By Francis Booth | On June 6, 2022 | Updated August 28, 2022 | Comments (0)
Prolific American author Vera Caspary’s last published novel, Elizabeth X, was released first in the U.K. in 1978, the year before her autobiography, The Secrets of Grown-ups. It was reissued in the U.S. the following year as The Secret of Elizabeth.
This analysis of Elizabeth X, or The Secret of Elizabeth 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 Francis Booth | On May 31, 2022 | Updated December 10, 2024 | Comments (0)
“The trouble with being the author of one of the all-time classics of suspense is that people keep expecting you to be that good again; and I suppose I must regretfully say that Vera Caspary’s The Man Who Loved His Wife is no Laura,” began Anthony Boucher’s February 20, 1966 review in the New York Times.
“But it is an intelligent and largely persuasive novel of a laryngectomy subject with a powerful death wish,” continued Boucher’s review, “ and was it himself or one of his family that fulfilled the desire?
I suspect that Mrs. Caspary has cast as a whodunit a story that could have been more effective without the puzzle element; but it still is well worth one’s attention – especially for her unflagging skill in creating unpleasant people.” Read More→
By Elodie Barnes | On May 30, 2022 | Updated July 8, 2025 | Comments (2)
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (1900 – 1948) is best known as the wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and for being the first true Jazz Age flapper in the 1920s. She was also a talented painter and dancer, as well as a writer in her own right. Here, we’ll explore Save Me the Waltz and other writings of Zelda Fitzgerald, which certainly deserve a fresh look.
Struggling first against the excesses of her own Roaring Twenties lifestyle and then battling mental illness, Zelda never achieved the critical success of her husband nor had the chance to fully develop her skills. According to her daughter Frances (Scottie) Fitzgerald:
“It was my mother’s misfortune to have been born with the ability to write, to dance, and to paint, and then never to have acquired the discipline to make her talent work for, rather than against, her.” Read More→
By Sarah Fanny Malden | On May 10, 2022 | Updated August 21, 2022 | Comments (3)
Jane Austen by Sarah Fanny Malden (1889) offers a detailed 19th-century view of Jane Austen’s life and works. The following analysis and plot summary of Persuasion focuses on the novel that many have judged to be Austen’s most mature and accomplished work.
Persuasion, the last novel Austen wrote, and Northanger Abbey, her first completed novel, were both published six months after her death in 1817.
Mrs. Malden said of her sources, “The writer wishes to express her obligations to Lord Brabourne and Mr. C. Austen Leigh for their kind permission to make use of the Memoir and Letters of their gifted relative, which have been her principal authorities for this work.” Read More→
By Sarah Fanny Malden | On April 30, 2022 | Updated August 21, 2022 | Comments (0)
Jane Austen by Sarah Fanny Malden (1889) offers views of Jane Austen‘s life and work from a 19th-century perspective. The following analysis and plot summary of Emma (1815) focuses on what some readers and critics believe to be the author’s finest novel (some might beg to differ, of course).
Mrs. Malden said of her sources, “The writer wishes to express her obligations to Lord Brabourne and Mr. C. Austen Leigh for their kind permission to make use of the Memoir and Letters of their gifted relative, which have been her principal authorities for this work.”
The 1889 publication of Malden’s Jane Austen was part of an Eminent Women series published by W.H. Allen & Co., London. The following excerpt is in the public domain: Read More→
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