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Gertrude Bell, English archeologist, writer & traveler

Gertrude Bell (1868 – 1926) was an English archeologist, writer, and translator. She traveled extensively in the Middle East and advocated for Arab nationalism before settling permanently in Baghdad and contributing to the nation building of the Kingdom of Iraq.

She published several books about her travels and her archeological excavations. She corresponded extensively with many friends, colleagues and policy makers during her whole life.

Gertrude was outspoken and independent from an early age. She studied modern history at Oxford University and developed a passion for archeology and languages. The support of her father, English industrialist Hugh Bell, and the family fortune helped her achieve her passion.

She became fluent in Arabic, Persian (Farsi), French, and other languages, which proved essential to interact with the local population during her travels.

She authored the translation of the poetry collection The Divān of Hafez, published in London in 1897. Hafez, a 14th-century Persian lyric poet, wrote his poems in Persian (Farsi) and Arabic.

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Exploring and mapping the Middle East

Gertrude spent many years exploring and mapping the Middle East, and participating in several archeological excavations. As she was fluent in Arabic and Persian (Farsi), she established close relations with local inhabitants, local tribes and local policy makers.

She advocated for the creation of independent Arab states and advised the British government against fighting with nationalists. She authored intelligence reports and white papers and, as such, was labelled the first female diplomat in the region.

After settling permanently in Baghdad in 1919, Gertrude became a key player in the nation building of the Kingdom of Iraq. Because of her background as an archeologist, she was appointed the director of the new Department of Antiquities in order to organise and regulate archeological excavations and to prevent the looting of antiquities.

She participated in the creation of the Baghdad Archeological Museum (later renamed Iraq Museum and also known as National Museum of Iraq) and the Baghdad Public Library (later renamed National Library of Iraq), and supported the education of Iraqi women.

 

Gertrude Bell’s writings

She wrote several books, including:

Persian Pictures (1894), about her first travels to PersiaSyria: The Desert and The Sown (1907) about her trip to Damascus, Jerusalem, Beirut, Antioch and other placesA Thousand and One Churches (with English archeologist William Mitchell Ramsay, 1907) about their excavations in AnatoliaAmurath to Amurath (1911) about her archeological work in MesopotamiaThe Palace and Mosque of Ukhaidir: A Study in early Mohammadan Architecture (1914) about the ruins of Ukhaidir in Mesopotamia

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The Legacy of Gertrude Bell

Gertrude corresponded extensively with many friends, colleagues and policy makers during her whole life, including with fellow British archeologist and diplomat Thomas Edward Lawrence (better known as T. E. Lawrence, and popularly as “Lawrence of Arabia”), a lifelong colleague and friend, and with her stepmother Florence Bell, a writer and playwright who had married her father in 1876 after the death of Gertrude’s mother (who was his first wife).

According to the obituary penned by her colleague David George Hogarth in 1926:

“No woman in recent time has combined her qualities – her taste for arduous and dangerous adventure with her scientific interest and knowledge, her competence in archeology and art, her distinguished literary gift, her sympathy for all sorts and condition of men, her political insight and appreciation of human values, her masculine vigour, hard common sense and practical efficiency – all tempered by feminine charm and a most romantic spirit.”

One year after her death, a selection of her extensive correspondence (out of 2,400 pages of letters) was edited by her stepmother Florence Bell and published in two volumes as The Letters of Gertrude Bell  (1927).

Further reading (& viewing) about Gertrude BellThe Incredible Life and Adventures of Gertrude Bell (documentary) The Death of Gertrude Bell Gertrude Bell (Historic UK) The Incredible Gertrude Bell

Contributed by Marie Lebert. Edited by Nava Atlas, Literary Ladies Guide.

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Mary Louise Booth (1831–1889), abolitionist and translator

Mary Louise Booth (1831–1889), was an American writer and a prominent translator from French to English. At the beginning of the American Civil War in 1861, she translated the French anti-slavery advocate Agénor de Gasparin’s seminal book Uprising of a Great People (1861) for it to be quickly distributed in the United States.

She became the first editor of the American fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar in 1867.

Born in Millville (now Yaphank) in the State of New York, Booth was of French descent on her mother’s side. After moving to New York City at the age of eighteen, she wrote tales and sketches for newspapers and magazines and also worked as a translator. She wrote History of the City of New York (1859), which became a bestseller.

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Works translated by Mary Louise Booth

She is estimated to have translated up to forty books. Her first translation from French to English was The Marble-Worker’s Manual (1856), followed by The Clock and Watch Maker’s Manual.

She also translated some works by French writers Joseph Méry, Edmond François Valentin About, and Victor Cousin. She assisted the American translator Orlando Williams Wight in producing a series of translations of French classics.

At the beginning of the American Civil War in 1861, she translated the French statesman and anti-slavery advocate Agénor de Gasparin’s seminal work Uprising of a Great People (original title: Un Grand Peuple qui Se Relève, just published in France) in a very short time by working twenty hours a day for one week. The American English edition was published in a fortnight by Scribner’s, a well-known publisher. The book caused a sensation and she received many appreciative letters for her contribution to abolitionism.

Mary Louise translated other books by anti-slavery advocates, including Agénor de Gasparin’s America before Europe (L’Amérique devant l’Europe) in 1861, politician Augustin Cochin’s Results of Emancipation and Results of Slavery (the two volumes of L’Abolition de l’Esclavage) in 1862, and jurist Édouard René de Laboulaye’s Paris in America (Paris en Amérique) in 1865.

She also translated non-political books, including Agénor de Gasparin’s religious works (written with his wife), Édouard René de Laboulaye’s Fairy Book (Contes Bleus), educator Jean Macé’s Fairy Tales (Contes du Petit-Château), historian Henri Martin’s History of France (Histoire de France”), and philosopher Blaise Pascal’s Provincial Letters (Lettres Provinciales”).

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Mary Louise Booth as editor of Harper’s Bazaar

She was the first editor of Harper’s Bazaar, the American fashion magazine created in 1867, and kept the position for more than twenty years until her death in 1889.

Under her leadership, the magazine steadily increased its circulation and influence. After struggling financially for years as a writer and translator, she earned a larger salary than any other woman in America.

Further reading The Long Island History Project Mary Louise Booth is as Good a Friend as Ever Yaphank New York Historical Society, Mary L. Booth Birthplace

Contributed by Marie Lebert. Edited by Nava Atlas, Literary Ladies Guide.

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Toni Morrison as Visionary Editor: “Black People Talking to Black People”

Toni Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford, 1931 – 2019) is celebrated for her groundbreaking novels and nonfiction that examine the Black experience in America.

Her writings have reached millions of readers, and she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 for the “visionary force and poetic import” of her work. [above right, Toni Morrison’s author photo on The Bluest Eye, 1970; photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]

Following is an overview of her career as an editor and publisher, which isn’t as widely known despite being hugely influential in the contemporary realm of Black literature and the publishing world.

 

A mix of roles: teacher, publisher, and editor

Morrison took on several roles during her career, most obviously as a writer, but also as a teacher, publisher, and editor. She didn’t view them as separate, but as different facets of working with books, and said that she could never imagine just writing.

“I went once with a friend to the country,” she said in an interview at Bryn Mawr, “and we said we would just stay a week or two and write, and both of us brought back blank pieces of paper. I just looked at the deer, you know; nothing happened.”

She described writing as the work she could not live without but also took “huge joy” in her work as an editor. “My effort is not to erase the conflict between editing and writing but to pay full attention to the editing and to pay full attention to the teaching … I don’t think that I’m the kind of person who can write without that kind of mix.”

Her editing career wasn’t initially born out of passion but out of necessity. In the late 1960s her marriage had broken up; she had children to care for and bills to pay. She needed a job and applied to Random House after seeing an ad on the back of the New York Times Book Review.

She started at their Syracuse office in 1967, becoming the first African American woman to do so (and one of only a handful working in publishing generally).

Her work caught the attention of Robert Gottlieb, then editor-in-chief at Knopf, and Jason Epstein, the editorial director. In 1970 she was promoted to trade editor at the Random House New York office.

 

“Black people talking to Black people”

At the time, the vast majority of fiction published by commercial publishing houses was by white authors. What Morrison called “the shelf” – the tradition of African American literature in America – was scattered and fragmented, and she believed that the general handling of Black authors was poor, with substandard editing and little to no marketing or publicity.

She was determined to make a change, and wanted her presence as an editor to reassure a Black author that “somebody is going to understand what he’s trying to do, in his terms, not in somebody else’s, but in his.”

She focused on writers who had been excluded from and marginalized within mainstream publishing: “We’ve had the first rush of Black entertainment, where Blacks were writing for whites, and whites were encouraging this kind of self-flagellation. Now we can get down to the craft of writing, where Black people are talking to Black people.”

One of her first successes, The Black Book (1974) ,was an anthology of Black history spanning from the earliest days of enslavement through the twentieth century. It used essays, letters, drawings, songs, and photographs to tell the story of Black people by Black people; Morrison called it “a genuine Black history book – one that simply recollected Black Life as lived.”

 

Breaking new ground in publishing

Morrison’s list grew extensive. She published and promoted a vast range of work by Black authors, including autobiographies by Muhammad Ali and Angela Davis, as well as fiction and poetry by Lucille Clifton, Toni Cade Bambera, June Jordan and Gayl Jones.

What they all shared, in Morrison’s words, was that same vision of The Black Book: “the kind of information you can find between the lines of history. It sort of falls off the page, or it’s a glance and a reference. It’s right there in the intersection where an institution becomes personal, where the historical becomes people with names.”

Her friend Erroll McDonald, executive editor at Pantheon, said that Morrison “had a sense of mission … the books that she tended to acquire were books of political and social moment … So many of the books were responsive to the times. She saw herself as having not only a literary mission but a social mission as well.”

Morrison herself said that she “wasn’t marching. I didn’t go to anything, I didn’t join anything. But I could make sure that there was a published record of those who did march and did put themselves on the line.”

Morrison’s editing was as daring as her writing, and many of the books that she championed and published were groundbreaking in their focus and subject. Gayl Jones’ 1975 novel Corregidora, for example, was a slave narrative that focused on the history of slavery as it impacted generations of Black southern women and their relationships with each other — as opposed to their relationship to whiteness and white people.

To a certain extent it foreshadowed Morrison’s novel Beloved, and echoed her own preoccupations in her writing. It was also incredibly bold and daring for the time, and after reading it Morrison reportedly said that, “no novel about any Black woman could be the same after this.”

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Toni Morrison in her New York home, 1980s.
Photo by Bernard Gottfryd, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

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Creating connections between Black authors

Morrison fostered a close relationship with those writers she worked with. The correspondence between her and Lucille Clifton (regarding Clifton’s book Generations) reveals the editing process as a dialogue, a creative endeavor between two brilliant women.

She also encouraged connections between the writers she published and promoted. In May 1972, she wrote to thank Clifton for agreeing to read some stories by Toni Cade Bambera: “I think they are stunning – and hope you will too.” Clifton’s words were later published on the back of Bambera’s collection Gorilla, My Love: “She has captured it all, how we really talk …She must love us very much.”

