Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman (1852 – 1930), more commonly known as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, was an American novelist and short story writer. Though no longer widely read, her 1891 short story, “A New England Nun,” is widely anthologized and still studied.
Born in Randolph, Massachusetts, Freeman came from New England Puritan stock. A prolific writer of novels, short stories, children’s books, and poems, her work has been largely forgotten, though it’s widely available online, all of it being in the public domain.
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Johanna Spyri (1827 – 1901), the author of Heidi, has been called the “Swiss Louisa May Alcott.” Tens of millions of copies of this classic children’s novel (first published in 1881) have sold worldwide in translations of more than forty languages.
Originally written in German, Heidi was Spyri’s first published novel. None of her subsequent books — and there were many — achieved the level of success as did Heidi. It’s not only the bestselling Swiss book ever published, but one of the bestselling books in the world.
Heidi has also been adapted numerous times to the stage, including an opera, plus several movies and television series. Read More→
Little Birds was Anaïs Nin’s second volume of erotic short stories, following Delta of Venus. Originally written as a way to make quick money, she sold them at a rate of a dollar per page to an anonymous client in the 1940s.
Little Birds was published in 1979, two years after Nin’s death. This collection of thirteen stories, perhaps more accurately termed vignette, cover a range of sexual topics from the female perspective.
Some of the characters from Delta of Venus make an appearance in these pages. The publisher describes the work: Read More→
Let’s pay tribute to a trailblazing group of mid-twentieth-century Black women journalists — Alice Dunnigan, Ethel Payne, Daisy Bates, Evelyn Cunningham, and Marvel Jackson Cooke.
Their work encompassed all facets of this era’s journalism, including reporting, editing, broadcasting, and publishing.
All of these women’s careers began at legendary Black newspapers, including the Chicago Defender, the Arkansas State Press, the Pittsburgh Courier, and The Crisis. Read More→
Gabriela Mistral (Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, 1889 – 1957), the Chilean poet, educator, diplomat, and feminist was the first Latin American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. Here, we’ll take a concise look at the poetry of Gabriela Mistral — an overview of her published works and analysis of major themes.
She was cited “for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world.”
Born in Vicuña, Chile, Mistral had a lifelong passion for eduction and gained a reputation as the nation’s “national schoolteacher-mother.” That she hasn’t retained a literary stature comparable to her countryman, Pablo Neruda, is surprising, given her Nobel Prize and many other achievements and accolades. Read More→
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) is actually Gertrude Stein‘s own memoir. Gertrude Stein Has Arrived by Roy Morris, Jr. chronicles the return of the delightfully perplexing literary figure to her American homeland in 1934.
With Alice in tow, Stein conducted an epic lecture tour to promote what would be her most commercially successful book.
Gertrude appropriated the supposed persona of her longtime companion, Alice B. Toklas, to tell her own tale. Famously, Alice is quoted as saying:
“About six weeks ago Gertrude Stein said, ‘It does not look to me as if you were ever going to write that autobiography. You know what I am going to do? I am going to write it for you. I am going to write it as simply as Defoe did the autobiography of Robinson Crusoe.’ And she has, and this is it.” Read More→
Anaïs Nin (1903 – 1977), an iconic literary figure of the 20th century, was best known for her Diary series. A trove of books by Anaïs Nin has recently been reissued in updated editions by Swallow Press, the premier U.S. publisher of her works.
Swallow Press is a division of Ohio University Press, and many of these updated editions have been edited by Paul Herron. As founder and editor of Sky Blue Press, Herron publishes the journal A Café in Space and digital editions of the fiction of Anaïs Nin, as well as a new collection of Nin erotica, Auletris. Read More→
Dust Tracks on a Road, Zora Neale Hurston’s 1942 autobiography, has confounded critics and scholars from the time of its publication, even as it has enthralled and entertained readers.
It was the most commercially successful book she published during her lifetime, though it has since been eclipsed by her 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Zora (1891 – 1960) studied anthropology at Barnard College in the 1920s, becoming the first African-American student at the prestigious college. With her larger-than-life personality, she quickly became a big name in the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1920s. Read More→
