A unique voice comes through in the following selection of quotes by British author Elizabeth Taylor (not to be confused with the actress of the same name) on love, loneliness, beauty, and marriage from her novels and short stories.
Elizabeth Taylor (1912 – 1975) knew from a young age that she wanted to be a novelist. She received high marks in English as a student and, after graduation, borrowed books through the Boots Library system which informed her natural storytelling abilities: works by of Jane Austen, Anton Chekhov, Henry Fielding, E.M. Forster, Samuel Richardson, Ivan Turgenev and Virginia Woolf.
Taylor found inspiration for twelve novels and sixty-five short stories in the everyday lives of ordinary people. She described it like this to her American publisher: Read More→
This analysis of “Désirée’s Baby,” an 1893 short story by Kate Chopin, explores the narrative of miscegenation and motherhood in the antebellum American South. Chopin is best known for the groundbreaking classic novella The Awakening (1899).
Désirée, a young woman adopted as a child, is married to a plantation owner named Armaud. She is startled when she suddenly realizes that their baby is of a darker complexion than her own and her husband’s.
Chopin uses the setting of Louisiana to create a delicate yet hostile environment for a disillusioned young mother. Motherhood in this era can be deemed sensitive and complicated, since Désirée lives in a time when its treatment is based on ethnicity and social stratification. Read More→
Amy Lowell (1874 – 1925), an influential yet undervalued American poet, was an energetic evangelist of the art of poetry for all her adult life. Here is presented “Lilacs,” said to be the one of the poet’s own favorites, and among the poems she recited most often in her many public readings.
First published first published in the New York Evening Post on September 18, 1920, “Lilacs” went on to be included in a 1922 modernist poetry anthology.
Finally, “Lilacs” became part of Lowell’s 1925 collection What’s O’ Clock, which received the Pulitzer Prize the following year. Unfortunately, the poet died before receiving this honor. She was only 51, having suffered from poor health for some time. Read More→
Who was Emily Brontë? This is a question not easily answered. This thoughtful chronology of her brief life by W. Robertson Nicoll was part of the introduction to the 1908 edition of The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë. It provides much insight into how she lived and worked.
Emily Brontë (1818 – 1848), the English author known for the novel Wuthering Heights, was also recognized as a brilliant poet. The sister of Charlotte and Anne Brontë, she is arguably the most enigmatic of the trio who produced some of the most widely read classics in English literature.
Emily lived only to age thirty and led a sheltered life at Haworth Parsonage in Yorkshire. After her boarding school education, brief sojourn to study in Brussels, and even briefer stint as a governess, she rarely engaging with anyone outside of her immediate family. That appeared to have been by choice.
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The relationship of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West has earned a place in literary history, and continues to fascinate with its allure of the unconventional, bohemian, and charmingly eccentric.
On December 15, 1922, Virginia Woolf recorded in her diary that she had met “the lovely aristocratic Sackville-West last night at Clive’s. Not much to my severer taste … all the supple ease of the aristocracy, but not the wit of the artist.”
She was, of course, writing of Vita, the woman who would go on to become her lover, friend, and confidante. Read More→
Ida B. Wells (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931), also known as Ida B. Wells-Barnett, was a fearless journalist and crusader in the early civil rights movement. A feminist, editor, sociologist, she was one of the founders of the NAACP.
She was best known for spearheading a national antilynching campaign, through which she worked tirelessly to end the uniquely American practice of the public mob murders of Black Americans. Wells’s reputation continues to grow, even decades after her death.
Journalism awards have been established in her name, scholarships are endowed in her honor, and there’s a museum celebrating her legacy in her hometown in Mississippi. Read More→
It is a truth universally acknowledged that there are Jane Austen fans so devoted that they read Pride and Prejudice (and/or her other novels) every year or two.
Contemporary Austen-flavored retellings only add fuel to the literary fire. In that vein, the witty pen of Sonali Dev has produced Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors (2019) and Recipe for Persuasion (2020).
For fervent devotees, for whom there can never be Too Much Jane, Ms. Dev’s novels will be a delicious treat. They transpose Austen-esque complicated relationships to the modern world, and season them with culinary themes. Here’s a look at these entertaining reads by Sonali Dev. Read More→
Margaret Walker (July 15, 1915 – November 30, 1998) was an American poet and novelist. Though she’s recognized today as one of the foremost Black American female writers of her generation, she deserves greater appreciation.
In addition to her acclaimed novel, Jubilee (1966), her poetry is collected into several volumes. Walker participated in the literary movement known as the Chicago Black Renaissance, and was a longtime friend of novelist and poet Richard Wright.
Walker was a university professor from the 1940s through the 1970s, and held positions at colleges in North Carolina, West Virginia, and Mississippi. She received six honorary degrees and was inducted into the African American Literary Hall of Fame in October 1998. Read More→
