By Taylor Jasmine | On July 21, 2018 | Updated August 14, 2026 | Comments (2)
When Giant by Edna Ferber was published in 1952, some critics, especially those in the Southern U.S., weren’t impressed. In fact, the book made them hopping mad. Ferber’s books, considered by some as dramatic pot-boilers, often managed to weave in themes of racism and injustice and that didn’t sit too well in areas where racism was prevalent.
A 2011 re-evaluation of the novel in The Texas Observer had this to say:
“Though it now boggles the mind, when Edna Ferber’s classic potboiler Giant was first published in 1952, it scandalized Texans from the Pecos to the Sabine. Critics ripped the novel, a hard-nosed satire of Lone Star mores, and Ferber herself to shreds in papers across the state. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On July 17, 2018 | Updated September 25, 2026 | Comments (0)
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir (1959) is the first of a multi-part autobiography series by a great intellectual and literary figures of the twentieth century. It depicts her early years growing up in a bourgeois French family, her adolescent rebellion against the convention and religious doctrine, and college education at the Sorbonne.
Toward the end of this memoir, she strikes out as part of an intellectual set in Paris in the 1920s and cements her lifelong open relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre.
Simone de Beauvoir’s friendships, early lovers, teachers, and mentors come to life in this vivid portrait of a fascinating and brilliant woman. It begins like this: Read More→
By Jordan St. Clair-Jackson | On July 11, 2018 | Updated March 27, 2023 | Comments (0)
Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor, first published in 1952, was this author’s first novel. Followed by The Violent Bear it Away, another novel, and A Good Man is Hard to Find, a collection of short stories, it was reissued in a new hardcover in 1962 as a nod how much O’Connor’s audience had grown in the intervening years.
O’Connor was best known for fiction (primarily short stories) in the form of morally driven narratives populated with flawed characters sometimes described as grotesque. As she herself reminded readers in her essay “The Teaching of Literature”: Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On June 17, 2018 | Updated September 22, 2025 | Comments (0)
Miles Franklin (1879 – 1954) is best known for her first novel, My Brilliant Career. Published in 1901, when the author was just 21, it’s an atmospheric story of a teenage girl growing up in the Australian bush who longs to break free from societal expectaions, as live as her own person.
Just after the novel’s publication and early success she wrote only sporadically, having become involved in World War I efforts and the woman suffrage cause.
During this period, she wrote a sequel to My Brilliant Career titled My Career Goes Bung, finishing it around 1915 – 1916. But it proved too far ahead of its time and wasn’t published until some decades later. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On May 19, 2018 | Updated September 22, 2025 | Comments (0)
Charlotte Temple by Susanna Rowson (1762 – 1824), sometimes known as Susanna Haswell Rowson) was the best-known work by this American-British author. It was also America’s first best-selling novel. First published in England in 1790 as Charlotte: A Tale of Truth, it was retitled Charlotte Temple in 1797.
With its classic theme of seduction and remorse, it sparked a great deal of controversy in its time. Yet it remained the most widely read novel of the first half of the nineteenth century.
Other than Charlotte Temple, Susanna Rowson’s prolific body of writings (which also included other novels as well as plays, poems, and school textbooks) has been largely forgotten. Though contemporary readers give this novel mixed reviews, judging from reader comments on Goodreads, Charlotte Temple has endured as an example of early American literature. Read More→
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