 

The importance of the art of editing

Morrison believed wholeheartedly in the importance of editing, and of finding not just a good editor but the right one for the work. In an interview with The Paris Review, she said, “The good [editors] make all the difference. It is like a priest or a psychiatrist; if you get the wrong one, then you are better off alone.”

She also believed that, for Black authors, the process of writing and editing was not just an act of creation, but of resistance and pride. Language itself, for Morrison, could be a challenge to racism and prejudice. Asked how Black writers could “write in a world dominated by and informed by their relationship to a white culture” she responded: “By trying to alter language, simply to free it up, not to repress it and confine it, but to open it up. Tease it. Blast its racist straitjacket.”

This was a view that she brought to all her work, and encouraged in the authors that she published. Angela Davis, after working with Morrison on her autobiography, said, “Toni Morrison persuaded me that I could write it the way I wanted to; it could be the story not only of my life but of the movement in which I had become involved.”

For many people, Morrison’s passion and determination were inspiring “Part of her allure for me,” Erroll McDonald said, “is that she described possibilities, not only for writers of color but publishers of color … When you saw her doing what she was doing, you felt hope in a barren landscape.”

 

Difficulties within the publishing world

Morrison’s position as an editor was never without its challengess. She faced racism within Random House and the wider publishing industry; there was occasional tension with some of her Black colleagues who disagreed with her decisions.

When she published a collection of poetry by the murdered Black writer Henry Dumas, for example, her edition failed to acknowledge prior publications, including in Black World. The editor of Black World at the time, Carole Parks, wrote to Morrison saying, “It’s not just that you have given people absolutely no inkling that a Black publication gave Dumas his first national exposure. It’s that you have at the same time added to the myth that Black genius would languish unappreciated were it not for some white liberal or far-sighted individual like yourself.”

There were also economic and cultural challenges as publishing continued to transition from art form to business. At the 1981 American Writers Congress, at which she gave the keynote speech, Morrison said, “The life of the writing community is under attack … Editors are now judged by the profitability of what they acquire rather than by what they acquire, or the way they acquire it.”

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10 Fascinating Facts about Toni Morrison

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Toni Morrison’s far-reaching legacy

Toni Morrison resigned from Random House in 1983. In the preface to her novel Beloved, she wrote, “Leaving was a good idea. The books I had edited were not earning scads of money … My enthusiasm, shared by some, was muted by others, reflecting the indifferent sales figures.”

She had already made an immeasurable contribution to Black writing and to Black publishing, and to the “shelf” of Black literature in America and beyond. As Arielle Grey has stated, “the books she edited and published went out into the world and forever changed it.”

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Contributed by Elodie Barnes. Elodie is a writer and editor with a serious case of wanderlust. Her short fiction has been widely published online and is included in the Best Small Fictions 2022 Anthology published by Sonder Press. She is Books & Creative Writing Editor at Lucy Writers Platform, she is also co-facilitating What the Water Gave Us, an Arts Council England-funded anthology of emerging women writers from migrant backgrounds. She is currently working on a collection of short stories, and when not writing can usually be found planning the next trip abroad, or daydreaming her way back to 1920s Paris. Find more of her writings here and on Literary Ladies Guide.

Further reading

The Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison, ed. Justine Tally, Cambridge University Press 2008 In Her Own Words: Toni Morrison on Writing, Teaching and Editing , Bryn Mawr Alumnae BulletinToni Morrison: The Art of Fiction, The Paris Review, 1993 Remembering Toni Morrison, a Trailblazing Editor , Vanity Fair, 2019A tribute to Toni Morrison as editor, Virago News, 2021 Toni Morrison as an Editor Changed Book Publishing Forever by Arielle Gray, Medium, 2021

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Feminist Activists of India Before 1900: A Brief History

This article is reprinted with permission from Unknown Literary Canon. Women were oppressed in patriarchal civilizations the world over. And women the world refused those systems and structures. Women the world over rose up in rebellion against their oppression.

They chaffed against the private domestic sphere before leaving it. They found ways to acquire knowledge that was forbidden to their sex and gender. They defied the odds to take ruling power from men, or ruled alongside and equal to their husbands. (Shown above right, Pandita Ramabai.)

During the colonial/imperialist era, they joined and were welcomed into anti-colonialist movements. Later, they came to together and forged feminist movements to throw off the shackles of domination and oppression that tried to contain and silence them.

In the West, we tend to focus on the feminist movements of the U.S. which inspired the movements in Europe. Most feminist authors we read are American, with a handful of French writers. We miss that the world is large, and women across the world rebelled and struggled against the constraints of patriarchy. Through deepening our collective understanding of the feminisms around the world, creativity can spark like a dialectic, as Audre Lorde said.

As the suffragette movement began in the U.S., feminist writers and activists began their own movement, which grew alongside the anti-colonist and reform movement.

I should like to remind the women present here that no group, no community, no country, has ever got rid of its disability by the generosity of the oppressor. India will not be free until we are strong enough to fore our will on England and the women of India will not attain their full rights by the mere generosity of the men of India. They will have to fight for them and force their will on the menfolk before they can succeed.  1

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The Queens: Sultan Razia, Nur Jahan,
and Rani of Jhansi

Vedic India (1500 to 500 BCE) allowed for some freedoms of gender and for women. However, as that period came to a close, caste took precedence and stratified society narrowly and rigidly. The religion shifted so that righteous actions became tied to caste, caste further tied to family, and the family structure in India was already patriarchal2 — increasing the oppression of women.

The feminist movements of 1800s India looked to both Vedic times and to a few ruling queens, as inspiration for women’s liberation. Sultan Razia, full name Raziyyat-Ud-Dunya Wa Ud-Din, was the first and only female Muslim ruler of the Indian subcontinent. She learned the skill of leadership in ruling in her father’s place when he went to battle.

In 1236, Razia learned that her stepmother planned to execute her. She successfully instigated the public against her stepmother and her son. That her rebellion was supported by the public makes her rule unique. She asked the public to depose her if they were unhappy with her rule. The nobles that supported her expected her to remain a figurehead. Razia had other ideas, taking more power over the four years of her reign. She left the purdah (the private sphere that some women in India traditionally occupied), wore the traditionally male clothing of sultans (Muslim rulers), and made public appearances.

Nur Jahan ruled alongside her husband in the early 1600s3. When her husband became ill, she governed in his place. Scholars believe her political acumen and diplomatic skills rivaled those of more famous rulers. When her husband was captured, she led troops into battle to free him. She signed imperial orders, and coins were issued with her likeness.

Prior to her reign, Nur Jahan was an accomplished architect. She made innovations in the use of marble — which later inspired her stepson, Shah Jahan, who ordered the building of the Taj Mahal.

The Rani of Jhansi (rani means queen) was born Lakshmi Bai. Her complicity in colonization is questionable, but the British viewed her as an enemy. They captured her, but she escaped and became a rebel. Jhansi was a leading figure in the Indian rebellion of 1857, wrote on horseback into battle, and died on the battlefield.

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Rassundari Devi

Image: Rassundari Devi Archives, India

“If I am asked to describe my state of mind, I would say it was very much like the sacrificial goat being dragged to the altar, the same hopeless situation, the same agonized screams … People put birds in cages for their own amusement. Well, I was like a caged bird. And I would have to remain in this cage for life. I would never be freed.” 

For Rassundari Devi, feminism was a departure and a rebellion without precedent or support. She born to a high caste land-owning family in rural India in 1809 or 1810. Married off when she was only twelve, responsible for the household by the time she was fourteen, she bore twelve children. Women were not typically educated in that time and place, but she tried to learn by sitting outside a classroom while boys were taught the alphabet4.

Her book Amar Jiban (my life) was published in 1868. It’s the story of one woman’s life. An extraordinary book for its time and place, because in writing it, Rassundari Devi told the world that an ordinary woman’s life had worth and merit. Like an early Betty Friedan, she described “the problem that has no name”; that lack of fulfillment and spiritual boredom that came from the repetitive tediousness of domestic labor.

She detailed the struggle to teach herself to read when she was twenty-six. In doing so, Rassundari Devi risked family and societal disapproval and ostracization. She described the process as a form of worship. Her faith was not curtailed to the passive feminine devotion of other women of her era. She read scripture, and she forged her own relationship with the gods.

In doing so, Rassundari Devi broke through the cage that was designed to contain her — broke through the social structures that kept the lives of women domestic and small.

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Pandita Ramabai

“My soul thirsted for freedom, for knowledge, for spiritual light; and I am determined that I must seek them at any cost.” 5

Rassundari Devi’s book has survived, but the books of other feminist writers of India have been lost to history. One of those books was authored by Tarabai Shinde. Tarabai was a lower caste (class) woman whose work was explicitly feminist and theoretical: The Comparisons of Men and Women6.

Pandita Ramabai (1858 – 1922) is the best-known of the feminist agitators and rebels of her time. She did not independently chose to leave the private sphere: she was thrust out of it. She helped start local women’s movements, travelled the globe to gain an education and to seek out feminist discourse, authored multiple books, and founding schools for girls.

Before her birth, her father, Anant Shastri Dongre, wanted to teach his wife Sanskrit (the ancient language of Hindu and dharmic scriptures). For this progressive rebellion, he was ostracized and driven away from his home before Pandita’s birth. Desperate for money, the family became nomadic scholars, reciting scriptures for pay. Pandita was taught by her mother, and could recite the 18,000 lines of the Bhagavata Purana from memory7. Pandita lost her family8 to the famines of 1874.

Although Pandita had religious knowledge that would rival that of scholarly man of her time, her family’s experiences made her turn from religion and to the cause of womankind. She had two great advantages: that she learned about social reality and occupied the public sphere because of her nomadic travels, and her deep learning and understanding of Hindu ideology9.

Armed with these weapons of feminist rebellion, she travelled throughout India, agitating and starting women’s movements. She wrote a book arguing against religious practices that hurt women, and for women’s emancipation.

Pandita then traveled to England. Here, she learned English, learned about Christianity. Originally, she wanted to study medicine, but had to drop out because of her deafness. She then travelled to the U.S., where American feminism inspired her to start thinking of setting up schools for girls in India.

To fundraise, she wrote The High Caste Hindu Woman, her most famous work. As the title implies, her views could be narrow because of her high caste and unwillingness to look to women outside of that caste. As well, she advocated from a position of feminine moral superiority — under the presumption that women were morally superior to men10.

How true is the claim of many Western scholars that a civilization should be judged by the conditions of its women! Women are inherently physically weaker than men, and possess innate powers of endurance; men therefore find it very easy to wrest their natural rights and reduce them to a state that suits the men. But, from a moral point of view, physical might is not real strength, nor is it a sign of nobility of character to deprive the weak of their rights . . .

