By Francis Booth | On April 23, 2023 | Updated August 13, 2023 | Comments (0)
Presented here is a deep dive into the character of Cassandra Mortmain, the heroine of Dodie Smith’s 1948 young adult novel, I Capture the Castle.
British writer Dodie Smith (1896 – 1990) is best known for the children’s book The 101 Dalmatians (1956). I Capture the Castle (1948), written after World War II while Smith was living in California and writing scripts for the movies, was her first novel.
The following is excerpted from Girls in Bloom: Coming of Age in the Mid 20th-Century Woman’s Novel by Francis Booth, reprinted by permission. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On April 6, 2023 | Updated July 31, 2023 | Comments (0)
George Eliot (1819 – 1880; pen name of Mary Ann Evans) has been recognized for her probing Victorian novels. Middlemarch is her arguably her greatest achievement, though most all of her novels were met with great critical and public acclaim.
Eliot’s writing was politically and socially driven, with many characters who are small-town individuals, some free thinkers, some eccentrics, others learned intellectuals. She drew her characters with great psychological depth whether they played major or minor parts in her narratives.
George Eliot’s heroines were no exception. From Adam Bede (1859) her first novel, through Daniel Deronda (1876), her last, her female characters were imagined fully formed, with dreams and desires of their own. Read More→
By Francis Booth | On February 21, 2023 | Comments (0)
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623 – 1673) was a British poet, philosopher, scientist, and fiction writer. Like some of her predecessors, the eccentric Lady Margaret Lucas Cavendish wrote for an exclusively female audience and was angry at men:
Men are so Unconscionable and Cruel against us, as they Endeavour to Bar us of all Sorts or Kinds of Liberty, as not to Suffer us Freely to Associate amongst our Own Sex, but would fain Bury us in their Houses or Beds, as in a Grave; the truth is, we Live like Bats or Owls, Labour like Beasts, and Die like Worms. (To All Noble and Worthy Ladies)
This essay is excerpted from Killing the Angel: Early British Transgressive Women Writers ©2021 by Francis Booth. Reprinted by permission. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On February 18, 2023 | Comments (0)
The following analysis and overview of the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861), the esteemed British poet, is excerpted from Essays by Arthur Christopher Benson.
Rich in insights and references to other poets of the period, this essay and the book (published in London by William Heinemann in 1896) from which it came are in the public domain. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On February 7, 2023 | Updated February 18, 2023 | Comments (0)
In 1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, a long narrative novel in verse, was published. It would become one of her best known works, and a true magnum opus with 11,000 lines.
The story of a writer somewhat like herself, it’s set in a lush landscape and laced with Elizabeth’s wry observations on the position of women in her time and place.
In a book titled Some Eminent Women of Our Time (1889), the author observed: Read More→
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