By Emma Ward | On November 20, 2017 | Updated March 28, 2020 | Comments (0)
From the 1989 Beacon Press edition of Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on her Life and Work by Louise DeSalvo:
Although at her death Virginia Woolf left diaries, memoirs, letters, stories, notebooks, and drafts of novels as well as published work that documented the trauma she endured as a child, one of the most significant facts about Woolf’s childhood — that she was sexually abused — has been glossed over by her biographers.
Louise DeSalvo’s long-awaited book creates a portrait of Woolf that reveals the extent of her childhood abuse – what she endured, how she coped with it, reacted to it, understood it. Read More→
By Brooke Kroeger | On November 19, 2017 | Updated January 1, 2023 | Comments (0)
From the 1999 Times Books edition of Fannie: The Talent for Success of Writer Fannie Hurst by Brooke Kroeger: In the first half of the twentieth century, Fannie Hurst was known as such for the startling particulars of her extraordinary life as for writing stories that penetrated the human heart.
Hers is the story of a Jewish girl from the Middle West turned dynamic celebrity author, the kid down the street who spoke her dreams out loud and then managed to fulfill every one of them.
Her name was constant newspaper fodder. It appeared in reviews of her twenty-six books; in reports of her travels, her lifestyle (including the marriage she curiously chose to hide from her friends as well as the public), her diet, and her provocative public statements; and in her obituary, which was front-page news, even in The New York Times. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On November 15, 2017 | Updated January 1, 2023 | Comments (0)
The Estate of Margaret Mitchell is very strict in terms of what they will allow to be done with the intellectual property of Gone With the Wind, one of the biggest blockbusters in American literary history.
So it was a quite a coup that Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley was published as an authorized sequel to GWTW. Though this book was scorned by critics, it was a commercial success. The following description is from the 1991 Warner book edition:
Gone With the Wind … dramatic, romantic, sweeping in its depiction of a time and place in American history, unparalleled in its portrayal of men and women at once larger than life and as real as ourselves … Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On November 10, 2017 | Updated May 14, 2023 | Comments (0)
From the 1976 Farrar, Straus and Giroux edition of Dragons in the Waters by Madeleine L’Engle: Readers of Madeleine L’Engle’s novel The Arm of the Starfish will recall Poly and Charles O’Keefe and their amateur detective friend, Canon Tallis. In Dragons in the Waters, the O’Keefes are traveling with their scientist father by freighter to Savannah, Georgia, to Venezuela.
Among their fellow passengers are Simon Renier, who quickly becomes their friend, and his enigmatic cousin Forsyth Phair, who with Simon is returning a family heirloom to Venezuela — a portrait of Simon Bolivar. When Forsyth Phair is murdered and the portrait stolen, all the passengers and crew become suspect. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On November 9, 2017 | Updated March 25, 2026 | Comments (0)
From the 1972 Farrar, Straus and Giroux edition of A Circle of Quiet (The Crosswicks Journals) by Madeleine L’Engle: The title of Madeleine L’Engle’s book comes from the text itself:
“Every so often I need out — away from all of these people I love most in the world — in order to regain a sense of proportion. My special place is a small brook in a green glade, a circle of quiet from which there is no visible sign of human beings … there I move slowly into a kind of peace that is indeed marvelous, ‘annihilating all that’s made to a green thought in a green shade.’”
This book is the attempt of a gifted woman to define and explore the meaning of her life, a life which, like many women today, is complex —that of wife, mother of three children, grandmother of two, teacher, frequent public speaker, practicing Christian, and writer who has published seventeen books. Read More→
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