By Nava Atlas | On April 11, 2019 | Updated September 8, 2022 | Comments (0)
Charlotte Brontë (1816 – 1855) outlived all five of her siblings, including her literary sisters, Emily and Anne. The grief at losing her sisters at ages thirty and twenty-nine, respectively, may have been easing with the happiness she found as the wife of Arthur Bell Nichols, and the widespread recognition of her talents as a writer.
Jane Eyre, Shirley, and Villette had all been published, and Charlotte was recognized as a major talent. Her books sold well, too. And though she was still known as “Currer Bell,” the male pseudonym she’d use to break into the publishing world, her true identity had been established. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On April 9, 2019 | Updated September 8, 2022 | Comments (0)
The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir is a semi-autobiographical novel published in her native French in 1954, and in English translation in 1956. The same year it was published in France, it won the prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt.
When The Mandarins was published outside of France, de Beauvoir was best known (as she is still today, perhaps) for her 1949 nonfiction book, The Second Sex, a feminist classic.
The Mandarins encompasses many of de Beauvoir’s favored themes, including existentialism, feminism, political structures (including communism), and morality. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On April 1, 2019 | Updated September 8, 2022 | Comments (0)
In January of 1947, Simone de Beauvoir, existentialist philosopher, novelist, and author of feminist classic The Second Sex, landed at La Guardia airport. From there she embarked on a months-long journey from one end of the U.S. to the other.
Immersing herself in American culture, customs, and vistas, she kept a detailed diary that was published in France in 1948. It was first published in an American edition in 1954.
The University of California Press published a more recent edition in 1999, describing it as “one of the most intimate, warm, and compulsively readable texts from the great writer’s pen.” The publisher’s description continued: Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On March 31, 2019 | Updated September 8, 2022 | Comments (4)
The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather, published in 1915, was the third of her twelve novels. It traces the artistic development of Thea Kronberg from Moonstone, her hometown in the desert of Colorado, to the stage of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.
Thea Kronborg has a dream of becoming a world-class singer. Born into the family of a Swedish Methodist minister in the Colorado village of moonstone, she has a beautiful voice, a driving ambition, and an innate sense of what is true and fine. She sees the surroundings in which she is growing up in as cheap and tawdry, though it’s a part of the booming American West. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On March 29, 2019 | Updated September 8, 2022 | Comments (0)
The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986) published first in French in 1967 as La Femme Rompue, presents a trio of novellas (or, one could argue, long short stories).
The French author, existential philosopher, political activist, and feminist has remained best known for The Second Sex (1949). But de Beauvoir also put her social theories, especially those pertaining to affairs of the heart, into several works of fiction.
Upon the book’s 1969 publication in English, The Sunday Herald Times (London) wrote: “In three immensely intelligent stories about the decay of passion, Simone de Beauvoir draws us into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises … suffused with de Beauvoir’s remarkable insights into women, The Woman Destroyed gives us a legendary writer at her best.” Read More→
Categories: 
Comments: