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…
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 folks over at The Classics Club recommend beginning the Women's Classic Event (I sort like the idea of calling it a "Challenge") by answering some questions about yourself. So here goes . . . Introduce yourself. Tell us what you are most looking forward to in this event. I teach American literature at the university level and my research interests are particularly…
I have been trying for some time to articulate what I see as an important missing link to discussions about how to improve women's status in the literary world--namely, improving their profile in our understanding of the literary past. If students come out of college with little exposure to women writers, as they continue to do in large numbers, then it is no wonder they have a…
Samantha Ellis's How To Be a Heroine brought up all kinds of issues for me about how and why women read fiction. My review of it is now up at The Rumpus. "Why do we read? Besides entertainment and escape, intellectual stimulation, and exposure to a world beyond our limited experience, one of the most fundamental reasons is to gain a perspective on our own…
Last week I was in New York for 3 glorious days. Two of those were spent at BinderCon, the first Out of the Binders conference for women writers. (The name is inspired by Mitt Romney’s clueless comments about binders full of women in the 2012 presidential campaign.) Speakers included Jill Abramson, formerly of the New York Times, Anna Holmes, formerly of Jezebel, and…
Publishing online is a quite an experience for an academic. Last week I published two pieces—one I had written a couple of months ago, the other I had written very recently. The first, a review of recent biographies about J. D. Salinger and Harper Lee at the Los Angeles Review of Books, was part of my larger goal of building a reputation as…