By Nava Atlas | On May 18, 2017 | Updated August 15, 2026 | Comments (0)
The story of Charlotte Brontë‘s writing life is one of sheer genius meeting tireless determination. She and her brilliant sisters Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë took pseudonyms to improve their chances of finding publishers.
The challenges and prejudices they faced in their literary pursuit is described in The Brontë’s Sisters Path To Publication. Following is a sampling of passages and quotes by Charlotte Brontë (1816 – 1855) on her writing life, starting with an 1846 query letter. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On May 17, 2017 | Updated July 12, 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 in the English canon — Wuthering Heights (1847). Following is a selection 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. Then, of course, there is the obsessive love between Heathcliff and Cathy.
The brooding and complex story follows the intersection of two families — the Earnshaws and the Lintons. The passionate, almost otherworldly connection of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff have sparked romantic imaginations as star-crossed lovers whose dramas and tragedies reverberate into the next generation. 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 July 23, 2026 | 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. Here is a selection of quotes by Charlotte Perkins Gilman on human nature.
Best known for the 1892 semi-autobiographical work of short fiction, The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman 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. 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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