Back to revising chapter one. I have already cut out 600 words--no small feat. But there is one piece that could never be removed. Although Constance was only weeks old when it happened, it would shape the rest of her life. Here is how I describe it: Only two days after Constance’s birth, her five older sisters came down with fevers, and ominous…
I am happy to report that my biography of Woolson has found a publisher. Here is the announcement that appeared in Publisher’s Marketplace: Professor at University of New Orleans Anne Boyd Rioux's PORTRAIT OF A LADY NOVELIST, the first biography of Constance Fenimore Woolson, a critically acclaimed 19th century American writer who served as the model for her friend Henry James's "Portrait of…
In a class I am teaching this semester--“Mad Geniuses and Scribblers: Portrayals of the Author in Nineteenth-Century America”--we read some samples of the criticism that was directed at women who ventured into print in the 1850s, beginning with Hawthorne’s famous diatribe against the “damned mob of scribbling women.” I noticed that many of the female students seemed to be squirming in their seats…
It hasn't been easy to keep Woolson in my life since I returned to teaching this fall. I've taught her stories "Miss Grief" and "Jeannette" in my American Literature Survey class. But presenting a paper at the South Central Modern Language Association conference here in New Orleans last week gave me the opportunity (or should I say made me make the time) to…
After a year and half off from teaching to write, I am now back in the classroom and find myself morphing from my writer self to that other professional identity: English Professor. I worked so hard for so many years to be a good teacher and successful professor, to get the tenure-track job, to get tenure, to get promotion, to get the scholarly…
Recently, my mom stayed with us so that I could get some writing done. We joked that she would be my “wife” for a week, and she was more or less. She kept the kitchen clean and my daughter fed and occupied while I worked from 6:00 am until lunchtime. When she left, I missed her. Not just because the dishes began to…
I wrote a couple of months ago about searching for an appropriate way to end Woolson’s biography, so I should be done with the manuscript, right? Not exactly. This summer, I have reached a new stage in my writing that is anything but the end. In some ways it feels like starting over. But really it is all just part of the process,…
On a recent trip to New York I had another close encounter with Woolson when I least expected it. On my trip to England and Italy, I was specifically in search of her, and at three precise moments I felt very close to her, as if I had come upon her in the real world, and not merely in the pages of her…
As I revisit the beginning of my book and consider what makes the best sort of biographical opening, a friend suggests to me that maybe when you’re writing about a woman’s life, the family part is more important than if you were writing about a man. This has sent me back to Carolyn Heilbrun’s Writing a Woman’s Life, first published in 1988, and…
Where should a biography begin? Now that I am in the revision stage, more or less, I’ve gone back the start of it all, which I haven’t seen in two years. Typically a life story starts with birth and a discussion of the subject’s antecedents, particularly the parents and their lineages. Rather boring stuff, usually. Yet a certain degree of family history is…