, she…
Yesterday, 119 years ago, Woolson died. The news appeared all over the U.S. and Britain, as well as in Italy, that she had fallen to her death in Venice. After a couple of days, the news began to circulate that she had not fallen but jumped. Her family rushed into print with an account from a cousin who had rushed to the scene,…
I am teaching a course this semester on “Henry James and the Women Who Influenced Him.” We’ll be looking at Minnie Temple, Woolson, and Edith Wharton, and reading quite a bit of biography alongside the fiction and critical works. So we started the semester last week with two essays on the pitfalls and virtues of biographical criticism. What does it mean to read…
In 1878, Woolson wrote a poem called “To Certain Biographers” in which she condemned the vogue of tell-all biographies that exposed famous men’s vices and weaknesses. She wrote, We give you Scanty thanks for all your labors; yes, Doubtless ye write truth, for barren places Are upon the mountains; none the less Are they mountains, and their silent grandeur Scorns your petty skill,…
The picture I chose for this blog masthead is the view from Woolson’s villa where she lived for three years in the late 1880s. Can you imagine waking up to that view every day? I took the picture last October. I was in Florence visiting some of the galleries and other sites Woolson loved. One afternoon (when it finally stopped raining), I took…
First things first. Who was Constance Fenimore Woolson? Maybe you have heard of the story "Miss Grief." Maybe you have heard about her close friendship with Henry James. Maybe you read something once about how she committed suicide in Venice in 1894. In any case, if you have heard of her, you're probably thinking, didn't she have a tragic life? Wasn't she some…