By Taylor Jasmine | On January 20, 2018 | Updated July 14, 2019 | Comments (0)
Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge (1865) is the classic tale of Hans and his sister Gretel (not to be confused with Hansel and Gretel). It takes place in Holland, and though the author created a lovely picture of Dutch life in the early 19th century, she never visited the country until well after the book’s publication.
In the 1946 edition, the Brinker children’s parents are described as a “gallant mother and strange, silent father.” The latter’s condition, as it turns out, is due to a head injury.
The family is relatable and timeless because they “are very real people with ambitions, hopes and problems that the young reader shares as he or she reads their story. The Brinkers are very poor, but during one eventful winter many wonderful things happen to them.” Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On January 15, 2018 | Updated November 26, 2022 | Comments (2)
Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson (1973) is the story of an unconventional union, written by one of the couple’s two sons, Nigel Nicolson.
Vita Sackville-West was a novelist and poet was known for her role in the Bloomsbury circle and her intense friendship with Virginia Woolf; Harold Nicolson was a diplomat and scholar.
Though neither admitted it to the other when they were courting and in the early days of their marriage, both were primarily attracted to members of their own sex. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On January 8, 2018 | Updated November 1, 2021 | Comments (0)
From the 2013 Timber Press edition of Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life by Marta McDowell: If you’re one of the millions of readers who grew up on Beatrix Potter’s tales, then you know that her illustrations are filled with carefully observed flowers and gardens.
Yet this aspect of her life — one of the richest and most enduring sources of inspiration for her work — has received little attention until now.
In this engagingly written and delightfully illustrated book, Marta McDowell takes you on a personal journey, tracing the development and eventual blossoming of Beatrix Potter’s life as a gardener, from her childhood interest in plants, through her development as an artist to her final years as an estate farmer and naturalist. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On January 6, 2018 | Updated December 19, 2024 | Comments (2)
“I long for life, and there is no help. I thirsted for the unknown; the thirst is gone. O God, let me stay with the known, and be weary of it: I am content.” The Lifted Veil by George Eliot is an 1859 novella that departs sharply from the usual realism of the esteemed British author’s fiction. She interrupted her work on The Mill on the Floss to work on this novella.
The Lifted Veil first appeared in Blackwood Magazine in 1859, the same year that her highly regarded novel Adam Bede was published.
It wasn’t published in book format until 1878 as part of a single volume with Silas Marner and Brother Jacob. The Lifted Veil wasn’t published as a stand-alone volume until 1924, more than forty years after the author’s death. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On January 3, 2018 | Updated January 31, 2025 | Comments (0)
My Brilliant Career (1901) was Miles Franklin‘s first novel. Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin (1879 – 1954) went on to become one of the most prominent Australian authors of her era.
She wrote this novel while still in her teens, and it was published in her twenty-first year.
It’s the story of tomboyish Sybilla Melvyn, a high-strung, imaginative girl from the Australian countryside. When her parents fall on hard times, they send her to live with her grandmother in another part of the country. Read More→
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