By N.J. Mastro | On March 10, 2025 | Updated March 12, 2025 | Comments (0)
The work of feminist writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft’s (1759–1797) has endured, despite attempts of critics of her time to bury her legacy after her death. A year after she died, her husband, William Godwin, published Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, unwittingly turning the public against the love of his life.
Two generations later, however, women rediscovered Mary Wollstonecraft’s writing — breathing new life into a historical figure who might have been forgotten along with other notable women whose words were lost to the patriarchy.
William Godwin meant no harm when he published his memoir of Mary Wollstonecraft in 1798. Mired in grief, he wanted the world to know Mary the way he did— as a compassionate, brilliant woman. Read More→
By Francis Booth | On January 28, 2025 | Comments (0)
Amy Levy (1861 – 1889), British novelist and proto-feminist essayist, lived the life of the “New Woman” with a circle of literary and lesbian friends, especially her probable lover Vernon Lee. The wealthy, fictional Sachs family in 19th-century London is the subject of Reuben Sachs (1888), arguably Levy’s best-known work.
Levy’s novel The Romance of a Shop (also published in 1888), is a “New Woman” novel about four sisters trying to make it in business.
In 1886, Levy had published “The Jew in Fiction,” in the British Jewish Chronicle. She said that no novelist so far had succeeded in “grappling in its entirety with the complex problems of Jewish life and Jewish character. The Jew, as we know him today … has been found worthy of none but the most superficial observation.” Read More→
By Francis Booth | On December 10, 2024 | Comments (0)
“You survived. That’s important.”
“But who am I? An insignificant girl with no great talent. Why was I the one to be saved?”
He smiled a little. “Haven’t you heard that God heeds each sparrow’s fall?”
So many sparrows fell. Was God watching? Did He count them? Why was I chosen to live?”
(from A Chosen Sparrow by Vera Caspary, 1964)
This in-depth look at A Chosen Sparrow by Vera Caspary is excerpted from A Girl Named Vera Can Never Tell a Lie: The Fiction of Vera Caspary by Francis Booth ©2022. Reprinted by permission. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On November 2, 2024 | Updated November 14, 2024 | Comments (0)
Presented here is an analysis by James Weldon Johnson of Phillis Wheatley’s poetry. She was one of the first women to be published in colonial America, and the first person in the U.S. to have a book of poetry published while enslaved.
James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) was a writer, educator, poet, diplomat, and civil rights activist. He helmed the NAACP from 1920 to 1930. He was a significant figure in the Harlem Renaissance movement, or as it was then called, The New Negro movement.
The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922), chosen and edited by Johnson, was one of a handful of significant anthologies of Black literature to be published in the 1920s. The segment following, in which he provides and analysis of Phillis Wheatley’s poetry, is a portion of the Johnson’s Preface to this collection. It is in the public domain.
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By Tami Richards | On October 10, 2024 | Comments (0)
As a social scientist, Harriet Martineau (1802–1876) published at least fifteen book titles, some of them spanning several volumes.
As a journalist, Martineau made a living by writing for mid-19th century journals and newspapers, encouraging intellectual and social debates across her native England and around the world.
As a writer, she engaged readers of novels, travelogues, biographies, and much more – she probably would have a book in every section of the library if her work were still in print today. Read More→
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