While she is invariable remembered today for her anti-slavery writings, Harriet Beecher Stowe also wrote a number of stories and novels of set in her native New England, including Oldtown Folks (1869). The quality of her work varies, but at her best, Stowe was an early and effective realist. Her settings are often accurately and detailedly described. Her portraits of local social life, particularly some of the minor characters, reflect an awareness of the complexity of the culture she lived in, and an ability to communicate that culture to others.
Editions: Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co., 1869.
Flora Annie Steel went to India as a young bride in 1868. Under conditions that sent many memsahibs home in shattered health, or killed them outright, she flourished. She travelled through the hill country, collecting folk-tales, which were eventually published as Tales of the Punjab: Told by the People (1894). She worked actively in the Indian communities, in roles as diverse as school inspector, nurse, 'doctress', and even Municipal Hall designer. She also published the definitive Complete Indian House-keeper and Cook (1890) as well as histories and novels of British India.
Editions: London & New York: Macmillan & Co., 1894.
In Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen refers to Belinda as "work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language." In this courtship novel, both the hero and the heroine have some growing up to do; neither is a paragon! But the greatest triumph of the author is the unhappily married Lady Delacour: cynical, witty, warm, and unforgettable.
Editions: Pandora Press 'Mothers of the Novel' Reprint edition.
At 37, Mary Edith Durham was the constant attendant of an invalid mother. Her doctor wisely prescribed that she "get right away, no matter where, so long as the change is complete" for two months a year. In 1900 she made her first tentative trip to the Balkans. Fascinated, she studied Balkan history and the Serbian language; made increasingly adventurous journeys to Serbia, Bosnia, and Albania; and began to write and speak about the area, its often violent people, and its tangled politics. Outside the Balkans she became increasingly respected as an ethnologist and anthropologist; for her war-time relief work in Scutari she was passionately hailed as the "The Queen of the Highlanders." It was a passion she returned throughout her life, an outspoken interpreter of the Balkan people.
Editions: London: Edward Arnold, 1909; Beacon Press reprint edition, 1987.
In 1788, an unknown woman stopped at a tavern, gave birth to a still-born child, and died. She was later discovered to be Elizabeth Whitman -- an unmarried woman who had been known and respected in Hartford society. Her fate became both a sensational story and a cautionary tale. But in Hannah Foster's retelling, it also becomes an examination of the constraints of marriage, and of the limited options available to women of Whitman's time. Although Whitman/Wharton sins and dies, we also see through the letters of other characters, that virtue is no guarantee of happiness.
Editions: Boston: Printed by Samuel Etheridge for E. Larkin, 1797. (First American edition.); New York: Oxford University Press, 1986 (reprint edition).
When Canadian feminist Nellie McClung moved to the Manitoba prairies, she was only a few years younger than her fictional character, Pearlie Watson. Pearl, at twelve, is the eldest girl in a poor Irish immigrant family with nine children. Through Pearl, we meet her family and her neighbors, as they deal with the harsh prairie winds -- and the winds of political and social change. A strong supporter of both the suffrage and temperance movements, McClung could nonetheless laugh at herself; her humor and spirit sparkle throughout the book, mixed with occasional pathos.
Editions: Copyright: 1908 by the Woman's Home Company; Copyright, 1908, by Doubleday, Page, & Company; Published New York: Grosset & Dunlap, March, 1908.
Alice Turner Curtis wrote several series for girls, emphasizing their "patriotism and daring". Each "Little Maid" book tells the story of a girl during the American Revolution. Ruth Pennell and Winifred Merrill live in Philadelphia, which was occupied for a time by General Howe and the British army. The little girls ardently admire the young French soldier, the Marquis de Lafayette, who assists the American cause. When Ruth overhears two British soldiers talking, she uses that information to play a part in the Revolutionary War of 1778.
Editions: Philadelphia: The Penn Publishing Company, 1919; Bedford, Mass.: Applewood Books, 1996.
Dorothy Osborne was 21 in 1648, when she met and fell in love with Sir William Temple. Both were from prominent Royalist families, neither of which approved of the match. Dorothy and William continued their courtship over the next seven years, mostly by letter. Dorothy uses these letters to negotiate their relationship and her position in their prospective marriage. She is witty, acerbic, and altogether charming. William became a diplomat and statesman; Dorothy was a fitting consort and confidante throughout their forty years of marriage.
