It’s incredible (and sad) that we’re still grappling with the same issues presented in these five 1920s novels by women writers. Four of them fell out of print and were rediscovered and reissued decades later; one has never gone out of print. It’s wonderful that all are available in fresh new or recent editions.

In these reissues, fascinating new introductions, forewords, or afterwords re-introduce these writers aren’t known enough and/or shouldn’t have been forgotten in the first place: Ursula Parrott, Radclyffe Hall, Anzia Yezierska, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and Dorothy Canfield Fisher.

As Edna St. Vincent Millay famously wrote, it’s not one damn thing after another, it’s the same damn thing, over and over. One hundred years or so after these books came out, we’re still grappling with their central themes in the culture and in personal lives. And while that’s frustrating, it’s also why these novels are still relevant to contemporary readers. Read More→

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) was one of the great romantic poets of the Victorian era. “Sonnet 43” breathed her famous words to life: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”

Her early texts, flavored with feminism, paved the way for others to follow. Immensely popular in her lifetime, her work was somewhat forgotten until rediscovered with new appreciation starting in the second-wave feminist era of the 1970s. Her life was one of contrasts: she was remarkably prolific, enjoyed a happy marriage with fellow poet Robert Browning, yet her lifelong chronic illness shadowed her for all time.

Browning kept a diary of her ailments, yet many questions remain unanswered about the source of her maladies. A Penn State anthropologist may have found the answer more than a century later. Read More→