Last week in my “Forgotten Books” class we read some stories from Kay Boyle’s The White Horses of Vienna and Other Stories. The title story dominated our discussion. (See the end for where to find "The White Horses of Vienna.") It was published in Harper’s magazine in 1935 and won the O. Henry Award for best story that year. Today it’s a rather…
My students and I just read this book in my Forgotten Books class. They weren't thrilled by it, but I thought it was fascinating, a peek into another "lost generation" that the myth of Paris in the 20s has obscured. Their biggest complaint (and mine) is that McAlmon's chapters are a lot of name-dropping and bar-hopping without much introspection. Boyle's chapters, on the…
I had one of those "A-ha" moments in my "Literature of War" class this week (and I don't mean the band). Light bulbs were going off---for me anyway. We've been talking a lot about the stories and histories that have been forgotten or suppressed. This week it started with no one in the class knowing the work of Katherine Anne Porter. That happens…
Last night my Little Women reading group and I met to watch the first episode of the PBS Masterpiece Little Women. It was wonderful to see them (my friends and the March sisters) again. My reading group had meet several times in 2016, while I was writing my book on Little Women, to discuss the novel and its two successors. They had all…
It has been lovely to hear from the first readers of Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters, which will come out Aug. 21. Because I had to produce the book so quickly in order to get it published for the 150th anniversary of Little Women on September 29, 2018, very few people had read it before it…
It's been almost three weeks in the U.S. since the biography and stories came out. Next week they come out in the UK. In advance of the UK publication, W.W. Norton UK has put up an excerpt of the biography. You can read the prologue and get a sense of the book. (The links there are for UK readers to purchase the…
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).…