Editions: London: J. M. Dent, & New York: E. P. Dutton, The Wayfarer's Library edition, n.d.
Anna Katherine Green is often credited as the first American woman writer of mystery fiction, even though Green's The Leavenworth Case (1878) appeared some years after Seeley Regester's The Dead Letter (1867). Regardless, Green was crucial in establishing many of the distinctive elements of the detective novel, including a focus on the detective, the importance of investigative and deductive work, use of legal expertise, and complex plot lines intended to heighten suspense. She published over three dozen mysteries with both male and female detectives, some of whom are now seen as classic types of the genre.
Editions: Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1903.
Anne Douglas Sedgwick's descriptions have great vividness and color, and convey a strong sense of immediate and direct experience. Her account of a Breton childhood is based on the memories of Sophie, "an old French friend." Born to a wealthy bourgeois father, and an aristocratic mother, the family life described is relaxed and lavish. Sophie's is a childhood in which the dinner table overflowed with rich foods, and an evening's walk might well be enlivened by a glimpse of gypsies with a dancing bear. In the background, we glimpse Breton peasant servants dealing with the mundane details of laundry and housework.
Editions: New York: The Century Company, 1919.
Leading radical feminist and abolitionist Elizabeth Cady Stanton recounts her experiences in this wonderful autobiography. Among other activities, she helped organize the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls (1848); found the National Woman's Suffrage Association (1859); write The History of Woman's Suffrage with Susan B. Anthony; and document sexism in religion in The Woman's Bible. She even ran for congress!
Editions: The original T. Fisher Unwin edition of 1898, OR New York: Schocken Books, 1971 or later (which is reprinted from the T. Fisher Unwin edition of 1898).
Mary Louisa Molesworth excelled in writing children's books of magical realism, in which everyday children wander from the familiar world into fairyland. Both worlds are described with conviction. The Tapestry Room is set in a house in Caen, where she lived from 1878-1880. Two cousins, a boy and a girl, wander through a tapestry and go adventuring in the castle and countryside it depicts.
Editions: First published in Edinburg, 1879. Illustrations by Walter Crane. Reissued, with the same pictures as in the original edition, for the Children's Classics, 1925.
Jo March, grown up and married, reigns over a circus of boys at Plumfield. Once Aunt March's house, the Bhaers have turned it into a school.
American writer Susan Coolidge is best remembered for her books about the irrepressible Carr family. Consisting of four girls and two boys, the Carrs are a considerable handful for their widowed father and their aunt Izzie. All too often, What Katy Did was to get into trouble – but she learns from her own painful experiences, and the examples of those who love her, that growing up means more than growing straight and tall.
Edition: Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1887, illustrated by Addie Ledyard.
Marguerite de Navarre played an important role in the development of the French Renaissance, as both a patron, and a writer of poetry, moral tales, and letters. The Heptameron, begun in the last decade of her life, is a collection of tales examining and critiquing the relations between the sexes. The threatening of women's honour by men's conduct is a major theme; also the ideals of true love (and marriage) founded "on God and honour". Beware: the world as Marguerite describes it is a wicked place!
Edition: London: Published for the Trade, n.d. 2 vols. in 1, illustrated, 21 cm. 183 p. (vol.1); 245 p. (vol.2) Translated by Walter K. Kelly, from L'Heptameron des Nouvelles de très haute et très illustre Princesse Marguerite D'Angoulême, Reine de Navarre. Nouvelle edition, publiée sur les manuscrits par la Société des Bibliophiles Français. A Paris, 1853.
Judging by the requests I get, Lucy Maud Montgomery is one of the best loved of women writers, vieing with Louisa May Alcott for the honour. For Montgomery fans, here is another collection of early work; short stories set in and around the green fields and silvery waters of Avonlea, Prince Edward Island.
This children's book has my all-time favorite title! The "Little Round Ball", as you might guess, is the earth; and the children who live on its different continents, in their different cultures, are the "Seven Little Sisters". All are children of the same god, whatever they may call him; however differently they may live. A charming introduction to cultural geography, from over a century ago.
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