It's the last day of 2016 and so naturally a time to reflect on the year that has been. 2016 was a year of ups and downs, both personally and nationally. But I'll stick here with the personal. (We've all had enough of the national political scene, I'm sure.) 2016 started with the frenzy of promoting my books Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a…
I feel bad that I haven't been blogging as much this year. I've been putting my energies into writing my next book, The Story of Little Women, and keeping in touch with readers via my newsletter, "The Bluestocking Bulletin." I'm happy to say that I am in the final stretch of the rough draft of the manuscript (there will still be lots of revision to come)…
I had a fabulous weekend in San Francisco at the American Literature Association conference (more about that in a moment). The highlight of my trip was getting to see and hold in my hand the letters that Constance Fenimore Woolson wrote to Francis Boott in the late 1880s and early 90s. If you have read the biography, then you know how central her relationship…
It's been almost three weeks in the U.S. since the biography and stories came out. Next week they come out in the UK. In advance of the UK publication, W.W. Norton UK has put up an excerpt of the biography. You can read the prologue and get a sense of the book. (The links there are for UK readers to purchase the…
Constance Fenimore Woolson was born on this day in 1840. I can't imagine a better birthday present for her than her picture on the cover of The New York Times Book Review! Although she was squeamish during her life about her picture appearing in print, I think she would be happy to know now that she is being remembered. The full review…
It has been an amazing publication day for Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist and Miss Grief and Other Stories. Reviews appeared today on the websites of The New Yorker and The New York Times. The latter review will appear on the cover of this week’s New York Times Book Review next to a review of Elaine Showalter’s new biography of…
Yesterday afternoon my first article for The Toast went live. What a great experience! The shares on Facebook are nearing 900. And the comments are so lively and nice. Thank you Toast readers! The title is: Eight Classic Female Bildungsromane You Should Know About If You Don’t Already It begins: The female Bildungsroman (or novel of development) is, in some ways, a contradiction…
The publication date is supposed to be Feb. 29 for both Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist and Miss Grief and Other Stories. However, it seems both books are being shipped now. Amazon shows them as ready to ship. Those who have pre-ordered them are starting to get emails saying they have been shipped. And the first sighting in a book store happened yesterday…
Each month I will feature a little-known woman writer of the past in my newsletter, which I have retitled "The Bluestocking Bulletin." Check it out here and, if you like it, you can subscribe at the bottom. This first issue features the writer Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789-1867), who was a famous early American novelist (as famous as James Fenimore Cooper, but sadly forgotten).…
Today my review of Lady Byron and Her Daughters, by Julia Markus, appeared at the Los Angeles Review of Books. In it I address what it means to write the biography of a woman overshadowed by a famous man. "Writers of such biographies face the challenge of convincing readers that their subjects deserve biographical treatment for their own sake, not simply because they were the…