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…
The BBC has 10 books it would like you to consider reading this month. I couldn't be more thrilled that one of them is mine: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160129-ten-books-to-read-in-february. It was a happy night last night when I opened my Facebook and Twitter accounts to see a flurry of posts and tweets spreading the news, courtesy of the article's author, Jane Ciabattari. Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist will…