[A]s men gain wisdom and progress further, they begin to disregard women’s lack of strength to honor their good qualities, and elevate them to a high state. Their low opinion of women and of other such matters undergoes a change and gives way to respect. Thus, one can accurately assess a country’s progress from the condition of its women. 11

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Sarojini Naidu

Sarojini Naidu rebelled early. She choosing to marry a man from a different state in India than her own (so their native languages and cultures were different), and marrying outside of her caste (class; marriages in India are typically arranged strictly within castes). She became a poet and orator before meeting Gandhi and joining the non-cooperation movement against British colonialism.

Sarojini’s anti-colonialism was part of her feminist advocacy. When arguing with anti-colonialists, she framed women as essential “nation builders” without whom the independence movement could not succeed. Through her advocacy, the women’s liberation movement became part of Indian nationalism.

Sarojini also advocated for women’s suffrage in India, helped start the Women’s Indian Association, and helped women organize strikes and non-violent protests. She became the first Indian female president of Indian National Congress, the first modern nationalist movement of the British empire, and today, India’s major liberal political party.

Her sister-in-law, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, was a more radical feminist than Sarojini. Kamaladevi shocked society by choosing to remarry a playwright after she was widowed. She helped found the All-India Women’s Conference. She’s best remembered for her work in promoting the socio-economic status of women through promoting the learning of Indian handicrafts, handlooms, and theatre.

 

The Reform Movements of the Early 1800s

Prior to the 1857 – 1858 conquest of South Asia, women and men in India had already begun to organize against casteism, poverty, and rape. Reform movements began around the time of Rassundari Devi’s birth. The oppressions that the reformers wanted to reform included: sati (widow burning) widow remarriage, child marriage, women’s property rights, and polygamy.

The reformers argued to raise the age of consent and marriage to 16 or 1812. Reformer K.C. Sen argued that child marriage was a “corruption of scriptures” and impeded India’s advancement. Reformer Dayananda Saraswati wrote that child marriage caused Indians to be “children of children”. He advocated for girls to be educated prior to marriage. In 1872, there was some success in the Marriage Act, which raised the marriageable age for girls to 14, and for boy to 18.

The reformers also advocated for the education of women. Both liberal and orthodox reformers supported the cause. Some believed that education would make women better wives and mothers, and better allow women to teach their children traditional values. Between 1855-1858, a forerunner of the movement, Vidyasagar, opened forty schools for girls.13

The brahmins (highest caste) organized a 1920 meeting for the compulsory education of women (their demand was denied). Rabindranath Tagore — winner of 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature — revolutionized a school for the revival of Indian arts and culture that his father had started. The school not only allowed women, but emphasized the conditions necessary for bringing out the creative in women.14

 Women began to graduate from colleges by the 1880s. Some women went further: going to England to study law and establishing medical schools in India.

At the time, most of the reformers were male of high caste (rigid Hindu class system). There’s the shortcoming of movement spurred by men, with little input from women and the lived experiences of women. This led to a greater issue: that the issues that the reformers wanted to address mostly affected higher caste Hindu women, to the exclusion of women from other religions and the lower castes. It’s the same problem that’s plagued women’s movements across the world, and it’s a problem that still troubles India’s modern-day feminist movements.

There was some lower caste reformers, like Jotirao Phulu (1827 – 1890), who opposed child marriage and advocated for women’s education and remarriage. He started several schools: one for the education of girls, two for the education of the lower castes, and one for the education of the children of widows. In his last book, published 1872, Phulu wrote against the stereotypical sexist language, eg., instead of “all men are created equal”, he wrote “each and every man and woman.”15

 

Why Is This Important

The early feminist movement in India serves as a powerful example of decolonial feminism, of how pre-colonial history and the movement against colonization spark women’s liberation movements. Because the two movements were historically entwined, the feminism of India doesn’t set up women’s liberation into narrow binaries.

As for the feminist activists and advocates of India, and those of the global majority, India’s early feminism can spark inspiration and creativity. The women and men of these movements showed great resilience in the face of adversity, courageously defied tradition, and spoke up and wrote for what they believed in. Their stories aren’t history to be forgotten; they are guides to show us what is possible.

Contributed by Unknown Literary Canon, a newsletter/blog/project that encourages readers to think about equality for all women through the lens of under-known/overlooked literary fiction, literature by lesbian women, and feminist theory.

 Notes

1 Jawaharlal Nehru, speech at Allahabad, March 31, 1928. From: Jayawardena, Kumari. Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World. (Kali for Women, 1986, republished by Verso Books 2016). p 73.

2 “Righteous actions”, or dharma, are the basis of the dharmic religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, etc.). One is born into one’s caste, caste duties are taught within the family — so if a society is casteist, it is necessarily very oriented around the idea of family.

Jayawardena, Kumari. Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World. (Kali for Women, 1986, republished by Verso Books 2016). p 74.

3 Lal, Ruby. Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan. (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2018).

4 Naaz, Hira. The Caged Bird Who Sang: The Life and Writing of Rassundari Devi | #IndianWomenInHistory. Feminism in India. March 23, 2017. https://feminisminindia.com/2017/03/2...

5 Kosambi, Meera. Pandita Ramabai’s American Encounter: The Making of a Modern Hindu Woman. 2003.

6 Jayawardena, Kumari. Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World. (Kali for Women, 1986, republished by Verso Books 2016). p 90.

7 Celarent, Barbara. The High Caste Hindu Woman by Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati Pandita Ramabai’s America: Conditions of Life in the United States. American Journal of Sociology 117, no. 1 (2011): 353–60. https://doi.org/10.1086/660901.

8 Ibid, p 90 – 91. Pandita’s parents and sister passed away. She and her brother survived.

9 Ibid, p 91.

10 Celarent, Barbara. The High Caste Hindu Woman by Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati Pandita Ramabai’s America: Conditions of Life in the United States. American Journal of Sociology 117, no. 1 (2011): 353–60. https://doi.org/10.1086/660901.

11 Kosambi, Meera. Pandita Ramabai’s American Encounter: The Making of a Modern Hindu Woman. 2003. p 169.

From: https://www.lehigh.edu/~amsp/2006/09/...

12 Jayawardena, Kumari. Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World. (Kali for Women, 1986, republished by Verso Books 2016). p 83.

13 Ibid, p 87.

14 Ibid, p 85.

15 Ibid, p. 84.

  

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The Works of Flora Nwapa, Mother of Modern African Literature

Chief Florence Nwanzuruahu Nkiru Nwapa (1931 – 1993, familiarly known as Flora Nwapa, was a Nigerian-born author, poet, short story writer, and activist.

She was known as the “Mother of African Literature,” and was the first African woman author whose writing published in England.

Here’s more about her writing, including the influences behind her debut novel, Efuru.

 

About Flora Nwapa

Florence Nwanzuruahu Nkiru Nwapa was born in Oguta, Nigeria. Born into the Igbo tribe, she was given the otherwise male title of Chief (or ogbuefi). Much of Nwapa’s writing covered what life was like from an Igbo woman’s perspective.

She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1957. She moved to Scotland and earned a further Diploma in Education at the University of Edinburgh. Her education readied her for a position as Education Officer for Nigeria’s Ministry of Education; Nwapa later taught at the Queen’s School in Enugu until 1962.

Nwapa published her debut novel, Efuru, in 1966. It was the first English-language novel by an African female writer to be published—and widely acclaimed—in Britain. Next came Idu (1970) and Never Again (1975). She also wrote two short story collections, and a poetry volume, Cassava Song and Rice Song (1986).

She founded Tana Press in 1974, and the Florence Nwapa Company in 1977. Nwapa was awarded the title of Chief (or ogbuefi) by her town in 1978. Usually, this honor of achievement was only awarded to Igbo men.

In 1989, Nwapa was appointed a visiting professor of creative writing at the University of Maiduguri in Nigeria. She joined the PEN International Committee in 1991. Nwapa’s last novel, The Lake Goddess, was published after her death (from pneumonia) in 1993.

Flora Nwapa is more than an influential female author: she paved the way for many emerging writers who followed in her footsteps. The Flora Nwapa Society, which provides scholarships and resources, is named in her honor.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Efuru (1966)

Efuru was Flora Nwapa’s debut novel. Its title translates to “daughter of Heaven” in the Igbo language—a culture that wove its way thematically through most of her prose and poetry.

As mentioned earlier, Efuru became the first English-language novel by an African woman to be published in England, partially thanks to its submission to Heinemann Educational Books.

The origin story behind the manuscript might be surprising: without a specific letter to a fellow author, Nwapa might never have decided to publish her debut work at all. She was initially reluctant to publish the novel before sending a copy of the unpublished manuscript to fellow African writer Chinua Achebe. After reading the story, Achebe responded with positive feedback—and one guinea in postage money to submit the manuscript to a publisher in London.

When Heinemann agreed to publish Efuru, a new world opened up for future African writers on an international stage. Efuru draws much of its inspiration from traditional Igbo culture, and served as an important window into culture that was little seen or understood from an international perspective.

The story’s heroine, Efuru, wants nothing more than to be a mother. However, she is strong-willed and career-focused, and experiences disappointment through many of the relationships which unfold throughout the story. Traditional values, independence, and life from the Igbo woman’s perspective are important themes that made Efuru a notable work, as well a bestseller.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Idu (1970)

Nwapa’s second novel, Idu, focuses on the eponymous main character’s close relationship with her husband and her eventual resistance to traditional cultural customs after he passes away. The word “idu” might have multiple meanings depending on its context—it can be used as a name or greeting, but also indicates a place (today, it is in Benin).

When Idu’s husband, Adiewere, dies she resists cultural norms and refuses to engage in the traditional mourning rituals. Moreover, she refuses to marry his brother as local customs dictate. Instead, Idu chooses to remain devoted to her husband, and waits to reunite with him in the afterlife rather than to remarry.

The book was criticized for its focus on Idu’s almost singular devotion to her husband, which some considered a strong contrast to Nwapa’s first novel, which exalted female independence.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Never Again (1975)
and One is Enough (1981)

Never Again was Nwapa’s third novel, published shortly after she founded Tana Press in 1974. It takes her writing in a different direction, focusing on the protagonist, Kate, who flees from the Biafran War. Family is an important theme, though the novel also explores the true cost of war rather than its patriotic public mask.

One is Enough, Nwapa’s fourth novel, was her first published by the Flora Nwapa Company. Amaka, the story’s heroine, endures an unhappy, abusive partnership. She chooses to have only one child, as suggested by the title.

The story One is Enough returns to the theme of female independence. Amaka moves from her hometown to the larger city of Lagos in search of a better, freer, and more successful life.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Women Are Different (1986) and Later Works

Women Are Different, a novel published after Nigeria’s 1960s independence, follows a group of women from their relationship at school to into adulthood. The story pays particular attention to how culture and traditions have changed around them.

Like her earlier works, Nwapa’s Women Are Different explores traditional values and culture from a female perspective. Divorce, infidelity, family life, and friendship among the themes that are explored through this lens.

Nwapa published two short story collections during her lifetime, This is Lagos (and Other Stories) in 1971, and later Wives at War (and Other Stories). Her sole poetry collection, Cassava Song and Rice Song (1986), compares women to the staple food cassava—a metaphor for their strength and crucial role in society.

