Mary Mapes Dodge (January 26, 1831 – August 21, 1905) was an American writer and editor of children’s books and stories. She is best known for the children’s novel, Hans Brinker.
Born Mary Elizabeth Mapes in New York City, she was he daughter of a well-to-do family and enjoyed a privileged education by private tutors that included languages, literature, music, and art.
In 1851, at age twenty, she married William Dodge, a lawyer with whom her father had business dealings. In short order, the couple had two sons. Just a few years into the marriage, Mr. Dodge was beset by financial difficulties and abandoned the family. He was found dead a month later from an apparent drowning. Read More→
Dear Literary Ladies,
I’m having trouble juggling parenting and writing. I can’t live without writing, but every day brings a thousand interruptions, and I’m just not getting anything done. How can I make this a more positive experience, and feel less frustrated? Did any of you manage to raise a few kids and create a body of work simultaneously, and if so, how did you do it?
Perhaps the most useful thing about being a writer of fiction is that nothing is ever wasted; all experience is good for something; you tend to see everything as a potential structure of words. One of my daughters made this abruptly clear to me when she came not long ago into the kitchen where I was trying to get the door of our terrible old refrigerator open; it always stuck when the weather was wet, and one of the delights of a cold rainy day was opening the refrigerator door. Read More→
Dear Literary Ladies,
I work so hard at my writing, putting in an inordinate amount time and effort. For all that, the rewards are so meager. Adding up the hours I put into my work (which I’m not even sure is more than mediocre), I would be making much less than minimum wage! My family thinks I should pack it in. What can you advise to help me persevere in a pursuit that’s so poorly compensated?
How can we know if we work hard now and develop ourselves we will be more than mediocre? Isn’t this the world’s revenge on us for sticking our neck out? We can never know until we’ve worked, written . . . Weren’t the mothers and businessmen right after all? Shouldn’t we have avoided these disquieting questions and taken steady jobs and secured a good future for the kiddies?
Not unless we want to be bitter all our lives. Not unless we want to feel wistfully: What a writer I might have been, if only. If only I’d had the guts to try and work and shoulder the insecurity all that trial and work implied. Read More→
Carson McCullers (February 19, 1917– September 29, 1967) was an American author of novels and short stories. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (published when she was just twenty-three) is arguably her best-known work. Many of her short stories have retained a prominent place in the American canon.
Born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia, her parents, Lamar Smith, a jeweler, and Marguerite Waters Smith, provided her and her two siblings with a comfortable middle-class life.
Lula Carson was their first-born child. Her parents considered her an artistic genius and encouraged her interests, especially music. Lynne Greeley, writing in Theatre History Studies, refers to Carson McCullers as “the preferred child” in her family. Read More→
The Vagabond (Translated from the original French, La Vagabonde) by prolific French author Colette (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette), is a 1910 novel telling the story of Renée Néré.
Taking place at the turn of the twentieth century, thirty-three-year old Renée becomes a music hall dancer in Paris after divorcing a cruel and faithless husband.
Not surprisingly, this narrative is based on Colette’s years as a music hall performer and actual experiences with her first husband. The nefarious Willy famously compelled her to crank out the Claudine stories, and then took credit for them. Read More→
Dear Literary Ladies,
My first novel is finally coming out, and I’m thrilled! But I’m also concerned about how to handle reviews from critics as well as readers. It’s hard to ignore reviews these days, with everything on the web and in one’s face 24/7. Any words of wisdom before my book hits the shelves?
If one has sought the publicity of print, and sold one’s wares in the open market, one has sold to the purchasers the right to think what they choose about one’s books; and the novelist’s best safeguard is to put out of his mind the quality of praise or blame bestowed on [her] by reviewers and readers, and to write only for that dispassionate and ironic critic who dwells within the breast.
— Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance, 1934
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Carson McCullers was just twenty-three when The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, her first novel, was published in 1940, but her insights into human nature demonstrated wisdom beyond her years. The book was acclaimed as the work of a prodigy by critics and fellow writers.
Through its unforgettable characters, the story delves into their struggle to build bridges between their separate islands of loneliness. The central characters all, in some odd way or another, seek answers to their confused desires from Singer, a deaf mute.
Read More→
Mary Webb (March 25, 1881 – October 8, 1927), born Mary Gladys Meredith in Leighton near Shrewsbury, was an English novelist and poet best known for the novel Precious Bane. She had strong ties to the countryside and people of her native Shropshire.
As a girl, she wrote plays and stories to entertain her five younger sisters and brothers. She matured into an essayist, poet and novelist who drew on her pantheistic view of nature, fascination with folklore, innate sense of mysticism, consideration of the female experience, and empathy with the most vulnerable and stigmatized of earth’s creatures. Read More→
