From the original review in The Corpus Christi Caller, July 1965 by Maurice Dolbier: Dodie Smith was born near Manchester, went to London stagestruck, was unsuccessful as an actress, went into business and then wrote plays and novels.
She now has a novel in which the heroine is a stagestruck Manchester girl who goes to London, is unsuccessful as an actress, goes into business, and does some writing.
Authenticity of background, therefore, can be comfortably assumed. The rest is fiction, charming, entertaining, and at times, mildly rueful — cool refreshment in a hot summer, a champagne cocktail from Miss Smith. Read More→
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917 – 2000), the Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, produced works that included sonnets and ballads as well as blues rhythm in free verse. The Bean Eaters was a well-received collection of poems published in 1960. Critics noted her ability to tap into both specific and universal experiences:
“Her poems are clear, not because they are childishly simple but because they strike at the thought and feelings common to mature people.”
Though Brooks poetry reflects urban African-American life, its underlying themes are universal to the human experience. Following is a review of this collection from the year in which it was published: Read More→
Excerpted from an interview with Edna Ferber in 1924 — early in her career. Originally published in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle; by Ruth Brindze – Sun, Nov 9, 1924. Edna Ferber started writing during a vacation seventeen years ago — and the vacation still lasts!
Like a fairy godmother, she touches her typewriter with her wand and creates cities and people just as she wants them. “I find writing so difficult that I wonder how I ever can do it. And when I finish a novel I try to console myself and say, ‘No one can really write a novel.’”
That is what Edna Ferber thinks of her profession and herself. Read More→
The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career (1917) by L.M. Montgomery, description adapted from the 1974 edition, Fitzhenry and Whiteside, Canada: Lucy Maud Montgomery, the creator of Anne of Green Gables, wrote this charming autobiographical memoir when she was in the middle of her career.
It is the most complete account she ever published of her childhood and early years as a writer. It originally appeared as a series of magazine articles in 1917, and this new edition is its first republication in any form. Read More→
L.M. Montgomery (1874 – 1972), the prolific Canadian author best known for the Anne of Green Gables series, wove personal experiences with marriage and motherhood into her work.
Fiction became a buffer against resentment at the roles she maintained, first as a dutiful granddaughter, then as an upstanding minister’s wife and devoted mother. Though these weren’t entirely facades, her spirited female characters hint at rebellion against limited roles and opportunities.
Montgomery had two sons in whose early childhoods she reveled. Parallel to the standard descriptions of her own mental state that forever peppered her journals (“sleeplessness,” “utter nervous prostration,” “dreadful weariness of spirit,” “restlessness,” ad nauseum), she cooed over her children. Read More→
Here are 6 helpful writing tips from Katherine Anne Porter (1890 – 1980), novelist and short story writer best known for Ship of Fools and Pale Horse, Pale Rider. Hers was a true American rags to riches story.
Porter often took many years after events to write about and analyze them fully, using her own life as a basis for her work. Her writing was a way to face questions that were left unanswered in her own life, giving her work a passionate, realistic, and sometimes harsh voice. Read More→
From all outward appearances, Edith Wharton, an heiress from one of late-19th century’s wealthiest families, seemed to be a woman in charge of her life.
But just beneath the surface, she was deeply insecure, especially about her writing abilities. Her family disapproved of her taking up the pen, and her society friends just didn’t care — or understand.
Wharton described how she overcame her obstacles with a great deal of humility. The following passages are from her memoir, A Backward Glance (1934). Read More→
An excerpt from The Early Diaries of Anaïs Nin, Volume II. From an entry dated November 1921, when the author was 18 years of age:
“I have been made to write. I have been to sit by my desk day after day, pouring into a million pages the contents of my mind and heart, the results of my observations, the thing I conceive, the things that are revealed to me, the things I must speak.
How else can I explain this flow of ideas to which my words are attached almost miraculously? It comes from within me, something stronger than my will, at the times I least expect it. I am led, I am carried way by a thing which is beyond my self, beyond control and discipline.” Read More→
