The back cover copy for Miss Grief and Other Stories is here: Discover the fiction of a writer once deemed America’s “Novelist Laureate.” Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840-94) was considered one of the best writers of her generation. She depicted with precise realism and great empathy a broad landscape of Americans and their ways, from the people of the rural Midwest and deep South…
Last weekend in Washington, D.C., 22 Woolson scholars—or Woolites (as we call ourselves)—gathered to share their research and celebrate the Woolson Society’s twentieth anniversary. Twenty-two participants may not sound like much, but their energy and enthusiasm far exceed their numbers. As the conference organizer, I had my share of worries, but they faded in the midst of so much conviviality and strong scholarship.…
By the time Constance Fenimore Woolson ended her life at the age of fifty-four, she complained that her entire right side was deformed from writing for nine to ten hours a day. Over the years she had learned to use a stand-up desk and write with her pen between her third and fourth fingers. And she had endured countless remedies, including electrotherapy. By…
Day one of the final revisions is here. Finally, a whole day without grading, prepping for classes, or writing letters of recommendations has materialized. I have cleared my desk, leaving only my computer, a lamp, a glass of water, a framed portrait of Woolson, and the manuscript with my editor’s comments. (I’m ignoring the stacks of papers and piles of books crowding my…
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…
Perhaps I shouldn’t be shocked, but I was when I read the Washington Post’s review of Karen Abbott’s new book, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy, about four women who participated in the Civil War. Jonathan Yardley compares what he sees as the book’s troubling passages to writing “borrowed from the pages of a women’s magazine.” Apparently, women’s magazines are full of writing that he…
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…
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,…