Gone With the Wind was published in 1936, at a time when the book industry, like all other businesses in the U.S., was still suffering from the results of the Depression. At least one person was concerned about the enterprise: Margaret Mitchell.
“I do hope they sell five thousand copies,” she remarked, “so they don’t lose money.” In one day GWTW sold 50,000 copies, and it was soon one of the fastest-selling books in the history of American publishing.
Published on June 30, 1936, GWTW had already been made a selection of Book of the Month Club, and advance sales were remarkable for a first novel by such an unknown author, particularly for a book of such length. Critics weren’t always as kind as the public. It’s fascinating to look back at how iconic books were reviewed in their own time. Read More→
Willa Cather (1873-1947) was a craftswoman of the written word. Known for their stark beauty and spare language, her novels reflected her philosophy that writing is a craft to be honed and perfected. Cather’s considerable writing wisdom has been fully preserved.
She always had a great deal of wisdom to impart on the art of writing. Here’s a sampling, excerpted from several of the numerous interviews she granted (despite her professed disdain for the press and with fame in general) between 1915 and the mid-1920s. Read More→
Dear Literary Ladies,
Some days, I just can’t find the resolve to work. I could blame all sorts of distractions and interruptions, but maybe it’s the discipline I lack. If the words don’t flow right away, I’ll get up and find some fine excuse not to stick with it. How do you develop the discipline to just sit down and write?
Ultimately, you have to sit down and start to write. And even if all you do is type out “I can’t write this morning; I can’t write this morning; oh, bother, I can’t write this morning,” that will sometimes prime the pump and get it started. It is a matter of discipline. It is particularly a matter of discipline for a woman who has children or another job. Read More→
Edited and introduced by Alice Walker, I Love Myself: When I am Laughing … and Then Again When I am Looking Mean and Impressive is an anthology of writings by Zora Neale Hurston.
This 1979 collection pays tribute to Hurston’s role in Black literature of the early twentieth century.
Hurston wasn’t known for being humble. She was upset over receiving second place in literary contests, yet confidently flaunted her talents. Walker wrote: “To know that second place, in such a society, has often required more work and innate genius than the first is to trust your self-evaluation …” Read More→
The following passage from A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf reminds us that each woman who writes is both an inheritor and an originator.
In it, she asks women who write to produce all kinds of books — and why stop at books? Let’s include all sorts of written output, fiction and nonfiction; articles, essays, blog posts, verse, and many etceteras for our own good and that of the world at large.
Let’s pay homage to her and other women writers who have paved the way by doing just that — elevating the voices of women in literature and in discourse in general. Read More→
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) was the third published book and second novel by Zora Neale Hurston (1891 – 1960), the noted author and ethnographer. It’s arguably her best known work and something of a feminist classic.
Zora had a dual career as a writer (producing novels, short stories, plays, and essays) and as an anthropologist. With her determined intelligence and humor, she became a big name in the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1920s.
Janie, the story’s heroine, searches for independence, identity, love, and happiness over the course of twenty-five years and several relationships. This story is actually not unlike Zora’s own, though it could be argued that she never found true happiness. Read More→
Dear Literary Ladies,
Sometimes I feel that I don’t have enough life experience to be a good writer. Everything I write, in hindsight, looks rather shallow and inauthentic. Should I wait until I’ve lived more fully, and gain some wisdom, before I bare my soul to the public in writing, or should I just plow ahead?
I wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in Haiti. It was dammed up in me, and I wrote it in seven weeks. I wish I could write it again. In fact, I regret all of my books. It is one of the tragedies of life that one cannot have all the wisdom one is ever to possess in the beginning. Read More→
Excerpted from review of The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O’Connor in The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri), March, 1960: Flannery O’Connor, a comparatively young Southern woman, writes with such skill and control that to praise her novel to excess would come easily and willingly.
Suffice it to say that The Violent Bear It Away is the best of her three books and that a comparison between this neo-Gothic tale and the novels written by William Faulkner at the height of his literary powers, could in no way harm Miss O’Connor. Read More→
