Xingu by Edith Wharton (1862 – 1937), a longform short story, satirizes a snobby ladies’ literary lunch group in the early 1900s. It was first published in Xingu and Other Stories (1916) and is a fairly rare occasion in which Wharton’s sly sense of humor is on display.
The six pretentious, competitive women invite a famous author as a guest to visit their group, with unexpected results. Whereas the guests assume that the author is there to discuss her latest novel, she insists on only discussing another work — Xingu.
The ladies of the group feign knowing the work and insist they’ve studied it — but did they really? Xingu, reprinted in full here, is in the public domain. Long paragraphs have been broken up for easier viewability on devices.
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Literary Ladies Guide to the Writing Life: Inspiration and Advice from Celebrated Women Authors Who Paved the Way by Nava Atlas (2011) is now available as an audiobook (updated and expanded) produced by Blackstone Publishing (2023).
The desire to put pen to paper has been described by many writers as an obsession that can’t be denied. Perhaps best expressed by author Anaïs Nin, who writes, “You write out of a deep inner necessity. If you are a writer, you have to write, just as you have to breathe…”
In Literary Ladies’ Guide to the Writing Life, Nava Atlas presents a treasury of intimate glimpses into the unfolding writing process across fifteen brilliant careers in women’s literature and relates their struggles, striving, and successes to those experienced by women writers today.
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Though Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950) wasn’t considered a confessional poet, her prolific love life was often reflected in her lines, sometimes obliquely, other times directly. Following is a small sampling of love poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Some of Millay’s love poems hint at cynicism, others sorrow, while others still reflect a women in full charge of her sexuality and aware of her power over those whose hearts she won — or broke.
It has been argued that tales of Millay’s love life have eclipsed her reputation as a poet — and that this should be corrected, as she was a brilliant poet. In hindsight unjustly, er reputation began waning even before her untimely death. Read More→
“The Daughters of the Late Colonel” by Katherine Mansfield is a modernist short story. New Zealand-born Mansfield (1888 – 1923) has been recognized for revolutionizing the short story form.
“The Daughters of the Late Colonel” is considered among her most highly regarded stories, along with “At the Bay,” “The Voyage,” and “The Stranger.”
Written in 1920, this story (now in the public domain) was first published in The London Mercury in 1921, and was later part of Mansfield’s short story collection, The Garden Party and Other Stories. Read More→
Presented here is a deep dive into the character of Cassandra Mortmain, the heroine of Dodie Smith’s 1948 young adult novel, I Capture the Castle.
British writer Dodie Smith (1896 – 1990) is best known for the children’s book The 101 Dalmatians (1956). I Capture the Castle (1948), written after World War II while Smith was living in California and writing scripts for the movies, was her first novel.
The following is excerpted from Girls in Bloom: Coming of Age in the Mid 20th-Century Woman’s Novel by Francis Booth, reprinted by permission. Read More→
The Making of a Marchioness is a 1901 novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, the prolific British-American author better known for timeless children’s classics.
The author of The Secret Garden and A Little Princess wrote many novels for adult readers, though none have been as enduring as those for “children of all ages.”
Relating the story of Emily Fox-Seton, The Making of a Marchioness was followed by a sequel in the same year: The Methods of Lady Walderhurst was also published in 1901. Soon after, the two books were combined into one volume, Emily Fox-Seton, named for the heroine. Read More→
Nan Shepherd (February 11, 1893 – February 27, 1981) was a Scottish modernist poet, writer, and mountaineer.
Best known for The Living Mountain, she published three novels, a collection of poems, several essays, articles, and letters.
Her deep love of the Scottish mountains and her knowledge of them through walking was fundamental to her writing and shaped most of her work. Read More→
Beginning in 1886, Amy Levy wrote several essays on Jewish culture and literature for The Jewish Chronicle. The best known is The Ghetto at Florence, presented here. Others in this series included The Jew in Fiction, Jewish Humour, and Jewish Children.
Amy Levy (1861 – 1889) was a 19th-century British novelist, essayist, and poet. She was best known for Reuben Sachs, an 1888 novel that examined Jewish life in Victorian England, a subject that was unusual for its time.
Despite talent and accomplishment, this promising writer died by her own hand when not quite twenty-eight years old following years of struggle with depression. Read More→
