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…
We live in an age of self-promotion: twitter, facebook--need I add blogging? A blog post by Nancy K. Miller about how Emily Dickinson might feel about our era’s publicity-consciousness got me thinking about how Woolson felt about her own literary celebrity. She loved it and hated it at the same time. She wanted recognition, but she didn’t want to ask for it and…
Woolson decided to end her life when she was fifty-three, almost fifty-four, years of age. Her last year was full of pain and worry about how she would financially and physically manage to maintain her independence. It is easy to see that there was a complex set of reasons she chose to end her life. But was it a “choice”? I have been…
Today I wrote the words that brought Woolson’s life to an end. There is still much to say about her death and its aftermath, as well as her legacy. But to type the following sentences today was deeply moving: “When the nurse returned a second time, the window was wide open. (It had been tightly closed with curtains drawn when Miss Holas had…
One of Woolson’s close friends was John Hay, a famous man in his day who has been largely forgotten in ours. A new biography of him has just been published by Simon & Shuster. The author, John Taliaferro, contacted me a while looking for a good portrait of Woolson, and he was kind enough to have an advance copy of the book sent…
I sit at my desk today, the sun shining on the banana trees outside my window, and think of Venice. I am now writing about Woolson’s last year of life. She got up at 4:30 in the morning to write. (I’m only getting up at 5:30.) She wrote until 4:00, after which she bathed in the Lido. In the evenings her gondolier (the…
Today some of Woolson’s observations on Saturdays in New York, when the ladies are out in force . . . Saturday in New York is a marked day, possessing such peculiar characteristics that any one could detect it by a glance at the streets even though just awakened from weeks of sickness with no idea of time or place. Let no one suppose,…
Then as now New York was known for its art exhibitions. What follows are Woolson’s reactions to the art world of 1871. Not particularly trained in art history or criticism, she tended to react personally—and humorously—to paintings. She knew what she liked . . . The Academy of Design, opposite the magnificent building of the Young Men’s Christian Association on Twenty-third street, is…
Woolson loved to find those places in America that revealed traces of a forgotten past. As Henry James said of her, “She stays at home, and yet gives us a sense of being ‘abroad’; she has a remarkable faculty of making the New World seem ancient.” She particularly liked old church yards, whose gravestones were intriguing remnants of a world long vanished. In…