Her last book, The Lake Goddess, was published posthumously. This novel, which explores the traditional tale of the Oguta Lake Goddess, believed to be a protector of women. is considered by some as Nwapa’s most important work.

 

Further Reading & Sources Encyclopedia Britannica SA History Online Brittle Paper Flora Nwapa Society Open Access Library: Invoking Flora Nwapa DW: Flora Nwapa The University of Edinburgh

. . . . . . . . . . 

Contributed by Alex Coyne, a journalist, author, and proofreader. He has written for a variety of publications and websites, with a radar calibrated for gothic, gonzo and the weird. His features, posts, articles and interviews have been published in People Magazine, ATKV Taalgenoot, LitNet, The Citizen, Funds for Writers, and The South African, among other publications.

More by Alex Coyne on this site

Nadine Gordimer, South African Author and Activist 8 Essential Novels by South African Author Nadine Gordimer Jeanne Goosen, Author of We’re Not All Like That 6 Notable South African Women Poets The Banning of Nadine Gordimer’s Anti-Apartheid Novels Olive Schreiner, Author of The Story of a South African Farm 10 Unforgettable Books by South African Women Writers Ingrid Jonker, South African Poet and Anti-Apartheid Activist

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7 Trailblazing American Librarians: Building Collections & Community

Who would have ever imagined that librarians would become targets in contemporary culture wars? Most of today’s battles are over banning and censorship, as we know. (Shown at right, Belle da Costa Greene).

And though book banning is nothing new, it wasn’t the primary concern of the librarians highlight here today. They were blazing trails in other ways (you’ll frequently see “the first” here). All of these professionals were visionaries who elevated the role of libraries as cultural hearts of communities.

These librarians proudly built diversity and cultural awareness into the fabric of what has evolved into the contemporary library. And that’s something that can’t be unraveled.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Belle da Costa Greene Photo: Theodore Marceau

Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950) became better known to the reading public thanks to the bestselling 2021 novel, The Personal Librarian. She started her career in 1905 as the private librarian of financier J.P. Morgan, building an exceptional collection of rare books and manuscripts. After his death in 1913, Morgan’s son and heir J.P. Morgan Jr. tasked Belle with transforming the collection into a public institution.

She remained the director of the Morgan Library for twenty-four years. Today her legacy continues at the Morgan Library & Museum, a cultural gem in New York City. A recent exhibition paid tribute to her life and work.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Ernestine Rose

Photo: NYPL Archives

Ernestine Rose (1880 – 1961) started her career at New York Public Library’s Seward Park Branch, serving a Jewish immigrant community. Her own Jewish background inspired her to create culturally sensitive programs for the library’s patrons.

When Ernestine became head librarian of the 135th Street Branch in 1920, she transformed it into an a lively hub in the Harlem Renaissance era for readings, public lectures, story hours, and exhibitions by Black artists.

Ernestine was the first to integrate the library’s staff, hiring several librarians who would become trailblazers in their own right. She helped facilitate the acquisition of the Arthur A. Schomburg collection, which eventually become the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, one of the crown jewels of the NYPL.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Pura Belpré

Photo: NYPL Archives

Pura Belpré (1899 – 1982) was the the New York Public Library’s first Latina librarian, hired by Ernestine Rose, who we met just above. Starting from her tenure at the 135th Street Branch to the other libraries at which she worked, she advocated for the city’s Spanish-speaking community. She oversaw the expansion of the Spanish-language book collection and created programs for Latinx library patrons, especially NYC’s large Puerto Rican community.

Her legacy lives on in the Pura Belpré Award, established in 1996. This annual prize is awarded to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work “best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth.”

. . . . . . . . . . .

Augusta Braxton Baker

Photo: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture,
Photographs and Prints Division,

Augusta Braxton Baker (1911 – 1998) spent much of her career, like Ernestine Rose and Pura Belpré, above, at the New York Public Library’s 135th Street Branch. She began as a children’s librarian in 1937, and made it her mission to build a children’s books collection with positive portrayals of people of color. Her efforts laid the foundation for the Schomberg Center Black Liberation List for Young Readers.

Augusta urged writers to create books featuring diverse people and communities, and encouraged publishers to bring them to market. In 1953, she was made Assistant Coordinator for Children’s Services, the first Black librarian to work in an administrative capacity at NYPL.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Carla Stanton Jones

Photo: ALA Archives

Clara Stanton Jones (1913 – 2012) started her career in the South, as a university librarian in the 1940s. In 1970, she became the first Black woman (and the first woman of any background) to serve as the director of a major American library system — the Detroit Public Library.

Carla also made history as the first Black president of the American Library Association (ALA), serving from 1976 to 1977. Her long and illustrious career, which spanned several decades, was dedicated to breaking barriers of race and gender in librarianship, inspiring generations of librarians of color who came after her.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Effie Lee Morris

Photo: ALA archives

Effie Lee Morris (1921 – 2009) was the first Black president of the Public Library Association (1971). She worked as a public librarian in Cleveland and the Bronx before becoming the first coordinator of children’s services at the San Francisco Public Library. There, she built a major collection of children’s books focused on diversity. The collection is now the Effie Lee Morris Historical and Research Collection.

Later, she switched gears to work as an editor of children’s books for a major publisher. As a librarian and editor, Effie Lee received many honors, including an entry into the congressional record as “a visionary who recognized the power of literacy and education in overcoming racism, inequality, and poverty.”

. . . . . . . . . . .

Dr. Carla Hayden

Photo: Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

Dr. Carla Hayden (1952 – ) until very recently was the 14th Librarian of Congress. In September 2016, Dr. Hayden became the first woman and the first African American in this position, nominated by former President Obama. As mentioned at the top of this post, her position was terminated abruptly on May 12, 2025. Encapsulating her tenure, the Library of Congress states:

“Her vision for America’s national Library, connecting all Americans to the Library of Congress, has redefined and modernized the Library’s mission: to engage, inspire and inform Congress and the American people with a universal and enduring source of knowledge and creativity.

By investing in information technology infrastructure and digitization efforts, she has enabled the American people to explore, discover and engage with more with this treasure trove of America’s stories maintained by the Library of Congress, even if they never visit the Library’s buildings in and around Washington, D.C.”

It won’t be a moment too soon for LOC to rehire her, or someone of her caliber to oversee our national archive. There were, and are other trailblazing librarians; this is a sampling of those who captured my imagination today, and if you love libraries as much as I do, I hope you enjoyed this!

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The Fox Woman by Nalbro Bartley (1928)

Journalist, short story writer, and lecturer Nalbro Isadora Bartley (1888 – 1952) published at least twenty-five novels between 1919 and 1934, sometimes releasing two in a year. The Fox Woman (1928) was her 19th novel. 

At the start of The Fox Woman, whose cover blurb says, “The Fox Woman ever takes but never gives,” we are in the 1880s. Gender-neutrally-named “tomboy” Stanley is only seven but already her widowed father, Millard Ames, is in awe of her.

“There was something about Stanley that he could not gainsay— something so persuasive yet determined that he found himself yielding to her slightest request.” Stanley’s mother died in childbirth and her father has since dedicated himself to her, as his late wife’s friend Maggie has dedicated herself to him, though with no expectation of reciprocity.

“I love you, Millard. I’m content to serve you. I know I’m absurd when I try to think of romance. I’m not the sort men fall in love with.” Maggie Aydelotte, referred to by Stanley as Tante Aydelotte, is her “self-appointed overseer and secretary” and refers to Stanley as a “tiny fox woman,” in reference to the story of the (male but gender-fluid) Japanese fox god.

The fox god who changes himself into a beautiful woman and apparently comes to the rescue whenever trouble threatens or a boon is asked . . . but really, she is searching for thrills! It’s the best simile I’ve come upon for Stanley. The fox woman has a clever heart but the good she does never outweighs the evil she causes. She will bide her time to have her own way. Apparently she may be maligned, even self-sacrificing, but she turns events to her liking or else escapes from distasteful situations. She so dominates and maneuvers the lives of those about her yet remaining the innocent, misunderstood individual, that she escapes dénouements. Her aim is to have power—and to be amused . . .

From an early age, Stanley’s was “a masculine mind with keen feminine intuitions. Just as she reveled in beauty and was, herself, a thing of motion and loveliness, so she reveled in power, in any game of playing politics to bring about the desired result.” By the age of twelve, but looking fifteen, Stanley writes in her diary, “I have become a woman. My darling father does not realize this. I shall have him take me abroad — I do not believe that I wish an American husband.”

Her father dutifully takes Stanley to Paris, though his legal business is failing and he has little money; Tante has gone to the Midwest to become a teacher, having given up on marrying Millard Ames. Father and daughter stay in Paris until she really is fifteen and has still never been to school, but has “a proposal of marriage, a wealth of golden hair and the ability to execute fancy dances in a manner equal to that of a professional.

She had become a sparkling little cosmopolitan.” Having made sure that she would never have a second mother, Stanley “now focused her thoughts upon a husband. He must be handsome, rich, talented, and as devoted and deluded as her father who was to live with them for always. They must travel a great deal, and have a brownstone-front house in New York and perhaps a country place in the Berkshire towns.”

Stanley’s father dies when she is still fifteen and she wishes he had waited until she had found a husband but soon gets over him. “Stanley reordered her small world and was not unmindful that she looked well in black.”

Tante returns as Stanley’s guardian and tells her she must learn to live on very little money and attend her boarding school, Miss Masters’s Seminary for Young Ladies.

Bah, she hated the very thought of it—three years of namby-pamby monotony . . . yet she was penniless and only fifteen, quite alone save for this strangely loyal soul . . . she must make the best of it. One cannot always remain fifteen. And she had been born with the wisdom of fifty.

But Stanley hates the conformity of school; she is an individual not a conformist. “I won’t get-up early and eat scorched porridge and say prayers and walk and study and mend and scrub—I wish that I had eloped with anyone.”

What follows for the next few chapters of the long novel is a kind of bildungsroman of Stanley adapting herself to and then leaving school, trying to become an actress and becoming engaged to the besotted Blair Britton. And she continues to toy with Blair while juggling the attentions of the wealthy but much older and previously married Lee Van Zile.

All the time Stanley was playing a fascinating game of fox. She knew better than to surrender to Van Zile instanter—the ardent old chap had begged her to marry him three days after they met. To have caused another seven-day wonder in eloping with an elderly upstate millionaire and abandoning young Britton to heartbreak and drink would not have given Stanley the self-righteous thrill of victory she meant to obtain.

Stanley does, cruelly, foxily reject Blair and marry Van Zile, though she insists on him remodelling the gloomy old pile, the “red brick fortress,” where he lives. She soon comes to regret her decision, but understands it was inevitable given her true nature. “I had a greedy jewel-box instead of a flesh-and blood heart,” she tells Tante. But now Stanley is pregnant.

“I’m wondering if he’ll be like Lee, a monotonous little soul sure to get seven per cent on investments, or if he will be like me —cheating and selfish and covered with a veneer of smiles.” Tante realises that Stanley wants a son to have someone to dominate as she gets older and “as an antidote to age and the inevitable ending of her sex appeal.”

