Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins was one of the first African Americans to publish a story with mystery and detection elements. The question of identity is crucial throughout this fast-paced melodrama, and almost no one is who or what they seem. Racial identity is shown as the underpining to personal identity; and whether someone is black or white utterly changes lives. The Negro maid, Venus Johnson, who does most of the actual detecting in the latter part of the book, is the earliest known black detective in fiction. Hopkins stresses Johnson's courage, resourcefulness, and above all, her intelligence.
Margaret Oliphant and her protagonist Kirsteen had a number of experiences in common: the main one being that they each worked hard and supported other family members with little appreciation. Kirsteen's options, as a Scotswoman from an old but poor family, appear to be unpaid drudgery at home, or a loveless marriage. Rejecting both, Kirsteen escapes to London where she becomes, not Cinderella, but Cinderella's dressmaker. Though looked down upon by her family for choosing to work, and 'not having a man', Kirsteen becomes independent and financially stable in the life she makes for herself. Kirsteen is a startlingly modern novel in its treatment of women and work.
In the fall of 1909, Lady Constance Lytton, a militant suffragist, was arrested for throwing a stone wrapped in a paper pamphlet at a politician's car. Sentenced to one month in prison, she was freed after two days due to a heart condition. She believed that she had received preferential treatment because of her rank; arrested again, she gave the working-class pseudonym "Jane Warton". She was imprisoned for two weeks and force fed 8 times before her real identity was discovered. Her health was seriously damaged during her imprisonment; while still a young woman, she suffered a severe heart attack and partial paralysis. This is her personal account of her experiences, a passionate appeal for both women suffrage and prison reform. She dedicates it to all prisoners, to whom she sends this message: "Lay hold of your inward self and keep tight hold. Reverence yourself. Be just, kind and forgiving to yourself."
In 1918 Elizabeth DeHuff, wife of the Santa Fe Indian School superintendent, invited homesick boarding school students to paint pictures of ritual dances. Illustrations by two of those boys were used in this collection of Pueblo Indian folk tales, published by DeHuff in 1922. Fred Kabotie, Hopi (1900-1986) and Otis Polelonema, Hopi (1902-1981) are now accounted two of the best young Pueblo artists of that era.
On January 16, 1893, four boatloads of United States Marines armed with Gatling guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition came ashore in Honolulu, capital of the independent Kingdom of Hawaii. The following day, the Queen of Hawaii, Lili'uokalani, surrendered at gunpoint, yielding her throne to the government of the United States. Hawaii was recognized as part of the United States in 1898 by President William McKinley. This is Lili'uokalani's account of what happened.
A light look at the first world war. With one last leave coming before his platoon is sent to war, the young protagonist longs for romance and loses his trousers. Nothing like a light-hearted bit of fluff... with a few spies thrown in for good measure!
A frail invalid at home in England, Isabella Bird became an avid and intrepid traveler abroad. The trips she made, to far-flung little-known locations, were often dangerous and demanding. In the Golden Chersonese, as the Malay Peninsula was then known, she faced draining heat, voracious insects, and dangerous outlaws with hardly a qualm, but found traveling with other ladies to be a severe trial! Her letters home, to family and friends, became the basis for her travel books.
Becoming a parent introduces one to a whole new genre: advice books written for parents. These are not unique to modern publishing! Before becoming notorious for her writings on the abolition of slavery, and the position of women, Lydia Maria Child won popularity and respectability in the United States by editing the nation's first children's magazine and publishing two best-selling domestic advice books. In The Mother's Book Child recommends principles and practices for the moral education and formation of character of children, from babyhood to young womanhood. Her writing is extremely readability and notable for its good sense: many of her recommendations are just as applicable in today's computer age as when she put her pen to rag-paper.
In 1909, Swedish writer Selma Lagerlof was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature "because of the noble idealism, the wealth of fancy and the spiritual quality that characterize her works." The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and its continuation Further Adventures of Nils weave information about the geography, folk-lore, and natural world of Sweden into the hilarious tale of a bad boy who is enchanted to the size of a thumb, and whisked off on the back of a goose!
Florence Nightingale is known world-wide for revolutionizing the field of nursing. Her Notes on Nursing was intended for two audiences: the barely established "professional" nurse found in the war zone or hospital, and the ubiquitous family members -- mothers, sisters, wives -- who were the first and often only line of defense against disease and death in the home. Mechanisms of disease transmission were not yet well understood. Nightingale draws attention to the patients' needs for light, fresh air, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and good diet. She is refreshing, stimulating and outspoken. Above all, she is concerned for her patients.
