Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882 – March 28, 1941), born Adeline Virginia Stephen in London, epitomized rare literary genius. Despite debilitating battles with mental illness, Woolf produced a body of work considered among the most groundbreaking in twentieth-century literature.
Virginia Woolf’s father, Leslie Stephen, was a literary critic, and her mother, Julia Prinsep Stephen, was a renowned beauty and artists’ model. Her mother’s sudden death when she was thirteen may have been the catalyst for the first of her recurrent breakdowns.
As a young woman, Woolf developed her writer’s voice with a number of literary pursuits. She reviewed books for the Times Literary Supplement, wrote scores of articles and essays, and for a short time, taught English and history at Morley College in London (she herself had never earned a degree). Read More→
Charlotte Temple by Susanna Rowson (1762 – 1824), sometimes known as Susanna Haswell Rowson) was the best-known work by this American-British author. It was also America’s first best-selling novel. First published in England in 1790 as Charlotte: A Tale of Truth, it was retitled Charlotte Temple in 1797.
With its classic theme of seduction and remorse, it sparked a great deal of controversy in its time. Yet it remained the most widely read novel of the first half of the nineteenth century.
Other than Charlotte Temple, Susanna Rowson’s prolific body of writings (which also included other novels as well as plays, poems, and school textbooks) has been largely forgotten. Though contemporary readers give this novel mixed reviews, judging from reader comments on Goodreads, Charlotte Temple has endured as an example of early American literature. Read More→
Susanna Rowson (n.d., c. 1762 – March 2, 1824) was an American-British author and actress, best known for Charlotte Temple, America’s first bestselling novel.
She was born in Portsmouth, England, the only daughter of British Navy Lieutenant William Haswell and Susanna Musgrave Haswell, who died within days of giving birth to her.
While stationed in Boston, her father met his second wife, with whom he had three sons. After being appointed a Boston customs officer, the family settled nearby. Read More→
Betty MacDonald (1907 – 1958) was an American author of humorous memoirs and children’s books. The Egg and I, her bestselling 1945 memoir of running a chicken farm in rural Washington State in the late 1920s, catapulted her to international fame.
Her Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books for children were also hugely successful. From Paula Becker’s 2016 biography, Looking for Betty MacDonald: The Egg, the Plague, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and I, here’s the story of how Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle came to the page and became a series: Read More→
Relationships between brilliant writers were nearly always a tangle of complication and passion. Some couples preferred non-monogamous arrangements; others agreed that marriage was never to be part of the bargain. An intellectual bond was part of the attraction, and the glue that held these literary love affairs together.
Of the couples listed below, only the union of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning seemed like pure bliss. But even in their case, it was complicated. Her father was so dead-set against the marriage that he disinherited her. Read on for a capsule of some famed literary love affairs and marriages — truly, for better or worse. Read More→
Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American poet long regarded as a major twentieth-century figure in the genre.
Wildly popular in her lifetime, she fell out of favor after her death, but is now being reconsidered — read, studied, and growing (or re-growing) in regard in the field of poetry.
Her middle name really was an homage to the New York City’s St. Vincent’s hospital, where the life of an uncle was saved before she was born. After her parents were divorced, there was minimal contact with their father. Her mother, Cora, was frequently away from home, on the road as a visiting nurse. Read More→
Miles Franklin (October 14, 1879 – September 19, 1954) was an Australian author of novels and nonfiction, born Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin.
Her best-known novel, My Brilliant Career, is the story of a teenage girl growing up in the Australian bush who longs to break free as her own person. Franklin wrote it while still in her teens and was just twenty-one when it was published in 1901.
Franklin’s literary career was long but uneven, alternating great gaps with almost feverish output. A need to support herself compelled her to work in a number of odd jobs, though she often made use of her experiences in her storytelling. Read More→
Kate Chopin (February 8, 1850 – August 22, 1904) was an American author who made her mark writing fiction that was regional in character, yet universal in nature.
Chopin’s best known work is The Awakening, an 1899 novella that was controversial from the time it was published in 1899. The reception of The Awakening, which was negative overall, along with the shockwaves it produced discouraged Chopin. Her output slowed considerably in its aftermath, and its erasure was hastened by her premature death just five years after its publication.
Chopin earned her due only decades after her death when her body of work was resurrected and reconsidered. The Awakening now considered an American classic and a staple in feminist literature. Her other works of fiction, which skewed to short stories, are held in similar high esteem. Read More→
