By Nava Atlas | On May 18, 2017 | Updated November 9, 2019 | Comments (0)
The story of Charlotte Brontë‘s (1816 – 1855) writing life is one of sheer genius meeting tireless determination. She and her brilliant sisters Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë took masculine pseudonyms to improve their chances of finding publishers.
You can read more about the challenges and prejudices they faced in their pursuits in The Brontë’s Sisters Path To Publication. Here’s a sampling of passages and quotes by Charlotte Brontë on the writing life, starting with a query letter — yes, even she was compelled to write them:
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By Nava Atlas | On May 17, 2017 | Updated February 9, 2026 | Comments (0)
Though Emily Brontë (1818 – 1848), sister of Charlotte and Anne Brontë barely lived to age thirty, she produced one of the most beloved novels of passion and tragedy — Wuthering Heights (1847). Following is a selction of quotes from Wuthering Heights that reflect the passionate and tumultuous nature of its characters.
One of the most influential of romantic novels, it touches on economic, social, and psychological issues.
Of Heathcliff, the complicated hero of the novel, Emily wrote: “Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something that, at times, strangely wills and works for itself.” Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On May 15, 2017 | Updated March 9, 2023 | Comments (0)
Enid Bagnold, the British author and playwright is best known for the classic 1935 children’s novel National Velvet and The Chalk Garden, a dramatic play that opened on Broadway in 1955.
Regarded as prickly and perplexing, she left behind a modest yet significant body of work. Here we’ll look at a selection of quotes by Enid Bagnold, a complicated and perplexing woman.
Bagnold at first pursued her studies in art, but then changed direction when she went to work as a journalist for a magazine in 1911. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On May 15, 2017 | Updated December 23, 2018 | Comments (0)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860 – 1935), an American author of fiction and nonfiction, is considered ahead of her time for her feminist works that pushed for women’s social and economic independence. Best known for the 1892 semi-autobiographical work of short fiction, The Yellow Wallpaper, she was one of the leading voices of the late 19th and early 20th century American women’s movement
Her nonfiction works, including Women and Economics (1898) and The Man-Made World (1911) detail how women’s lives were impacted by social and economic bias. Sadly they’re still relevant, which is why they’re still read and studied. Here is a selection of Charlotte Perkins Gilman quotes on gender roles and human nature. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On May 1, 2017 | Updated February 1, 2025 | Comments (7)
“How it Feels to Be Colored Me” is a brief essay by Zora Neale Hurston originally published in the 1928 edition of The World Tomorrow. In it, she explores her own experience with race, in her customary brash manner. She makes clear that she speaks only for herself.
Raised in the all-Black community of Eatonville, FL, Hurston first encountered what was universally called “the race problem” as a young adult striving to gain an education in the north.
The tone of this essay doesn’t reflect the kind of intellectual propagandist Black pride displayed in the Harlem Renaissance (also known as New Negro movement) of the 1920s; yet it unabashedly pokes holes in the rampant segregation and bias that were woven into the fabric of American life, North or South. Read More→
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