Johanna Spyri and Frances Hodgson Burnett illustrate the effects of nature on well-being through the symbolism and imagery of nature in their novels, Heidi and The Secret Garden. In both of these beloved classic novels, the authors show how the characters’ interactions with nature sets them on transformative journeys that help heal physical ailments and mental distress.
Spyri’s Heidi (1881) follows a young girl who has lost her parents and is taken to the Swiss Alps to stay with her grandfather. Mary Bernath, literature professor at Bloomsburg State University, writes that “Heidi’s home in the Alps is an idyllic place, far from the modern world and its concerns.”
After a short time, she is sent to the city of Frankfurt to be a companion to Klara, a slightly older girl who is unable to walk. While in Frankfurt, Heidi falls ill and yearns to return to the natural world of the Alps. Read More→
Claudine Picardet (1735–1820) was a French chemist and mineralogist whose translations of publications written by her European colleagues, contributed to the Chemical Revolution.
Picardet was the only woman scientist in the Dijon Academy (Dijon being a French town) and the only scientist who was proficient in four foreign languages (English, German, Italian, Swedish).
She translated many books and articles relating to chemistry and mineralogy for her French colleagues to keep abreast of current developments in their field. Read More→
Despite the challenges and pressures that Palestinian women writers have historically faced from displacement, occupation, and societal pressures, prominent writers have emerged steady and strong, whether in Palestine or exiled in the diaspora. Poet Fadwa Tuqan (1917 – 2003) was one of these women.
Palestinian women writers, like other women writers across the globe, did not have it easy, especially those who lived through the Nakba. This was the 1948 catastrophe when more than 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from historical Palestine (modern day Israel) to Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.
Added to this displacement were societal pressure and cultural norms that put women at a disadvantage compared to their male peers. Read More→
Eliza Ashurst Bardonneau (1813–1850), born Elizabeth Ann Ashurst, belonged to a family of English radical activists. She teamed up with her friend Matilda Mary Hays (1820–1897), an English journalist writing about women’s rights, to offer the first translations into English of some works by French novelist George Sand.
They both liked the subversive tone of Sand’s novels and the political and social issues tackled in her works.
Eliza Ashurst belonged to a family of English radical activists who supported causes such as abolitionism, women’s suffrage and Italian unification (Risorgimento). Read More→
George Eliot was the pen name used by the English writer Mary Ann Evans (1819–1880). She used her real name as a translator, editor and critic, and used the pen name George Eliot for her fiction.
By her own account her first literary works were translations of theological and philosophical works, which influenced her work as a fiction writer. She also led a life defying the conventions of her time.
Mary Ann Evans received a good education and was a voracious reader. Her father was the estate manager of the Arbury Hall Estate (in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England) and she had access to the large library of the estate, including many Greek classics. Read More→
Gertrude Bell (1868 – 1926) was an English archeologist, writer, and translator. She traveled extensively in the Middle East and advocated for Arab nationalism before settling permanently in Baghdad and contributing to the nation building of the Kingdom of Iraq.
She published several books about her travels and her archeological excavations. She corresponded extensively with many friends, colleagues and policy makers during her whole life. Read More→
Mary Louise Booth (1831–1889), was an American writer and a prominent translator from French to English. At the beginning of the American Civil War in 1861, she translated the French anti-slavery advocate Agénor de Gasparin’s seminal book Uprising of a Great People (1861) for it to be quickly distributed in the United States.
She became the first editor of the American fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar in 1867.
Born in Millville (now Yaphank) in the State of New York, Booth was of French descent on her mother’s side. After moving to New York City at the age of eighteen, she wrote tales and sketches for newspapers and magazines and also worked as a translator. She wrote History of the City of New York (1859), which became a bestseller. Read More→
Toni Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford, 1931 – 2019) is celebrated for her groundbreaking novels and nonfiction that examine the Black experience in America.
Her writings have reached millions of readers, and she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 for the “visionary force and poetic import” of her work. [above right, Toni Morrison’s author photo on The Bluest Eye, 1970; photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]
Following is an overview of her career as an editor and publisher, which isn’t as widely known despite being hugely influential in the contemporary realm of Black literature and the publishing world. Read More→