Francis Marion Beynon was a progressive journalist in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. She campaigned for women's suffrage, and was an outspoken pacifist during World War I. Neither was a popular political position. Her novel Aleta Dey is heavily autobiographical. Aleta constantly questions not only authority, but the basis and certainty of her own convictions. In part because of this, her friendships include an ardent socialist, even as she loves a vehement Tory. For Aleta, it is not the positions they take that are most important, but rather the intellectual and emotional honesty with which they make choices. A fundamental underlying respect for the right of others to make their own judgements enables her to love others even when they differ, concluding "We've gone through this content with the will for righteousness, and leaving each the other one to choose his path."
Lillian Wylas was first woman to join the CID at Scotland Yard, in 1920, working her way up from a sergeant's position. But truth lagged behind fiction: in 1910, Baroness Orczy's fictional "Lady Molly" was already a valuable asset to the detective force. She was much too gifted a detective to be out walking a beat; she and her devoted assistant Mary were assigned to solve the most mysterious of crimes in gaslight London and the English countryside.
The Icelandic were renowned for years for the richness of their oral tradition of stories and sagas. If you like "stories of kings, and of battles, and of ship-sailing" then you'll enjoy this lavishly illustrated little collection for children.
The Camp Fire Girls organization celebrated their 90th Anniversary in 2000. But when I read this book as a kid, I had no idea they were a real group. The book appealed to me because the girls in it knew how to do all sorts of interesting things, like canoeing and building fires, and because they were loyal to each other through all sorts of difficulties.
Anzia Yezierska emigrated to America from Russian Poland around age ten. Her family settled in New York's lower east side, along with many other Jewish families. For years she struggled to gain an education and to establish herself as a writer. Her short stories unforgetably chronicle the immigrant ghetto and the immigrants' dreams.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman is an important figure in the early history of women's rights. In this classic feminist work, she examines the role and status of women at the turn of the last century. She argues that women's dependence on men for their livelihood restricts their intellectual and emotional development, harming both sexes.
Rudyard Kipling paid tribute to Juliana Horatia Ewing's novel Six to Sixteen, as "a history of real people and real things." Margery's early life in India before her parents die, is reminiscent of another fictional orphan, "Sara Crewe". But Margery is luckier in the kindness of the relatives and friends in whose care she is left. By describing her experiences in several very different families, Juliana Ewing contrasts ways of raising young women. Margery and her close friend Eleanor are realistically drawn. They are portrayed with sensitivity to time, place, and personality. Details of their daily life, education, and chosen activities are closely based on Juliana's own childhood.
Fanny Inglis was an accomplished American lady when she met diplomat Don Angel Calderon de la Barca. A few months after their marriage in 1838, he was appointed the first Spanish envoy to the young Republic of Mexico. Fanny and her husband spent the next two and a half years there. Fanny wrote almost daily letters home describing their social life and travels, not to mention the two Mexican revolutions that occurred during their stay! After their return to the United States, her letters were collected and published.
When she took the extreme and socially disastrous step of leaving her feckless husband, Charlotte Smith was responsible for the care of eight of her ten children. She proceeded to maintain them, and herself, by writing books. She began with several successful romances, but increasingly incorporated revolutionary political themes as well as some painful realism into her works. She was accused of destroying the fabric of society for describing marriage across classes in The Old Manor House.
Cornelia Meigs broke new ground with her historical children's novel, Master Simon's Garden, in 1916. The story covers three generations, from an early Puritan settlement to Revolutionary times, and vividly illustrates the principles of freedom, tolerance, and love for one's fellow-man through the exciting events of the characters' lives. Meigs was later a three-time Newbery Honor nominee, beginning in 1922, the year the award was established.
Jean Ingelow was a well-known Victorian poet, novelist, and children's writer. Mopsa the Fairy is a delightful, imaginative fantasy. Jack, out walking with his nurse, finds a nest of fairies in an old thorn tree. Pocketing them, he is carried off to Fairyland by an albatross. It promises to take him home again when he calls for it... but he forgets its name! He and little Mopsa, his fairy charge, have all sorts of adventures in Fairyland.
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