Stanley sees motherhood as another challenge for her to master; “she wanted to be as successful in the role as she had been in those of fiancée, artiste, old man’s bride.” Especially since she is assuming her husband will not last long; “It is not likely that his child will know him,” she says to Tante. “As for Van, he could not last five years. Already his step was uncertain and his blood pressure high.”

When the baby is stillborn, Stanley has even more power over her husband. “If she had made Van Zile adore her by giving him a child she had made him an abject slave by having lost the child. His pity as well as his pocketbook were laid at her restless little feet.” Stanley comes to hate Van Zile and treat him cruelly.

“Was it an inherited taint which caused this ruthless deceit and wilfulness? Some people are born with defective limbs or organs—she was born with defective character.”

Stanley becomes pregnant again and loses this baby too; the doctors don’t tell her but warn Tante that Stanley not to try to have a third birth. But without Stanley’s knowledge, Tante uses her own guile and Van Zile’s money to “adopt” a baby boy whose mother has died; they present it to Stanley as her own son, “Ames Van Zile, the millionaire baby, as the evening papers had it.”

As time moves on, Stanley becomes the mature, society lady and charitable patroness as the “girlish, ethereal charm that had deceived Blair and won her husband was replaced by a somewhat substantial, matronly beauty.” The novel now becomes mainly the story of Stanley’s son, as he grows up and marries the exotic Carol, of whom Stanley initially disapproves. But in the end, Blair returns and offers to marry the aging fox woman.

“We must marry but let us not try to be in love. Rather comfortable at our age, don’t you agree ?”
        “I’m not sure but what I am in love ” She was thinking what a graceful retreat this afforded her. Tante in a nursing-home, good old Tante, after all— Blair and herself traveling leisurely on the Continent with May spent in London.
        She could refer to her married son and to her lovely daughter-in-law, be proud of Blair’s distinguished white hair and vibrant voice even when ordering dinners. She could write interesting, self-sacrificing letters to Ames and send Carol beautiful trifles from Paris.
        Sometimes they could come back and Ames’s children would find in her a doting, story-book grandmother. Perhaps Carol would not mind her toying with them for a few weeks. (She would bring them such wonderful clothes and make such a generous will.)
        All the time she would have someone who understood her moods and knew her past, as well as appreciated her abilities. Blair would be ready to pick up her fan whenever she ordered him to; in time he would become docile and rather fussy about draughts and diets.
        No matter how bravely he might speak now she was content to bide her time. They would make pleasant contacts and she could reminisce inaccurately but romantically—yes, it might be best to marry this Blair . . . moreover he would not be too expensive!

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

Other novels by Nalbro Bartley

Her previous novels included The Gorgeous Girl, 1920, “A story of contrasts — the story of one girl whose gorgeousness is all on the outside, plainly visible; and another, whose beauty and fineness are hidden within.”

Having married in her mid-twenties, Beatrice feels “the dissatisfaction not over this first year of married life but at the twenty-seven years as a Gorgeous Girl, the disappointment at not having some vital impelling thing to do.” She resolves to become another kind of woman, a very advanced woman for 1920.

She would now be an advanced woman, intellectual, daring; she would allow her stunted abilities to have definite expression. Either she would find a new circle of friends or else swerve the course of the present circle into an atmosphere of Ibsen, Pater, advanced feminine thought, and so on––with Egyptology as a special side line. She would even become an advocate of parlour socialism, perhaps. She would encourage languid poets and sarcastic sex novelists with matted hair and puff satin ties. She would seek out short-haired mannish women with theories and oodles of unpublished short stories, and feed them well, opening her house for their drawing-room talks.

The previous year Bartley had published another novel about a woman seeking her way in the modern world. A Woman’s Woman is about a woman torn between love for her wealthy businessman husband and a bohemian artist, which examines the societal pressures on the modern woman. At the age of thirty-five, with two children Sylvia rebels.

“Little by little she emerges from her home-keeping shell and joins one woman’s club after another. She is sent as [a] delegate to conventions, starts a woman’s exchange and finally becomes one of the most prominent women in the country.”

But at the end she returns to her married life; surprisingly perhaps, the reviewer in the Chicago Tribune did not approve: “the reader is expected to rejoice as the spirited heroine, for love’s sake, resumes the making of fish balls and the washing of dishes.” And in 1926 Bartley had published Her Mother’s Daughter, which contains the character Dodo Grant, more a garçonne than a flapper, more Radclyffe Hall than Zelda Fitzgerald.

Dodo Grant, her closely cut black head nodding vivaciously as she gave orders as to the seating. Dodo’s was the vitality of the Murillo type, dark, inscrutable eyes and a sallow, healthy skin. She stood out among a thousand of young things—the boyish, athletic type that could wear untrimmed hats pushed far back on her clipped head and say timely, clever things whenever conversation lagged.

It seemed natural for Dodo to smoke incessantly and wear knickers for walking. One thought of her as a sexless, delightful comrade whose main interests were golf and dogs and social settlement work. No one remarked at Dodo’s appearing at a dance in a severe white frock and upon all other occasions in mannish tailleurs and swashbuckling neckties centered by a sparkling cock made of diamonds. No one anticipated the day when Dodo Grant would marry.

Nevertheless, in the chapter “Dodo’s Secret,” we find that Dodo is secretly straight and has been infatuated with a married man, over whom she has been through a “rocky time.” “When I was nineteen his wife heard about it and made a row. She always does, they say. I was rather a wreck. No one has suspected that I was the romantic kind—I’ve never been anything but pals with the boys.”

. . . . . . . . .

Contributed by Francis Booth, the author of several books on twentieth-century culture: Amongst Those Left: The British Experimental Novel 1940-1960 (published by Dalkey Archive); Everybody I Can Think of Ever: Meetings That Made the Avant-Garde; Girls in Bloom: Coming of Age in the Mid-Twentieth Century Woman’s Novel; Text Acts: Twentieth-Century Literary Eroticism; Comrades in Art: Revolutionary Art in America 1926-1938; High Collars & Monocles: 1920s Novels by British Female Couples; and A Girl Named Vera Can Never Tell a Lie: The Fiction of Vera Caspary.

Francis has also published several novels: The Code 17 series, set in the Swinging London of the 1960s and featuring aristocratic spy Lady Laura Summers; Young adult fantasy series The Watchers; and Young Adult fantasy novel Mirror Mirror. Francis lives on the South Coast of England. 

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An Autumn Love Cycle by Georgia Douglas Johnson (1928; full text)

Georgia Douglas Johnson’s poetry was first published in NAACP’s The Crisis in 1916, and was subsequently included in the premier Black journals and anthologies of the 1920s. Georgia was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1920s. Presented here is the full text of An Autumn Love Cycle, her third collection, published in 1928.

Though Black women’s poetry was regularly featured in the era’s periodicals, an entire collection by one writer was a rarity. Georgia published three poetry collections in the span of six years; one more was to come decades later.

Her first collection, The Heart of a Woman (1918) featured poems both specific to Georgia’s life yet universal to the female experience, speaking of love, loneliness, and women’s constrained roles. Decades later, the title of this book (and its eponymous poem) would inspire Maya Angelou’s 1981 memoir of the same name.

The poems in Bronze (1922) more directly confronted themes of race and social justice. An Autumn Love Cycle (1928) returned to more personal themes of love, motherhood, and being a woman in a male-dominated world. Arguably Georgia Douglas Johnson’s most critically praised collection, it includes “I Want to Die While You Love Me,” her most widely reprinted poem. It was recited at her funeral.

More full texts of collections by Georgia Douglas Johnson

THE HEART OF A WOMAN (1918)
BRONZE (1922)

. . . . . . . . . .

An Autumn Love Cycle
by Georgia Douglas Johnson (1928)

Harold Vinal, Limited, New York 1928
This book is lovingly dedicated to Zona Gale whose appreciation, encouragement,
and helpful criticism have so heartened me

Privilege to reprint certain of these poems is through the courtesy of the editors of The Crisis, The Liberator, Telling Tales, The Sphinx, Music and Poetry, Messenger, Opportunity, and The Minaret. 

Foreword by Alain Locke

In the title of her first volume, The Heart of a Woman, Georgia Douglas Johnson chose with singular felicity, indeed with the felicity of instinct, her special domain in art. And as she proceeds with maturing power and courage of expression in this third volume, it becomes all the more apparent that the task which she has set herself is the documenting of the feminine heart.

Any poetic expression of life from this point of view that achieves a genuine authenticity and sincerity of emotion is as welcome as it is rare. For the emotions of woman, time-old though they be and hackneyed over as in a sense they really are, are still but half expressed. They have yet to be carried beyond the platitudes and the sentimentalizations of a man-made tradition.

Yet in the wholesome stripping off of mediaeval brocades and the laces of classic conceits, it has often occurred to us to question whether the imposition of futurist patterns and the cubist cut of the current intellectual modes has given us any more vital or adequate a revelation of the flesh and blood figure of the “eternal feminine.”

“Clothes are but clothes,” as Carlyle would say: modern feminist realism has but overlaid the vitally human with another convention, and interposed another cloak. How long shall we make a sphinx of woman, who herself now yearns to throw off along with the mystery, the psychological vestments of disguise. Our author puts it pointedly in “Paradox,”–

Alas! you love me better cold
Strange as the pyramids of old
Responselessly . . .
So, like a veil, my poor disguise
Is draped to save me from your eyes
Deep challenges.
Fain would I fling this robe aside
And from you, in your bosom hide
Eternally.

Voicing this yearning of woman for candid self-expression, Mrs. Johnson invades the province where convention has been most tyrannous and inveterate,—the experience of love. And here she succeeds where others more doctrinally feminist than she have failed; for they in over-sophistication, in terror of platitudes and the commonplace, have stressed the bizarre, the exceptional, in one way or another have over-intellectualized their message nad overleapt the common elemental experience they would nevertheless express. Mrs. Johnson, on the contrary, in a simple declarative style, engages with an ingenuous declarative style, engages with ingenuous directness the moods and emotions of her themes. 

Through you I entered Heaven and Hell 
Knew rapture and despair.

Here is the requisite touch, certainly for the experiences of the heart. Greater sophistication would spoil the message. Fortunately, to the gift on a lyric style, delicate in touch, rhapsodic in [t]one, authentic in timbre, there has been added a temperamental endowment of ardent sincerity of emotion, ingenuous candor of expression, and, happies of all for the particular task, a naive and unsophisticated spirit. 

By way of a substantive message, Mrs. Johnson’s philosophy of life is simple, unpretentious, but wholesome and spiritually invigorating. On the one hand, she belongs with those who, under the leadership of Sara Teasdale, have been rediscovering the Sapphic cult of love as the ecstasy of life, that cult of enthusiasm which leaps over the dilemma of optimism and pessimism, and accepting the paradoxes, pulses in the immediacies of life and rejoices openly in th glory of experience.

