Susan Bailey of Louisa May Alcott is My Passion describes Diana and Persis, Louisa May Alcott‘s unfinished novel, as compelling, revealing, biographical, and thus, tragically incomplete:
By the 1870s, Louisa May Alcott and her baby sister May had become close companions. Although quite different in temperament, both shared that burning ambition to become the artists they were meant to be – Louisa as a best-selling author, and May as an acclaimed painter, exhibiting at the Paris Salon. Read More→
For bibliophiles, it’s not enough to be so obsessed with books that we’re reading four or five works of fiction or nonfiction at any given time. We also love books about bookstores, libraries, and even books about books and reading! This might seem eccentric at first glance, but for the devout book lover, it makes perfect sense.
Here’s a slew of books for book lovers that celebrate the passion for the page. Above, Bibliophile: An Illustrated History by Jane Mount, which kicks off this list.
In this list you’ll find a book about so-called “book towns” around the world; a celebration of libraries; a musing on the art of reading itself; a collection on the thrill of finding rare books; books on bookstores, and a book on the joy of bibliomania. What perfect gifts these make for the book nerds in your life — or for yourself! Read More→
Revisiting a book many years after the first reading and still being able to connect is one of the greatest joys of rediscovering great authors. It’s no surprise that Pearl S. Buck won the Pulitzer Prize for The Good Earth and contributed to her receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature.
This novel, published in 1931, was the first in her House of Earth trilogy, followed by Sons and A House Divided. It made it to the bestselling lists in the United States, both in 1931 and 1932.
The author, as the daughter of missionaries, grew up in China and based this work of historical fiction on her personal observations of village life around her. Read More→
A reflection on the period in which Mina Loy and Marianne Moore, modernist poets (among other talents) crossed paths in the early 1920s. Excerpted from Everybody I Can Think of Ever: Meetings That Made the Avant-Garde by Francis Booth, reprinted by permission.
The poetry of Mina Loy was often compared and sometimes published next to that of the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap put them together in the issue of Little Review that immediately followed their obscenity conviction for printing Ulysses, some time around 1920.
Man Ray took photographs of both of them specially; opposites in looks but potential sisters in their view of female sexuality. And the only issue of the magazine New York Dada had both an article mocking Loy’s relationship with Cravan and a portrait of the Baroness, this time wearing only her jewelry, as the “naked truth” of Dada. Read More→
Mina Loy (December 27, 1882 – September 25, 1966) was a brilliant English-born poet, playwright, and artist. Light years ahead of her time, she was lauded by her peers for her dense analyses of the female experience in early twentieth-century Western society.
She was associated with other great minds and literary innovators of her time, like T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Sylvia Beach, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, and others. Read More→
The Road Through the Wall was Shirley Jackson’s first novel (1948). That was also the year when her short story, “The Lottery,” was published, making her instantly famous (as well as infamous). This plot summary and analysis of The Road Through the Wall focuses on its young heroine, Harriet Merriam.
Jackson claimed that the novel was loosely based on her childhood growing up in a well-to-do neighborhood in California. Admitting that this book was somewhat of a revenge novel, she asserted that a first novel’s purpose, after all, was to get back one’s parents.
Excerpted from Girls in Bloom: Coming of Age in the Mid-20th Century Woman’s Novel by Francis Booth, reprinted by permission.
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From the time of her classic essay, “Notes on Camp” (1963), Susan Sontag was launched into the position of one of America’s premier public intellectuals.
Nearly every line she wrote or spoke was quotable, so it’s a great challenge to choose a selection of quotes by Susan Sontag for a post that’s reasonable in length; here, we’ve attempted such a feat. Painting at right by Juan Bastos ©2009, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons License 3.0.
Achieving fame (and sometimes notoriety) in multiple forms of media — essays, fiction, film, and more — Sontag seemed to embrace her role as provocateur. Susan Sontag pastel portrait at right by Juan Bastos. Read More→
This brief biography of Rachel Field (September 19, 1894 – March 15, 1942), a noted yet often neglected American author, will highlight her extensive body of work in the areas of adult fiction, poetry, and children’s fiction.
She’s perhaps best remembered for All This and Heaven Too (1938), which was adapted into a film starring Bette Davis, and Hitty: Her First Hundred Years (1929), an award-winning children’s book.
Several of her other books were adapted into films starring prominent Hollywood stars of the time, and upon her untimely death in 1942, newspaper editor Laura Benet remembered her as a calming and reassuring presence to all of those who knew her. Read More→
