Literary Ladies Guide

From the Hazleton, PA Standard-Speaker, March, 1968, review by Miles A. Smith of Plant Dreaming Deep by May Sarton, published by W.W. Norton.

The early part of this book describes how the author, in 1958 when she was forty-six, found a dilapidated 18th-century farmhouse in a quiet corner of New Hampshire, settled in it, and began putting down new roots.

It was the first property Miss Sarton ever had owned. The rehabilitation of the house and the problems of furnishing it strike a familiar theme — so many other writers have described similar experiences. Yet she gives the account a fresh, individualistic touch. Read More→

Adapted from the original article in The Emporia Gazette – November 10, 1938: The 1938 Nobel prize for literature today was awarded to Pearl S. Buck, American author of The Good Earth and other novels dealing with China. 

She was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia in 1893 and has spent much of her life in China. (photo at right courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Parents Missionaries – Mrs. Buck’s parents were missionaries in China and her first husband, J. Lossing Buck, was a member of the faculty of Nanking university. They were divorced in 1935. Read More→

Enid Bagnold (October 27, 1889 – March 31, 1981) was a British novelist and playwright. Though now best known as the author of the classic 1935 children’s novel National Velvet, she wrote about a variety of subjects in a number of genres.

The daughter of an army officer, Bagnold was born in Rochester, England and spent her early years in Jamaica, after which she was educated in England and France. She attended art school, studying with some notable artists.

Though National Velvet (1935) and possibly The Chalk Garden might ring some familiar bells, a 2008 article (in conjunction with a stage revival of the latter) by Sarah Crompton states that “… her name is almost forgotten … the rest of a rackety, riveting life and career has fallen down the cracks of literary history.”

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From the original review from The Coshocton Tribune, August, 1940: A haunting echo of something you can’t quite put your finger on pervades every page of Gypsy, Gypsy by Rumer Godden.

In tonal quality, the book is very much like Black Narcissus, Miss Godden’s previous novel. She has succeeded in weaving the same aura of mystery around the Normandy coast that she did around the Indian locale of Black Narcissus. Read More→

Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher has delighted generations of young readers since it was published in 1917. A tale of a young girl’s growth toward independence, it has been reissued in numerous editions, proving its timelessness. The 1999 edition from Henry Holt and Co. described the book in brief:

“For all of her nine years, fragile Elizabeth Ann has heard her Aunt Frances refer in whispers to ‘those horrid Putney cousins.’ But when her aunt can no longer care for her, Elizabeth Ann is forced to leave a sheltered life to live in the wilds of Vermont with distant relatives. Read More→

From the original review in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle by Betty Brainerd, February, 1935:  In Come and Get It by Edna Ferber is a lusty and dramatic saga of life in the Wisconsin north woods.

Before mentioning anything else you have to say about Edna Ferber, it’s that she has been places and she has seen things. And then, having seen things, she proceeds to picture them for others in a manner that is so natural and clear that you, too, begin to see them, and to live them. But not like Edna Ferber sees them. Read More→

From the review of A Peculiar Treasure by Edna Ferber in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 12, 1939:  Edna Ferber‘s hallmark is a succession of successes, her attainment is the climb to the pedestal upon which she is recognized as one of America’s most proficient and intuitive novelists.

Her philosophy is always that of the typical, middle-class Jew whose faith is American democracy.

Edna Ferber comes down to us today in autobiographical form to capture again the pulse of a reading public avid for her understanding and again to pluck upon the heartstrings of a nation she knows so well. Read More→

Ship of Fools by noted American short story master and novelist Katherine Ann Porter (1890 – 1980) was published in 1962. The sprawling novel took her more than twenty years to write and was highly anticipated by critics and readers alike. Though critical opinions were mixed, it was the best-selling novel of her career and of 1962 overall.

Set before the start of World War II, it follows the voyage of a group of disparate passengers on their way from Mexico to Europe.

The sprawling story, which Porter originally anticipated would be a novella, was started in 1940. It features large cast of international characters on the German freight and passenger ship, the Vera, most on a pleasure trip from Veracruz, Mexico to Bremerhaven, Germany. There are also more than eight hundred Spanish workers in steerage. Read More→