In a deeper and somewhat more individual message, upon which she only verges, and which we believe will later be her most mature and original contribution, Mrs. Johnson probes under the experiences of love to the underlying forces of natural instinct which so fatalistically control our lives. [Especially is this evident in her suggestion of the tragic poignancy of Motherhood, where the consummation of love seems also the expiation of passion, and where, between the antagonisms of the dual role of Mother and Lover, we may suspect the real dilemma of womanhood to life.]

Whatever the philosophical yield, however, we are grateful for the prospect of such lyricism. Seeking a pure lyric gold, Mrs. Johnson has gone straight to the mine of the heart. She has dug patiently in the veins of her own subjective experience. What she has gleaned has been treasured for the joy of the search and for its own intrinsic worth, and not exploited for the values of show and applause.

Above all, her material has been expressed with a candor that shows that she brings to the poetic field what it lacks most,— the gift of the elemental touch. Few will deny that, with all its other excellences, the poetry of the generation needs just this touch to make it more vitally human and more spontaneously effective.  —ALAIN LOCKE. Washington, D.C. 

 

. . . . . . . . . . .
THE CYCLE

I Closed My Shutters Fast Last Night
I closed my shutters fast last night,
Reluctantly and slow,
So pleading was the purple sky
With all the lights hung low;
I left my lagging heart outside 
Within the dark alone, 
I heard it singing through the gloom
A wordless, anguished tone.
Upon my sleepless couch I lay 
Until the tranquil morn
Came through the silver silences
To bring my heart forlorn,
Restoring it with calm caress
Unto its sheltered bower,
While whispering: “Await, wait
Your golden, perfect hour.”

Footsteps
Passing ever, early, late,
No fond footsteps seek my gate,
But down the winding road they wend
To some other journey’s end.
Yet,—I would not have them wait
Here within my guarded gate,
Certain footsteps I shall know,
And for them I listen low!

Oh Night of Love
Oh night of love, your rapt ecstatic hours
Were mine, the languor of their pale perfume
Pervades me, kisses in a fountain-fire,
Surround me,—fetter and consume.
Oh night of love, your groves of strange content
Project a thralldom over comind days;
Exalted, derelict, and blind I went
Unmindfully along Life’s misty ways. 

Autumn
Believe me–when I say
That love like yours, at this belated hour,
Overwhelms me,—
Stills the fount of thought!
I move as one new-born–
And strange to swift transitions
As from my prison door
I gaze
Into a blinding sunlight!

Thralldom
Your voice keeps ringing down the day
   In accents soft and mild,
   With which you have beguiled
   And wooed me as a child.
Your presence bounds my every way
   And thrills me in its fold
   With phantom hands that hold
   Like cherished chains of gold. 


Separation
Within your pulsing day 
There must be little space
For visions of my face
To lure your thoughts away.
Yet, I would have it so,
To be alone the pain
That saddens love’s refrain.
Pray God you never know!

Proving
Were you a leper bathed in wounds
   And by the world denied,
I’d share your fatal exile
   As a privilege, with pride.
You are the very sun, the moon,
   The starlight of my soul,
The sounding motif of my heart 
   Its impetus and goal!

Interim
The days lie dark between our jeweled meetings
Like wintry burials.
My heart bows low before the cheerless hearth
Until your voice rings through the gloom
And bids me
Wake!
And live!

Good-Bye
Let’s say ‘Good-bye’
Nor wait Love’s latest breath
Poised now so lightly on the wing of Death,
While yet within our eye one fervent gleam 
Remains to hallow this, a passing dream:
Yes, yes ‘Good-bye,’
For it is best to part
While Love’s low light still burns
Within the heart!

 

 

Love’s Miracle
So like a boundless, soundless sea
The miracle of love to me
With all the world a rosy dream
Sailing upon a silver stream,
While I, a fairy in mid-air,
Am dancing, dancing everywhere.

Hark! do you hear the thunder peal?
I care not what it would reveal,
Tomorrow will be yesterday
When I am shivering and gray:

I will not heed the prompter’s ring
Let others answer, I shall sing
And dance the merrier—away!
I’ll live and live and live—today!

A Paradox
I know you love me better cold
Strange as the pyramids of old
Responselessly.
but I am frail, and spent and weak
With surging torrents that bespeak
A living fire.
So, like a veil, my poor disguise
Is draped to save me from your eyes’ 
Deep challenges.
Fain would I fling this robe aside
And from you, in your bosom hide
Eternally.
Alas! you love me better cold
Like frozen pyramids of old
Unyieldingly? 

How My Heart Sinks
How my heart sinks when I behold the sad reflection of my face,
A wan and wistful wound, with oh, such meagre grace;
How can you hold me dear withal and conjure charms withdrawn.
Or does the Autumn twilight hold a charm unknown to dawn?

Hold! Do not speak! some day perchance, I’ll read the message dire
Within the ashes of the flame, the aftermath of fire,
Ere then perhaps I shall have found the highways of the soul
Where one may read uncrucified, the blood-words of the scroll.
Till then, uphold illusion’s veil before my gaze the while
That I may gather strength to fuse from agony, a smile! 

To Time
Day by day the threads of white
Multiply, Oh! hour-glass!
How passing swift your bright sands pass,
Fain would I hold you,
Linger, bide
Until these surges shall subside,
That sweep me forward unto bliss,
Oh! charging sun, I bid you rest,
Break not your arrow in my breast!

Welt
Would I might mend the fabric of my youth
Which daily flaunts its tatters to my eyes, 
Would I might compromise awhile with truth

Until love’s moon, now waxing, wanes and dies.
For I would go a further while with you
And draining this Cup of Joy so passing fair,
Which meets my parching lips like cooling dew
‘Ere time has brush cold fingers through my hair.

Review
I fear my power impotent
To hold you leal and full content,
Some hapless look or word perchance
Dispels the glamor of romance;
I tremble lest some stranger fair
Arrest you,—cause you to compare
The meagre charms which I possess
With some resplendent loveliness.

How far removed from Youth’s command
The trembling sceptre in my hand,
As miserly within the glass
I mark Love’s fleeting hours pass. 

Illusion
Oh! for the veils of my far-away youth,
Shielding my heart from the blaze of the truth;
Why did I stray from their foldings and grow
Into the sadness that follows—to know.

Impotent atom with desolate gaze
Treading Life’s treacherous, intricate maze—
Oh for the veils, for the vails of my youth
Shielding my heart from the blaze of the truth!

Parody
You came,
The tapestries of love
Were shining in the sun,
My wishes settled down content
About you as you stood. 
I looked into your cryptic eyes
And thought I understood;
But no,—
The splendor of your gaudy robe
Grew dimmer day by day,
I wondered,
Searched within my soul to seize the mystery.
The answer staggered me,
Aghast,
Like one at bay,
I gazed with open eyes of thought upon you,
God! ’twas true—
A mockery, a parody, 
Had come to me—in you!

Delusion
You gave me your hand,
I held it to be
The last word, the dear word,
The soul’s entity;
I cherished it, treasured it,
Only to find
I held but a gauntlet—
That I had been blind!

 

 

Sunset
And now— 
As one who closes up the house and goes uncaring where
He may forget the scenes of home ‘mid foreign climes and air,
I bar the chamber of my heart and seal the past within
To wander down the city’s road amid the whirr and din.
The long years seem impassable, the morning has no smile,
With naught behind these barring doors and nothing else worth while,
Like some lone pilgrim without hope, I stumble on my way, 
Who lifts no futile plea for  sun, but asks for clouds less grey.

Finis
I looked death calmly in the face
And placed my hand within his hand
And said:
“Come, come, let us away
For I have lost the magic key
Opening the portals of desire—
My wishes cumber in the dust,
And life is stagnant
         in
                  my
                            heart!

 

. . . . . . . . . . . .
CONTEMPLATION

Ivy 
I am a woman
Which means
I am insufficient
I need—
something to hold me
Or perhaps uphold.
I am a woman.

Joy
There’s nothing certain, nothing sure
Save sorrow. Fragile happiness
Was never fashioned to endure;
For joy repels the perfect claim
And answers to no certain name;
How furtively we scan the mist
Perchance amid the gloom to find
Some moments rare and rapture-kist.

One Day
God-by dear day of sunshine, rain
In flooding torrents pours
Its liquid footsteps on my roof,
Its fingers on my doors.

While I sit tranquilly within
And tell my beads of joy,
Holding a peace within my heart
Which nothing can destroy. 

Attar
Fire—tears—
And the torture-chamber,
With the last maddening  turn of the screw—
Only thus
Is one precious drop distilled 
Of the attar of rose
Of the heart.

Youth’s Progeny
Oh the sad little dreams of the dime yesteryear
Lying cold, still and stark in the dust of their bier,
How the hear hurries back, all the long weary way,
Just to bid them good-night at the close of the day.

I Wonder
I wonder—
      as I see them pass unheeded down the way,
(The women who were once beloved, imperious and gay)
Holding with frail, pale hands the cup
Of Life’s discarded wine
If memories 
Are bliss enough
To make the dregs—divine!

Values
All the pretty baubles spread
Are not the answer to my need,
These tinseled trappings but beguile
This journeying, while deep within
A want unspeakable resides,
That throbs and throbs unceasingly,—
So hungering,— no banquet spread
Can tempt it, and no golden wine
Make it forget: I balance it—
The world flies upward in the scale!
Always, unsoothed, unquieted,
It aches and aches across the days
And sears the nights that sum my life.

Armageddon
In the silence and the dark
I fought with dragons;
I was battered, beaten sore
But rose again;
On my knees I fought still rising
In my pain;
In the dark I fought with dragons.
Weary tears
Cease your flowing,
Even now, the dawn appears!

Le Soir
Mute-lipped—
            unquestioning grim-visaged Fate,
I cleave the shadows toward the Western Gate;
And yet—
            my lagging heart still holds
Mute-arms outstretched
Unto earth’s gleaming folds.

Who knows? 
            perhaps Hope’s blossoms spray
In lush profusion
O’er the edge of day!

Treasure
What matters though love’s dream shall pass,
Since from the throbbing hour-glass
One golden-throated moment pres’t
Its attared incense to my breast.

Since I have known the purple gleam
That lifts above me—can I deem
The way unlighted—when I go 
Encircled by love’s afterglow?

 

 

Retrospection
After all—
             mine is the joy
Which naught can lessen or destroy.
For love has led my flying feet
Where immortelles are springing sweet,
And everlasting skies of gold
Are memories, when earth is cold
And though our future paths should lie
Estranged, as star-ways, through the sky,
I shall not look reproof, nor find
Within this pass a charge unkind,
And lightly sorrow shall be met
For I can never know regret. 

. . . . . . . . . .
INTERMEZZI

Springtime
Again it is the vibrant May,
   The bursting buds, the leafing trees,
   The fragrant, undulating breeze,
   Call to my heart in subtlest way:
   Come! come! it is a holiday.

The streamlet with unending song,
   Beneath its silver veil of mist
   Seems flowing, flowing, to some tryst,
   While I—with inner surges strong,
   Find incomplete the day, and long.

Destiny
I know my love is seeing me
As restless rivers seek the sea,
Across the night, across the days
That snare the intervening ways.

I know my love is seeking me
As Time must seek Eternity,
When nights are very still I hear
His footsteps, coming, coming near!

Envoys
Love calls me tonight
In the beat of the rain
Through the cold little drops
On my bare window-pane;
Calls and calls through the dark
Like a whispered refrain
Tapping soft on my heart
Through the bare window pane. 

I Want to Die While You Love Me

I want to die while you love me,
   While yet you hold me fair,
While laughter lies upon my lips
   And lights are in my hair.

I want to die while you love me,
   And bear to that still bed,
Your kisses turbulent, unspent
   To warm me when I’m dead.

I want to die while you love me
   Oh, who would care to live
Till love has nothing more to ask
   And nothing more to give?

Ecstasy
Not less than this, beloved,
This beaming, highmost ray
That sweeps in royal splendor
Across our perfect day.

Not less than this,—far rather 
That we should say ‘adieu,’
With every rose in Eden
Abloom for me and you.

 

 

Pledge
With kisses I’ll awake you love
So tenderly at morn,
The pledges of my fealty
Diunally reborn.

We’ll thread life’s way together love,
And when the fading light
Dips softly over western hills
I’ll kiss your eyes good-night.

Your Eyes
Your eyes—
Dark pools, so calm and deep,
A thousand ages in them sleep,
A dreaming world within them lies,
And all my hopes 
Of paradise!

Amour
Kiss me!
And let the hours bloom triumphantly 
Before life’s little sun has set
And I am old.

Love me!
The day is fleet
And I . . . .
Am far too passionate 
To die!

Finality
When love’s triumphant day is done,
Go forward! leave me to the night
Beneath the coldly staring stars,
The waiting winter and its blight.

For I would never hold the heart
That mutely quivers to be free,
Unfurl your restless wings—away!
And leave the emptiness to me. 

In Love
I lived in Hell the other day
Its fires wrapt me angrily,
But now their horrors fall and fade
Like ghosts that memory has made.

I lived in Hell even today,
How sift the fierce flames die away—
Submerged with kisses, I forget,
With tears upon my pillows yet.

Fiction
Ah! love!
I shall not seek to penetrate
Your webbed gauze 
Nor tease my heart
By queries deep,
But hold you tenderly;
The day is evening,
And I must cull my flowers
‘Ere dark.

Dead Days
Dead days of rapture and espair
   I would your hours exhume,
Renew their wildness once again
   Their rigors and perfume.

. . . . . . . . . . .
PENSEROSO

Break, Break My Heart
Break, break my heart
For love is done,
The pale light trails the dying sun—
And night awaits—no hope—no stars
Darkness
Hide my scars!

Little King
From worshipping I now arise
Stunned and aghast, with opoen eyes
I see the real, the little you
I thought so gallant, brave and true.

A pity yet is mine, I fear,
Since wherefore comes this falling tear,
For none among your fawning throng
Will love you well, nor love you long.

Romance
When I was young
             I used to say:
romance will come risding by
And I shall surely smile
And play with him awhile.

When I grew older
             then I said:
romance may come riding by
I wonder shall I smile
And play with him awhile?

But now—
             Alas! I only say:
Romance never will come by
And I shall never smile
He has been dead the while!

 

 

Falling Gods
Confusion, desuetude and gloom,
   The travailing of sound,
Fell desolation in my soul,
   And agony profound;
The gods are falling heavily
   And for all time to be,
And never more my heart shall know
   A shrine to Deity!

Armour
You cannot hurt me any more
   For I am armored now
And I can look into your face
   With cool, unfevered brow.

The tranquil river meets the sea,
   My life flows on at rest,
Unurged, untorn, but oh, my God!
   I love the old way best!

Divide
Your light’s breath may fan my cheek
Your whisper stir me when you speak,
And yet—
The teeming planets play
Between your heart—and mine
Today.

Return
Now, 
Like the pines intoning
Though some solitary gloom
My errant thoughts go pattering
About love’s ancient tomb,
And though no breath of incense rare
Lies round the shattered cup,
A banquet weird, the fragments
Where the ghost of love 
May sup.

Song of the Sinner
Just a bit of ashes
Grey, grey ashes—spent—
God! how fierce the fires burned
Down to this continent.

Just a bit of ashes, 
Not a single spark
Lives in this residuum
Crumbling cold and dark.
Just a bit of ashes—
To the judgment day,
I go with my memories—
Pray, sweet virgin, pray!

Celibacy
Where is the love that might have been
flung to the far ends of Earth?
In my body stamping around,
In my body like a hound
Leashed and restless—
Biding time!

. . . . . . . . . . .
CADENCE

Offering
I seek no tokens of you dear
   I only ask to give
The purple flower of my heart
   And you will let it live.

I ask no fealty or plight,
   I only pray that you
May find earth’s barren places bright
   Perhaps, because it grew.

And when for you the final sun
   Moves toward the darkening West,
I shall be lingering to place
   Love’s flower on your breast. 

 

Estrangement
Some day I shall be dead, and pride
   Which kept me from your feet,
Shall be the burden of the song
   My cold lips shall repeat.

And some day when you too shall find
   A pillow in the sod,
Would you then spurn an hour with me
   Above—where daisies nod?

Recessional 
Consider me a memory—a dream
That passed away,
Or yet, a flower that has blown and shattered—
In a day;
For passion sleeps, alas, and keeps no vigil
With the years,
And wakens to no conjuring
Of orison or tears.

Consider me a melody 
That served its simple turn,
Or but the residue of fire
That settles in the urn,
For love defies puring reasoning
And undeterred flows
Within—without 
The vassal heart!
Its reasoning—
Who knows? 

Sepulchre
I have mounded the corpse of my sorrow
   And wreathed it with roses fair
That none who may pass on the morrow
   May know what lies buried there. 

Curtain 
When one has lived
‘Tis not so hard
To fold the hands,
To say, “Good-night,”
and creep away 
Behind the dark:
But ’tis not strange
The heart rebels
When sounds of night 
Ring down the day
That was a weary, joyless way
From early dawn
To setting sun:
How eagerly we trail the light
For crumbs of happiness we fend,
And struggle, struggle—to the end!

Afterglow
Through you I entered heaven and hell,
Knew rapture and despair,
I flitted o’er the plains of earth
And scaled each shining stair:
Drank deep the waters of content,
And drained the cup of gall,
Was regal and was impotent,
Was suzerain and thrall.

Now, by Reflection’s placid pool
On evening’s mellowed brow,
I smile across the backward way
And pledge anew my vow;
For every glancing, golden gleam,
I offer gladly—pain!
And I would give a thousand world
To live it all again!

FINIS

 

The post An Autumn Love Cycle by Georgia Douglas Johnson (1928; full text) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Fascinating Biofiction: Novels About Real-Life Women

If you love learning about fascinating women of the past, but aren’t inclined to read full-scale biographies that take you from the second they were born (or earlier) to the minute they died, another fantastic route into their lives is via novelizations, also known as biofiction.

This type of novel usually focuses on a particularly interesting portion of a fascinating real-life person’s journey. This seems to be a growing genre, and when done well, as in the small sampling following, is entertaining as well as illuminating.

To create these novelizations successfully requires a delicate balance involving deep research and creative license.  Here’s a small sampling.

. . . . . . . . . .

Saving Vincent:
A Novel of Jo van Gogh Bonger

Last year, my book group read The Secret of Sunflowers, which, like Saving Vincent, fictionalizes the story of Jo van Gogh Bonger. Sunflowers alternates chapters about Jo with those about a fictional modern-day woman who is pretty forgettable. I found the contemporary story distracting and after finishing the book, I wished that someone would write a novel focusing only on Jo.

I got my wish with Saving Vincent: A Novel of Jo van Gogh (2025) by Joan Fernandez. It’s based on the true story of the widow of Theo van Gogh, Vincent’s devoted brother. She singlehandedly rescued Vincent van Gogh’s artistic legacy — without her, he would have been lost to history. Here, Joan introduces her novel:

“In 1891, timid Jo van Gogh-Bonger lived safely in the background of her art dealer husband Theo’s passionate for selling work by unknown artists, especially his ill-fated, deceased brother Vincent.

When Theo van Gogh died unexpectedly, Jo’s brief happiness was shattered. Her inheritance—hundreds of unsold paintings by Vincent—was worthless. Pressured to move back to her parents’ home, Jo defied tradition, opened a boarding house to raise her infant son alone, and chose to promote Vincent’s art herself.

Her ingenuity and persistence drew the powerful opposition of a Parisian art dealer who vowed to stop her and sink Vincent into obscurity. It would take Jo fifteen years for the world to finally take note of Vincent van Gogh.”
Can you imagine a world without the art of Vincent van Gogh? Jo made the world a richer place with her passionate belief in her brother-in-law’s brilliant work. Read more about Saving Vincent.

. . . . . . . . . .

Solitary Walker:
A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft

I’m a bit obsessed with Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter, Mary Shelley. The elder Mary was an early women’s rights advocate, best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and the younger Mary for producing the first work of science fiction, none other than Frankenstein (1818), written while still in her teens. Mary died nine days after giving birth to her namesake daughter.

N.J. Mastro’s novel, Solitary Walker, skillfully imagines the most formative and fascinating episodes of Mary Wollstonecraft’s brief life. From the publisher’s description:

“England, 1787. Mary Wollstonecraft is an avowed spinster. At 28, she moves to London to live independently as a writer. With her publication of A Vindication for the Rights of Woman a few short years later, she emerges as a leading figure for women’s equality. But when a humiliating faux pas threatens her reputation, Mary travels to Paris to write about the French Revolution, where she unexpectedly falls in love with American adventurer Gilbert Imlay.

Her ill-timed affair occurs just as the Reign of Terror begins, forcing Mary to decide whether to leave Paris—and Imlay. Her writing has branded her a revolutionary. If she stays, she is sure to face a trip to the guillotine. The choice Mary makes alters her life forever.

Readers of biographical fiction will embrace this carefully researched novel about the woman historians widely consider the world’s first feminist. Told against the backdrop of Wollstonecraft’s incredible rise as a writer, the French Revolution, and a solo journey along the remote shores of Scandinavia, Solitary Walker is the timeless story of women forging their own path.”

My favorite parts of the novel were those that involved Mary’s relationship with Gilbert Imlay, because let’s face it, complicated relationships are so compelling. This novel of the complicated and compelling Mary is an engrossing read, illuminating the a brief and blazing life.

. . . . . . . . . .

The Personal Librarian
(a novel of Belle da Costa Green)

The aforementioned N.J. Mastro, author of Solitary Walker (just above), contributed this article about Belle da Costa Green, the real-life figure behind The Personal Librarian. Within it, Mastro includes a review of the novel:

“The Personal Librarian is poignant, engaging, and instructive. Readers discover Belle da Costa Greene while the authors also bring to life two unique worlds, that of rare books and fine art.

