By Taylor Jasmine | On October 30, 2017 | Updated December 18, 2022 | Comments (0)
The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead, the Australian author, was originally published in 1940. But it wasn’t until this novel was reissued twenty-five years later, in 1965, that it received critical acclaim and a wide audience.
Sam Pollit the title character, is the father and husband in the dysfunctional Pollit family. Supposedly, he was inspired by Stead’s father, a marine biologist. Egotistical, perhaps even narcissistic, Sam dominates the blended family, especially his wife Henny and older daughter Louie.
When it was first published, The Man Who Loved Children was set in Sydney. The reissued edition changed the venue to Washington, D.C. as a way to appeal more to American readers. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On October 22, 2017 | Updated December 23, 2022 | Comments (0)
From the original review of Miss Bianca (book #2 in The Rescuers series) by Margery Sharp in The Anniston Star, November, 1962:
What a joy it is, in the harsh literary wilderness of earnest tragedy and frantic sophistication, to find an occasional fairy tale, all delight and whimsy and otherworldliness!
Margery Sharp gave us this pleasure several years ago with her wonderful little book, The Rescuers, the stirring tale of the Mouse Prisoners’ Aid Society and its daring rescue of a Scandinavian poet from the gloomy dungeons of the notorious Black Castle. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On October 14, 2017 | Updated May 8, 2023 | Comments (0)
Yonnondio: From the Thirties is a fragment of a novel that Tillie Olsen (best known for Tell Me a Riddle) began at age nineteen, in the 1930s, and then abandoned for decades as she worked to earn a living and raised four daughters.
In 1974, it was published as an unfinished work. It’s the story of the Holbrooks, a struggling working-class family, moving about the western and middle western U.S. in search of a living.
This novel is considered experimental and somewhat autobiographical, and explores themes of class and family (specifically motherhood). It also nods to the socialist views of Olsen and her family of origin. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On September 21, 2017 | Updated November 18, 2022 | Comments (0)
The Australian government refuse to import Letty Fox: Her Luck by native Aussie Christina Stead (the talented and complicated author best known for The Man Who Loved Children) after this novel’s 1947 publication. It was declared “salacious” and “obscene,” and was even occasionally banned.
A frank and witty coming of age story set between the Great Depression and World War II, this banned book didn’t meet much favor in the Australian press, either. Here’s one such review, which panned the novel thoroughly. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On September 19, 2017 | Updated September 21, 2026 | Comments (0)
It’s widely believed that Lady Ruby MacLean, the protagonist of The Loved and Envied by Enid Bagnold was based on real-life Lady Diana Cooper, a famous socialite of the early 20th century. Bagnold’s fellow British writer Nancy Mitford also drew inspiration from Lady Cooper for Don’t Tell Alfred.
Though the book doesn’t much resonate with contemporary readers, it was apparently enjoyed by a previous generation, and stands firmly in Bagnold’s modest canon.
Lady Maclean is the character through which the theme of aging is explored, in particular, how it affects a beauty who is, as the title implies, loved and envied. Read More→
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