Literary Ladies Guide

For Anaïs Nin, writing was essential as breathing. This need inspired her multi-volume The Diary of Anaïs Nin series. What started as a voyage of self-discovery eventually transcended the personal into the universal.

Her diaries became a touchstones for a generation of women (and Nin became a feminist icon), not merely one woman’s private quest for identity and meaning.

By the standards of today’s confessional media, Nin’s frank writings may no longer seem as revolutionary as they did just a generation ago. In the final volume of the Diary (Volume Seven, 1966 –1974), she delighted in sharing snippets from the countless letters of gratitude she received from women everywhere, in all walks of life: Read More→

Even after Louisa May Alcott had already achieved fame as an author, she continued to answer letters from readers.  Louisa seemed rather smitten with her own narrative and didn’t mind repeating it for her own benefit and that of others.

She was generous in her advice to aspiring writers — readers of her work, especially young women — who sought words of wisdom for achieving success.

On occasion, Louisa professed disdain for writing what she called “moral tales,” but any reluctance on her part gave way to willingness to write them anyway, because, as she said, they paid well. The money she earned allowed her to care for her dear mother and family.

There’s no easy road to success

Here’s a response Louisa sent to one female reader, a Miss Churchill, asking her advice on achieving success. It was written on Christmas Day, circa 1878:

“I can only say to you as I do to the many young writers who ask for advice —there is no easy road to successful authorship; it has to be earned by long and patient labor, many disappointments, uncertainties and trials. Success is often a lucky accident, coming to those who may not deserve it, while others who do have to wait & hope till they have earned it. This is the best sort and the most enduring.”

. . . . . . . . . .

I worked for twenty years …

“I worked for twenty years poorly paid, little known, and quite without any ambition but to eke out a living, as I chose to support myself and begin to do it at sixteen.

This long drill was of use, and when I wrote Hospital Sketches [see LMA’s Civil War Journals] by the beds of my soldier boys in the shape of letters home I had no idea that I was taking the first step toward what is called fame. Read More→

Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886) wrote some 1,800 poems, though only a handful were published during her lifetime. Here we’ll look at ten of her well-loved poems — though choosing is always tough. 

Dickinson remains something of a mystery, which fuels the continued fascination with her work and life. In The Penguin Companion to American Literature (1971), Eric Mottram offered this assessment of her poetic practices:

“She hoarded her poems, among them love poems, apparently addressed to Benjamin Newton, a student in her father’s office, with whom she corresponded until his death in 1853, and Charles Wadsworth, a distinguished married clergyman who may have left America because of her. Read More→

Moods by Louisa May Alcott was this beloved American author’s first novel (that is, the first that she published under her own name). It came out in 1864 — four years before her breakout Little Women. 

The novel unconventionally presents a “little woman” a true-hearted abolitionist spinster, and a fallen Cuban beauty, their lives intersecting in Alcott’s first major depiction of the “woman problem.”

Sylvia Yule, the heroine of Moods, is a passionate tomboy (as was the author herself) who yearns for adventure. The novel opens as she embarks on a river camping trip with her brother and his two friends, both of whom fall in love with her. These rival suitors, close friends, are modeled on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

Read More→

Charlotte Brontëwas fiercely protective of the work and reputations of her literary sisters, Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë, both of whom tragically young of consumption (tuberculosis).

By default, she became the guardian of her sisters’ literary legacy. Following is Charlotte Brontë’s preface to Wuthering Heights, Emily’s only published novel.

The sisters first published their works under pseudonyms, thinking that their work would be more readily accepted for publication and general acceptance. Read More→

In The Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell, Charlotte Brontë pays homage to her sisters, telling the story of how she, Emily, and Anne found their paths to becoming published authors.

This was no simple feat for women of their time, particularly those who had no money, status, or contacts.

Written in 1850, after both Emily and Anne had already died tragically young, Charlotte explains their pseudonyms as the “Bells.” She was Currer, Emily was Ellis, and Anne was Acton. She, like her sisters, believed that using ambiguous names would make it easier to interest publishers in their works. Read More→

Following is the full text of The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman‘s most widely known work. This long-form short story is written from the perspective of a depressed young wife and mother who has been confined, with all her creative outlets forbidden to her. 

First published in 1892 in New England Magazine, it’s considered a feminist classic, and is widely studied in women’s studies and literature courses.

The story starts with a mystery: the house seems to have “something queer about it.” It soon becomes clear that the house isn’t the only thing that’s “queer.” The secluded country home and the attic room the narrator inhabits come to represent her tenuous situation and her slippery sense of self. Read More→

Developing the discipline to write regularly is an age-old dilemma. For tips on self-discipline for writers, we’ll turn to some of our classic women authors. A famous writerly quote goes something like: “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”

Attributed to Mary Heaton Vorse (1874 – 1966), variations of it have been credited to (mostly male) authors from Ernest Hemingway to Kingsley Amis.

If only it were that simple. Ms. Vorse plied her trade in an era when the only thing between the writer whose seat was on the chair and the typewriter or notebook on the desk was the dreaded blank page. For today’s writers, that dreaded blank page is on the computer screen, and behind it, the entire universe on the web, seducing you with endless distractions. Read More→