By Nava Atlas | On August 31, 2019 | Updated September 2, 2022 | Comments (0)
It may be fair to say that the acclaimed 1987 film, Babette’s Feast, is better known than the short story by Danish author Isak Dinesen upon which it’s based. In fact, it’s possible that fans of the movie aren’t aware that it’s based on Dinesen’s story, nor even anything about her.
Isak Dinesen (1885 – 1962) was the nom de plume of this writer, best known for her 1937 memoir Out of Africa, which details her life as the owner of a coffee plantation in colonial Kenya.
Born Karen Christenze Dinesen into a family of aristocrats, merchants, and landed gentry, she was later known after marriage as Karen von Blixen-Finecke. The marriage conferred on her the title of Baroness, but didn’t last. Her ex-husband’s philandering left her with the lifelong effects of syphilis. Read More→
By Skyler Gomez | On July 8, 2019 | Updated June 5, 2023 | Comments (0)
Shirley was the second published novel by Charlotte Brontë. Published in 1849 under the pseudonym Currer Bell, the author had already become famous with the success of Jane Eyre (1847).
While Charlotte was at work on this book, her remaining siblings died (two sisters had died in childhood). The first to go was her troubled brother Branwell. He was soon followed to the grave by Emily and Anne, who would also come to be celebrated for their literary accomplishments.
The lengthy novel has two female protagonists — the eponymous Shirley Keeldar, as well as Caroline Helstone. Set in Charlotte’s native Yorkshire, it takes place against the background of the textile industry’s Luddite uprisings of 1811 and 1812. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On July 3, 2019 | Updated September 4, 2022 | Comments (0)
Anzia Yezierska (1880 – 1970) was a writer whose body of work focused on the Jewish immigrant experience in America in the early 1900s.
Born in an area that’s now Poland but which was part of the Russian Empire when she was was a child, her family arrived in New York City’s Lower East Side during the immigration wave of the late 1800s. Anzia, then in her early teens, never shed the feeling of being an outsider looking in.
All of Yezierska’s short stories are collected in How I Found America: Collected Stories of Anzia Yezierska, 1991. In her introduction to the book, literary critic Vivian Gornick wrote: Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On June 27, 2019 | Updated June 5, 2023 | Comments (0)
Jane Eyre (1847), Charlotte Brontë’s best known novel, tells the story of the title heroine’s love for the mysterious and reclusive Mr. Rochester and her quest for independence.
Though considered a proto-feminist work, it also fits into the gothic novel genre due to that pesky little detail of Rochester’s mad wife locked away in an attic. Through the concise plot summary of Jane Eyre that follows, the reader will get an overview of the book that made Charlotte Brontë famous.
Jane, a young woman of unassuming background and appearance, searches for love and a sense of belonging while preserving her independence. The book sparked a fair amount of controversy when first published, which was fueled by critics and the public suspecting that “Currer Bell” (the author’s ambiguous pseudonym) was a woman. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On March 10, 2019 | Updated December 22, 2020 | Comments (0)
Willa Cather (1873 – 1947) was a masterful American author of fiction whose spare yet evocative prose has held an enduring place in American literature. Life on the prairie and the immigrant families she had encountered inspired some of her earlier novels, including O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Antonia. Death Comes for the Archbishop is considered one of her finest, and One of Ours won the Pulitzer prize.
After abandoning her initial ambition to study medicine, Cather embarked on a life of letters, first working as a journalist, critic, and editor. Her first published book was a collection of poems titled April Highlights (1903), remaining her only volume of poetry. Next came The Troll Garden (1905), a collection of short stories. Her first novel, Alexander’s Bridge, was published in 1912. Read More→
Categories: 
Comments: