No one introduced me to Woolson. I didn’t discover her writings in a class in college or in graduate school. I didn’t stumble upon an essay about her or find her buried in a footnote somewhere. My first encounter with her was altogether different. You could call it a fluke or maybe fate. I was a graduate student with a burning desire to know…
I’ve been in my writing cocoon for a while now. But I am happy to say that a full draft of the manuscript of my Woolson biography is complete and now in the hands of my brilliant editor, Amy Cherry at Norton. I feel an odd mixture of relief and trepidation. A tremendous weight has lifted, but I also know that there is…
My review of Rebecca Mead's My Life in Middlemarch was published last week on Electric Literature's blog, The Outlet. This is my first foray into non-academic reviewing. I had a lot of fun doing it and can't wait to do more. This book was particularly interesting because Woolson was a big fan of George Eliot's. I believe Eliot was her first and most lasting…
A recent piece in the Atlantic argues that women writers’ lack of all-supporting, all-sacrificing spouses—in the vein of Vera Nabokov—may be a missing link to help explain the lack of gender parity in the literary world today. Vera was the kind of wife who not only took care of all of the details of her family’s life (including doing all the driving—Vladimir never…
At the beginning of Woolson's career, she wrote to William Dean Howells that the “critics seem to hold my very life in their hands.” She could not sleep after reading her reviews. In September 1874, she must have laid awake for nights after reading The Nation’s review of two of her stories just published. Without the support of Howells and other elite male writers,…
Inspired by the class I taught last semester and some of the writing that came out of it on this blog, I wrote a piece for VIDA that they have just published on their website: Women’s Citizenship in the “Republic of Letters” One-Hundred and Thirty Years Ago and Today. VIDA conducts an increasingly widely publicized count of women's writings and reviews of their works in…
I have been reading Rebecca Mead's new book, My Life in Middlemarch, and thinking more about what drew Woolson to George Eliot, one of her favorite authors. When she began her career, Eliot was the most revered female author, so it was natural for her to be inspired by her. In fact, Woolson’s works were often compared to Eliot’s. The Century, for instance,…
The working title for my biography of Woolson obviously refers to Henry James’s now-classic novel. Let me explain why I chose it. After reading The Portrait of a Lady, Woolson wrote to the author about his heroine, Isabel Archer, “With no character of yours have I ever felt myself so much in sympathy.” She experienced with Isabel “a perfect . . . comprehension,…
Further thoughts about Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Constance Fenimore Woolson: One of my favorite passages from Woolf’s extended essay is: One must have been something of a firebrand to say to oneself, ‘Oh, but they [men] can’t buy literature too.’ Literature is open to everybody. . . . Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no…
The grading is done, the semester is over, and the manuscript beckons. As my mind tries to find its way back into the book, I have been re-reading Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. I have copied down so many passages that have made me reflect on Woolson’s life and work. I wonder if Woolf would have thought any differently about the…