Literary Ladies Guide

Elizabeth von Arnim’s 1940 novel (her last), Mr. Skeffington, tells the story of a woman’s rather desperate effort to grasp at her lost youth as she approaches the age of fifty. She has a hard time accepting middle age and yearns for the health and beauty she feels that she has been robbed of by the passage of time.

In a contrived plot, she encounters all the men whose hearts she broke in the bloom of youth. Spoiled, vain Fanny Trellis Skeffington, who had long since divorced her husband (Mr. Skeffington of the title), must come to terms with her life as it is, not as she wishes it to be. 

This novel wasn’t as popular as the author’s debut novel, Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898), nor as successful in literary terms as Vera (1922), it nonetheless became well known through its 1944 film adaptation. Elizabeth Von Arnim, who died in 1941, didn’t live to see this adaptation.

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In this site’s  “Dear Literary Ladies” series, a challenge that’s universal to the writer’s life is playfully posed to a (departed) classic author. We find the “answer” in the author’s own writings about the subject.

Here’s what L.M. Montgomery, best known as the author of the Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon series, has to say about something that most every writer experiences  – rejection of their work.

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There’s something quite intimate in seeing the handwriting of revered authors whose works we’re accustomed to seeing in print. Here’s a sampling of letters, notes, manuscript fragments, and diary entries of classic women authors we know and love.

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Here’s a sampling of Dorothy Parker‘s cynical verses on life and love. In her heyday from the late 1920s through the 50s, she was known for her sharp wit, and was one of the founding members of the Algonquin Roundtable, an exclusive group of eminent New York City writers.

Behind her famous acid wit was a life often filled with struggle and sadness. Following a difficult childhood, she lived fairly recklessly, drinking excessively, going from one bad relationship to another, and often contemplating suicide. ‘What fresh hell is this?’ she wondered in one famous poem. Read More→

Laura Z. Hobson (June 19, 1900 – February 28, 1986) was an American fiction writer best known for Gentleman’s Agreement and the subsequent award-winning film of the same name.

Born Laura Kean Zametkin in New York City, she and her twin sister Alice grew up on Long Island. Their parents were highly educated refugees from czarist Russia. Her father was the first editor of the Jewish Daily Forward; her mother did social work.

Before she became a full-time novelist with the 1947 publication of Gentleman’s Agreement, she had been a successful writer of advertising and promotional copy on the staff of Luce publications, where she wrote for Time, Life, and Fortune. Read More→

Christina Georgina Rossetti (December 5, 1830 – December 29, 1894) is one of the most enduring and beloved of Victorian poets. Born in London, she was the youngest of four artistic and literary siblings.

She is known for her long poem “Goblin Market,” her love poem “Remember,” and the lyrics to the popular Christmas carol “In the Bleak Midwinter.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne and Lord Tennyson praised her work and she was hailed as the natural successor to Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Christina’s poetry and prose reflected her pensive, passionate, devotional, and, at times, playful personality. Read More→

Dear Literary Ladies,
I just got a taste of sweet success—all my work and efforts seem to be coming to some fruition. I don’t want to boast or brag, but I admit I want to shout my news from the rooftops! I won’t, of course; but how should a writer savor success once it arrives? Read More→

Mary Mapes Dodge (January 26, 1831 – August 21, 1905) was an American writer and editor of children’s books and stories. She is best known for the children’s novel, Hans Brinker.

Born Mary Elizabeth Mapes in New York City, she was he daughter of a well-to-do family and enjoyed a privileged education by private tutors that included languages, literature, music, and art.

In 1851, at age twenty, she married William Dodge, a lawyer with whom her father had business dealings. In short order, the couple had two sons. Just a few years into the marriage, Mr. Dodge was beset by financial difficulties and abandoned the family. He was found dead a month later from  an apparent drowning. Read More→