By Melanie P. Kumar | On June 23, 2021 | Updated January 28, 2024 | Comments (1)
Quite often in life, the innocence and idealism of one’s childhood years are intruded upon by the realities and pragmatism of adult life.
The author in question is Enid Blyton, who was called “a racist, sexist homophobe and not a well-regarded writer,” by the members of the Royal Mint, who in 2019 blocked attempts to give her a commemorative coin.
When one is forced to reckon with the labeling of a favorite author of one’s childhood, there will necessarily need to be a dialogue with the past to find a balance with the present. Read More→
By Robin Clifford Wood | On June 18, 2021 | Updated August 27, 2022 | Comments (2)
Rachel Field (1894 – 1942) was an astonishingly prolific playwright, poet, children’s writer, novelist, and illustrator. I knew almost nothing about her before I moved into her old house on an island in Maine, but now I know better. Here is a selection of fascinating facts about Rachel Field, a talented and prolific author who deserves to be rediscovered and read. (photo at right, Beineke Library, Yale)
Due to the tragedies that reverberated from her sudden death and the subsequent hardships of her bereaved family, Rachel’s work and her famous bright spirit faded prematurely from the national literary scene. Fortunately, the first biography of Rachel Field arrived in 2021 to celebrate the woman and her writing. Read More→
By Francis Booth | On June 8, 2021 | Updated November 17, 2021 | Comments (0)
Caresse Crosby (born Mary Phelps Jacob; April 20, 1892 – January 24, 1970) was known as a patron to the Lost Generation and other expatriate writers in Paris of the late 1920s. With her second husband, Harry Crosby, she founded Black Sun Press, publishing early works of writers who would have a lasting impact.
And in an offbeat yet impactful turn of events, in 1914, Crosby became the first person to receive a patent for the modern bra in 1914. The following appreciation of Crosby’s Paris years is excerpted from Everybody I Can Think of Ever: Meetings That Made the Avant-Garde by Francis Booth, reprinted by permission. Read More→
By Ann McCutchan | On June 4, 2021 | Updated June 13, 2023 | Comments (8)
The following musing on the friendship of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Zora Neale Hurston, two complex literary personalities, is excerpted and adapted from The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Author of “The Yearling,” © 2021 by Ann McCutchan.
This biography revives interest in a mid-20th century writer whose work successfully bridged literary and commercial qualities.
A Pulitzer Prize winner and household name in her time, Rawlings deserves to be remembered and read. Further thoughts on The Life She Wished to Live will be found following this excerpt. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved: Read More→
By Francis Booth | On May 30, 2021 | Updated October 25, 2025 | Comments (0)
Sylvia Beach (1887 – 1962) was the legendary owner of the legendary bookshop Shakespeare and Company the meeting place for all of literary Paris in the 1920s, and the publisher of James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922.
Excerpted from Everybody I Can Think Of Ever: Meetings That Made the Avant-Garde by Francis Booth, reprinted by permission.
Beach wrote her own résumé towards the end of her life in a letter dated April 23, 1951, to the American Library in post-war Paris, when she donated the remaining books from Shakespeare and Company to them. Read More→
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