Literary Ladies Guide

At one of the library sales I frequent in my quest for classics by women authors, I came upon Sara Crewe: or, What Happened at Miss Minchin’s by Frances Hodgson Burnett. This confused me; wasn’t this the story always known as A Little Princess?

It turns out that Sara Crewe is an earlier version of what became the classic. It was serialized in St. Nicholas magazine in 1887, then collected into a novella, published in 1888 by Charles Scribner’s Sons.

In 1905, the expanded story was published for all time as we best know it, titled A Little Princess. And since then, the story has been performed on stage, filmed in several versions, and is consistently named one of the top novels for children of all time. 

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From the 1993 Viking edition of The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton: “Brave, lively, engaging,” said The New York Times Book Review of Edith Wharton’s classic novel The Buccaneers, left uncompleted at her death (finished by Marion Mainwaring).

Nan and Virginia St. George have the great good luck to be born beautiful and wealthy — the two qualities prized above all others in 1870s New York — but the insurmountably bad luck to come from “new money.”

Shunned by the snobbish guardians of Manhattan society, the lively girls still attract many admirers, but no offers of marriage from eligible men — the grail pursued discreetly but with single-minded intensity by all young women of polite birth (and their mothers). Read More→

Mary O’Hara (July 10, 1885 – October 14, 1980; born Mary O’Hara Alsop) was an American author, screenwriter, and composer, best known for the horse story for all ages, My Friend Flicka.

Born in Cape May, New Jersey, she was raised in the Brooklyn Heights, New York, mainly by her father. Her mother died when she was a child.

Against her father’s wishes, in 1905 she married a distant cousin, Kent Kane Parrot. Sadly, their daughter died of skin cancer when in her early teens. The couple, who also had a son, divorced around 1920, after which, Mary began working as a screenwriter in Hollywood. Read More→

Dear Literary Ladies,
Sometimes I get so frustrated with my writing that I want to give up. It’s as often a pain as it is a pleasure, and it’s getting so hard to be published these days. Can you give me a reason to persist in this often thankless pursuit?

Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it’s the answer to everything. To why am I here? To uselessness. It’s the streaming reason for living. Read More→

Katherine Mansfield (1888 – 1923) was a complex, brilliant writer of short stories who lived with tuberculosis for several years that overlapped with her most productive time as a writer. The following selection of gutsy and inspiring quotes by Katherine Mansfield that demonstrate her desire to live life to the fullest, even at its most difficult times.

New Zealand-born Mansfield adopted the bohemian life in London in 1908, and it was then that she began writing short stories.

Her first collection was published in 1911 and reflected a certain disillusionment with her native country. Titled In a German Pension, it received favorable reviews and was praised for “acute insight” and “unquenchable humour.” Read More→

Presented here is a selection of passages from the diaries and journals of several iconic women authors — Louisa May Alcott, L.M. Montgomery, Enid Bagnold, Virginia Woolf, Anaïs Nin, and Sylvia Plath. Also introduced is Anne Lister, AKA “Gentleman Jack,” who is considered a prolific secret diarist moreso than an author.

For many well-known authors, a personal diary or journal was a constant companion and confidant. Into it they poured their dreams, goals and desires, as well as their fears and insecurities.

What’s striking about these entries is that they reveal a great deal of self-doubt. It goes to show that in many cases, confidence is less important to success than perseverance. Confidence as a writer is something gained over time.

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Orchard House, best known as the home in which Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women, is a literary site that’s a must-do for devotees of this classic American author. 

Located in Concord, Massachusetts (within an hour of Boston) the house opened its doors to the public in 1911, some twenty-three years after the deaths of Louisa May and her father, the noted philosopher and educator Amos Bronson Alcott.

The interior rooms of Orchard House can be seen via a docent-led tour lasting about an hour. The Alcott family comes to life through the tour guide’s narrative, and questions are cheerfully answered along the way.

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From the 1961 Doubleday edition of No Signposts in the Sea by Vita Sackville-West: In this brilliantly fashioned short novel by Vita Sackville-West, one of the most distinguished of British writers, a famous journalist accompanies an attractive widow on a leisurely voyage and discovers the raptures and torments of an apparently unrequited love.

His passion mounts even as he must face the fact that his beloved is unattainable; for, as the reader gradually learns, it is not just a matter of his humble origins, nor of her reticence and seeming preference for a likable — and highly eligible — fellow passenger. It is that he himself has only a brief time to live. Read More→