The Brontë sisters — Charlotte, Emily, and Anne — went through an arduous process in seeking publication for their first works — The Professor, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey, respectively (The Professor was Charlotte’s first full novel, written before Jane Eyre, but published only after her death). Here’s the story of the Brontë sisters’ path to publication, steered by Charlotte’s unwavering persistence.
Before attempting to publish novels, Charlotte, who seemed to be the front person for the trio of sisters, undertook the task of finding a home for a collaborative book of poems. They took masculine, or at least indeterminate, noms de plume. Read More→
A Quiet Passion, the film biopic of beloved poet Emily Dickinson’s life was released in April of 2017 to nearly unanimous glowing reviews.
Directed by Terence Davies and starring Cynthia Nixon in the title role, here are snippets from the top reviewers — interestingly, more of the critics who fell in love with this film are men.
Viewers, especially true Emily Dickinson aficionados, have been much more divided, as you can see in the Amazon reviews. Some object to how she and her family are portrayed in the film, feeling that it took too many liberties. If you’re a literature lover, don’t miss this film — and decide where you stand. Read More→
Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë might be linked by their early 19th-century British backgrounds and legions of devotees. They had some similarities in their backgrounds and paths to publication, yet many differences. This isn’t a Jane Austen vs Charlotte Brontë competition; they were both brilliant writers!
Perhaps they’re often compared because they were among the group of British women writers who made an immense contribution to literature in the first part of the 1800s. Read More→
The story of Charlotte Brontë‘s (1816 – 1855) writing life is one of sheer genius meeting tireless determination. She and her brilliant sisters Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë took masculine pseudonyms to improve their chances of finding publishers.
You can read more about the challenges and prejudices they faced in their pursuits in The Brontë’s Sisters Path To Publication. Here’s a sampling of passages and quotes by Charlotte Brontë on the writing life, starting with a query letter — yes, even she was compelled to write them:
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Though Emily Brontë (1818 – 1848), sister of Charlotte and Anne Brontë barely lived to age thirty, she produced one of the most beloved novels of passion and tragedy — Wuthering Heights (1847). Following is a selction of quotes from Wuthering Heights that reflect the passionate and tumultuous nature of its characters.
One of the most influential of romantic novels, it touches on economic, social, and psychological issues.
Of Heathcliff, the complicated hero of the novel, Emily wrote: “Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something that, at times, strangely wills and works for itself.” Read More→
Enid Bagnold, the British author and playwright is best known for the classic 1935 children’s novel National Velvet and The Chalk Garden, a dramatic play that opened on Broadway in 1955.
Regarded as prickly and perplexing, she left behind a modest yet significant body of work. Here we’ll look at a selection of quotes by Enid Bagnold, a complicated and perplexing woman.
Bagnold at first pursued her studies in art, but then changed direction when she went to work as a journalist for a magazine in 1911. Read More→
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860 – 1935), an American author of fiction and nonfiction, is considered ahead of her time for her feminist works that pushed for women’s social and economic independence. Best known for the 1892 semi-autobiographical work of short fiction, The Yellow Wallpaper, she was one of the leading voices of the late 19th and early 20th century American women’s movement
Her nonfiction works, including Women and Economics (1898) and The Man-Made World (1911) detail how women’s lives were impacted by social and economic bias. Sadly they’re still relevant, which is why they’re still read and studied. Here is a selection of Charlotte Perkins Gilman quotes on gender roles and human nature. Read More→
Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation Between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was published in 1898.
Far ahead of its time, Women and Economics held the position that humans are the only species in which the female depends on the male for her survival.
It’s considered one of Gilman’s finest works, though it hasn’t retained the renown of her semi-autobiographical short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. Read More→
