Miles Franklin (1879 – 1954) was an Australian writer best known for her 1901 novel, My Brilliant Career. Following is a selection of quotes by Miles Franklin that will help us get to know this under-appreciated author a bit better.
Franklin is also an unsung early feminist. She traveled to the United States when she became a participant of the women’s movement and joined the National Women’s Trade Union League of America.
When she began her writing career in earnest, she, like George Eliot and other female authors, she dropped her first names (Stella Maria Sarah) and retained the last part of it — Miles Franklin — thinking it would help achieve a more serious literary reputation. She employed a number of other noms de plume throughout her writing career, because, ruth be told, it was a way to ease the sting of critical reviews. Read More→
We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) was the last published work by Shirley Jackson during her lifetime. The narrator, Mary Katherine “Merricat” Blackwood, lives with her sister and uncle on an isolated estate in rural Vermont.
The Blackwoods have been shunned by the neighbors in the nearby village due to a tragedy — murder by poisoning — that occurred some years earlier.
This critically acclaimed novel is considered one of Jackson’s masterpieces; and it has been an inspiration to authors that came after who write in the thriller and mystery genres. Read More→
Raising Demons by Shirley Jackson is a 1957 memoir of motherhood and domestic tribulations. Wry and humorous, it serves up an idealized version of this author’s family’s life in North Bennington, Vermont, and is a departure from her fictional tales of psychological terror — notably, The Lottery (1949).
How much of the depiction of this family’s life reflects reality is an open question. Jackson’s husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman, a literary critic and professor, was chronically unfaithful, controlling, and belittling.
Jackson herself was a heavy smoker, overweight, and may have been addicted to prescription barbiturates due to anxiety. She was only 48 when she died of heart failure in her sleep in 1965. Read More→
Françoise Sagan (1935 – 2004), the French novelist, playwright, and screenwriter, was always best know for her debut novel, Bonjour Tristesse, published when she was just 18. Following is a selection of quotes by François Sagan on love, life, and writing.
Sagan went on to have an incredibly prolific career after her freshman effort, coupled with a wild and turbulent life that featured fast cars, drugs, and many love affairs.
Her turbulent life eventually caught up with her health; she spent her last few years ill and and she died in 2004 of a pulmonary embolism at the age of sixty-nine. Read More→
Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan (1954) is the story of Cecile, an amoral seventeen-year-old, who goes on vacation to the south of France with her father, Raymond.
Raymond is a widower who leads a life revolving around multiple affairs with women, usually short-lived. Cecile, despite her age, is fully aware of her father’s love life.
Raymond has rented a well appointed villa, and Cecile, her father, and her father’s mistress of the moment, Elsa, depart for a month of sun and relaxation. Read More→
Gone With the Wind — the book — was a publishing phenomenon. Not within memory had an American novel been so long (1,037 pages, a half-million words) or weighed so much (3.5 pounds).
The following narrative was originally published in The Story of Gone With the Wind by Bob Thomas, © 1967 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., National Publishers, Inc., New York.
MacMillan published GWTW at a time when the book industry, like all others in the U.S., was still suffering from the results of the Depression. At least one person was concerned about the enterprise: Margaret Mitchell. Read More→
