What’s the worst review you ever got? Woolson’s was a doozy.
At the beginning of Woolson's career, she wrote to William Dean Howells that the “critics seem to hold my very life in their hands.” She could not sleep after reading her reviews. In September 1874, she must have laid awake for nights after reading The Nation’s review of two of her stories just published. Without the support of Howells and other elite male writers,…