By Melanie P. Kumar | On October 6, 2021 | Updated August 25, 2022 | Comments (2)
There are some books from one’s schoolgirl years that stay with you, and the What Katy Did series by Susan Coolidge (1835–1905) certainly falls into that category for me.
I read and re-read those books through many vacations. Before realizing it, the actions of favorite characters begin to have an effect on me, as the reader.
The American author of the What Katy Did series (five books in all) was born Sarah Chauncey Woolsey but gained fame with her pen name, Susan Coolidge. The first book of her Katy Did series was published in 1872. Read More→
By Tyler Scott | On September 29, 2021 | Updated July 11, 2024 | Comments (0)
Many of us love classic books, so I thought it would be fascinating to discover a few contemporary writers’ favorite classic books by women authors. Leslie Pietrzyk, Stacy Hawkins Adams, and Kathryn Reid responded with thoughtful answers as well as short biographies.
As a contributor to Literary Ladies Guide, I (Tyler Scott), weigh in as well. When we write, when we read, it’s all about enlarging our circle. This brief survey proves that literature continues to connect us in our shared human experiences. Read More→
By Evan Atlas | On September 24, 2021 | Updated April 27, 2024 | Comments (0)
This musing on women’s spiritual journeys inspired by the sea is excerpted from the essay “Women Who Swim” by Evan Atlas. Featuring the iconic real-life swimmer Gertrude (Trudy) Ederle, it moves into parallels with Marian Taylor in The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch and Edna Pontellier in The Awakening by Kate Chopin:
The sea appears as this powerful source of perfection and self-transcendence in The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch (1987), whose character, Marian, is the subject of a sea-inspired spiritual journey. She arrives in an unfamiliar setting, immediately noticing that something is off: Read More→
By Melanie P. Kumar | On August 30, 2021 | Updated November 11, 2026 | Comments (7)
It’s a talented fiction writer who can make you believe that she has written your story. And what if you’ve been named for a fictional heroine because your father loved her character traits?
Then, it’s almost an umbilical cordlike connection that stays with you throughout your life. This is how I came to be named Melanie, after the character of Melanie Wilkes from Gone With the Wind.
My father had read the book in engineering college, when I was nowhere in the picture. He tucked the name away in his head for future use. After my birth, as is wont in families, many suggestions for names came up from family members. The name Melanie encountered a bit of resistance, being a Christian name in an Indian home, but my father stood his ground. Read More→
By Francis Booth | On August 25, 2021 | Updated August 26, 2022 | Comments (4)
The fascinating and highly transgressive Englishwoman Anne Lister (1791 – 1840) of Shibden Hall in Yorkshire wasn’t a writer of published books, but was a committed diarist with a lot to write about. This introduction to the secret diaries of Anne Lister is excerpted from Killing the Angel: Early Transgressive British Woman Writers by Francis Booth ©2021, reprinted by permission.
Known in her local environs as “Gentleman Jack,” Lister’s enormous journals, only recently published, run to twenty-six volumes and four million words – which possibly makes her in terms of word count one of the most prolific of woman writers in this book – but were never meant to be read by anyone.
These diaries, written primarily between 1817 up until Lister’s death in 1840, are partly in code to hide her lesbian sexuality. Once decoded, they are perfectly unambiguous, at least today. Read More→
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