My class finished our discussion of East Angels last night. I was afraid they wouldn’t like the ending and would find the heroine rather contrived, but they did not. Having read The Portrait of a Lady first and understanding how Woolson was responding to and revising James in East Angels made it so much more meaningful and gave us a useful frame for…
Today I have been writing about Constance’s and Henry James’s visit to Stonehenge, in the autumn of 1884. It was so cold and blustery that they could barely speak to each other. On the way back to her lodgings in Salisbury, their carriage had to pull off the road and cower in a ditch for a half hour while the wind roared overhead.…
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,…