Upon the recommendation of his nephew Junius Morgan, J.P. hires Belle da Costa Greene to purchase and curate his growing collection of rare books, manuscripts, book-related artifacts, and artwork. At the time, Belle was working as a librarian at Princeton, a white male-only university. Junius discovered Belle’s talent during his frequent visits to Princeton’s rare book collection. Her exceptional knowledge impressed him, as did her witty, animated personality.

Belle dazzles her new employer from the start. Because a great deal of business occurs in social settings as much as at auctions and by private arrangement, J.P. introduces her to New York society, where she makes an indelible impression. Soon she is traveling the world searching for the rarest of books, the most exquisite artwork money can buy, and antiquities few people have ever seen.

Throughout what appeared a charming, glamorous existence, Belle is forced to carry the secret of her true identity. If discovered, she would be fired. Not only would this destroy her career as a librarian, it would also take away her livelihood. Besides supporting herself, she was the breadwinner for her mother and siblings, to whom she provided food, clothing, shelter, and education.”

. . . . . . . . . .

Harlem Rhapsody
(a novel of Jessie Redmon Fauset)

I hope to get to the The Personal Librarian (above) soon; but I jumped ahead and listened to the new book by Victoria Christopher Murray (co-author of The Personal Librarian) — Harlem Rhapsody, a novel of Jessie Redmon Fauset.

I so enjoyed this book, as I am completely enamored of the Harlem Renaissance era and its writers. It’s wonderful that Jessie Fauset, who was not long ago in danger of being completely forgotten, is being honored in this way. She was a talented novelist, essayist, and poet in her own right; and in her capacity as literary editor of NAACP’s iconic journal The Crisis, she discovered and nurtured many of the legendary writers of that era (not the least of which was Langston Hughes).

The novel draws upon newly discovered evidence of the love affair between Jessie and the eminent W.E.B. Du Bois. It touches on the racial bias that Jessie, an intellectually gifted and highly educated woman had to continually endure in her quest for professional advancement. Sometimes the prose is a bit workmanlike, and occasionally the research jumped out, but I loved every second of the listening experience (narrated by Robin Miles).

. . . . . . . . . .

The Bohemians by Jasmin Darznik
(a novel of Dorothea Lange)

This is a wonderful novelization of the early career of Dorothea Lange, the esteemed photojournalist. Her photographs captured many major historical events of the twentieth century, including the Dust Bowl and the Japanese-American internment camps. She’s best known for the instantly recognizable portrait “Migrant Mother.”

Jasmin contributed 10 Fascinating Facts About Dorothea Lange, which makes an excellent introduction to this trailblazer. About the novel, from the publisher:

“In 1918, a young and bright-eyed Dorothea Lange steps off the train in San Francisco, where a disaster kick-starts a new life. Her friendship with Caroline Lee, a vivacious, straight-talking Chinese American with a complicated past, gives Dorothea entrée into Monkey Block, an artists’ colony and the bohemian heart of the city.

Dazzled by Caroline and her friends, Dorothea is catapulted into a heady new world of freedom, art, and politics. She also finds herself unexpectedly falling in love with the brilliant but troubled painter Maynard Dixon.

Dorothea and Caroline eventually create a flourishing portrait studio, but a devastating betrayal pushes their friendship to the breaking point and alters the course of their lives. The Bohemians captures a glittering and gritty 1920s San Francisco, with a cast of unforgettable characters, including Frida Kahlo, Ansel Adams, and D. H. Lawrence.

A vivid and absorbing portrait of the past, it is also eerily resonant with contemporary themes, as anti-immigration sentiment, corrupt politicians, and a devastating pandemic bring tumult to the city—and the gift of friendship and the possibility of self-invention persist against the ferocious pull of history.”

I found this novel incredibly satisfying, as I had watched a documentary about Dorothea Lange just before listening to it. I loved its focus on her early career and San Francisco years, highlighting the challenges a woman with her talent and ambition faced some one hundred years ago. Some things have changed, others haven’t …

. . . . . . . . . .

The Other Alcott (a novel of May Alcott)

The Other Alcott (2017) by Elise Hooper is an imagining of the life of May Alcott. The youngest of the Alcott sisters, she inspired the character of Amy March in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. May (after marriage known as May Alcott Nieriker) was a talented visual artist. In this work of historical fiction, Elise Hooper gives readers a glimpse into the youngest Alcott’s artistic pursuits and her side of the sibling rivalry. From the publisher:

“Many of us grew up knowing the story of the March sisters, heroines of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. But while most fans cheer on Jo March, based on Louisa herself, Amy March is often the least favorite sister. Now, it’s time to learn the truth about the real Amy — Louisa’s sister, May. This lesser-known sister, the free spirit, the girl who decorated her walls—was she really the brat she was portrayed to be in her sister’s novel?

May begins to question her relationship with her sister as well as her dream to be an artist when her illustrations for Little Women are received poorly by reviewers. This inspires May to embark on a quest to discover her own true identity as an artist and a woman. Starting with art lessons in Boston and moving on to Rome, London, and Paris, this talented, and determined woman forges a life on her own terms, making her so much more than merely ‘The Other Alcott.’”

In a conversation reprinted on Literary Ladies’ Guide, Elise Hooper sums up why she chose May as the subject for this novel:

“She was such an optimistic figure, despite the many challenges that faced her, and she’s always been overshadowed by her infinitely more famous older sister, making me feel that her story needed to be told. Furthermore, I thought many modern readers would relate to May’s struggle to balance her desire for a career with her search to find love.”

Interestingly, Elise Hooper also came out with a novel of Dorothea Lange’s life titled Learning to See. Though I haven’t read it, it sounds like it would be a good companion to Jazmin Darznik’s novel, above, as Learning to See centers around Dorothea’s documentation of the Japanese American internment camps of the WWII era.

. . . . . . . . . .

Charlotte & Arthur
(a novel of Charlotte Brontë)

Charlotte & Arthur by Pauline Clooney (2021) is a richly imagined novel about the wedding and subsequent Irish honeymoon of Charlotte Brontë and Arthur Bell Nichols, the curate who worked with her father at Haworth parsonage. This novel is based on meticulous research by Ms. Clooney, an award-winning short story writer and the founding director of Kildare Writing Centre in Ireland.

The narrative focuses on a little-known time in Charlotte’s life. Though she’s a celebrated author at home and abroad, the siblings she grew up with (Emily, Anne, and Branwell Brontë) have all died, leaving only Charlotte and her father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë, from a family that once numbered eight members.

Charlotte is bereft and lonely, but the Rev. Brontë isn’t enthusiastic about her marriage to his curate. She herself took many years to warm up to Arthur. But finally, he won her heart, and this is where we pick up the story.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Pauline Clooney, and asked why she chose the novel form to tell the story of this part of Charlotte’s life. She responded:

“I think the story of her marriage to Arthur is as romantic, and alas, because of the brevity of their time together, as tragic, as the Brontë’s lives and works, and I felt the novel form might do more justice to that mix of romance and tragedy, than the hard facts of non-fiction.” Read the entire interview here.

The post Fascinating Biofiction: Novels About Real-Life Women appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

The Technique of the Love Affair, by A Gentlewoman (1928)

The Technique of the Love Affair (1928) sums up the new attitude to men, sex and relationships of the modern woman of the late 1920s perfectly, not to say outrageously and shockingly.

It gives cynical and completely amoral guidance to young women on how to master and dominate men without ever falling under their spell; the woman who follows its advice will always be in control, never be in love and never be subservient to a man, says the author.

Although the book always has its tongue firmly in its cheek, and although it is no doubt intended as comic relief, it still probably presents and represents the thinking of the dedicated 1920s flapper better than any other book of the period, fictional or otherwise.

“The Technique of the Love Affair makes, I am bitterly afraid, considerable sense. If only it had been written and placed in my hands years ago, maybe I could have been successful, instead of just successive.” (— Dorothy Parker)

. . . . . . . . . . . .

“Your love affair should be hedged about with flirtations, and your lover should believe – preferably with accuracy – that several others would clamour for his place of favour and intimacy if he relaxed his hold upon you. But, though you should find means to display your admirer to your lover, you must not flaunt your lover before your admirers. (Interpret ‘lover’ in anywhere you choose, so long as it implies the most favoured of those who surround you.)”

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Doris Langley Moore
. . . . . . . . . . . .

Actually written by Doris Langley Moore

The Technique of the Love Affair was originally published pseudonymously as by “A Gentlewoman,” though it was actually written by a young Doris Langley Moore (1902-1989), the distinguished British fashion writer, fashion historian – she founded the Museum of Costume in Bath – and Hollywood costume designer – responsible for, among others, Katherine Hepburn’s outfits in The African Queen.

In a long career, lasting from the 1920s to the 1970s, Moore wrote many other books, including several on fashion and social life, including Pandora’s Letter Box; being a Discourse on Fashionable Life as well as light, enjoyable novels such as Not at Home and All Done by Kindness and biographies of notable women, in particular E. Nesbit, author of The Treasure Seekers, The Phoenix and the Carpet and The Railway Children.

She also wrote about Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter, as well as four books on the “mad, bad and dangerous to know” Byron himself. She was awarded an OBE in 1971.

Moore was born in 1902, so she was a young woman herself when she wrote The Technique of the Love Affair and not the hard-bitten, older cynic whose voice the book purports to convey. But the book was nevertheless admired by that epitome of the hard-bitten, older cynic herself: Dorothy Parker, she of Vicious Circle and Algonquin Round Table fame.

Parker herself was only thirty-five in 1928 but she had already been writing acerbic theatre criticism, initially for Vanity Fair, for ten years. A woman not easily humbled, Parker read the book at the time and wrote about it in awestruck, almost reverential terms in the New Yorker for November 17, 1928.

“Well, to get back to me as quickly as possible—when Our Heroine found that she was the bust of the season as a wit and an elocutionist, she decided to turn to that good old stand-by, sex. ‘Let others raconteur if they will,’ I said, ‘but gangway while I go Garbo!’

To that end, I acquired a book called The Technique of the Love Affair, by one who signs herself “A Gentlewoman,” and set out to learn how to loop the Usual Dancing Men.

I have thought, in times past, that I had been depressed. I have regarded myself as one who had walked hand-in-hand with sadness. But until I read that book, depression, as I knew it, was still in its infancy. I have found out, from its pages, that never once have I been right. Never once. Not even one little time.

You know how you ought to be with men? You should always be aloof, you should never let them know you like them, you must on no account let them feel that they are of any importance to you, you must be wrapped up m your own concerns, you may never let them lose sight of the fact that you are superior, you must be, in short, a regular stuffed chemise And if you could see what I’ve been doing!

Despite its abominable style and frequent sandy stretches, The Technique of the Love Affair makes, I am bitterly afraid, considerable sense. If only it had been written and placed in my hands years ago, maybe I could have been successful, instead of just successive.”

. . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . .

A spoof Socratic dialogue

The Technique of the Love Affair is a spoof of a Socratic dialogue, with the older woman Cypria (named after Venus’ birthplace) educating her naïve young friend Saccharissa in the ways of the world. Cypria points out that, since the First World War, there has been a marked lack of eligible men. Women have to fight for them on as near-equal terms as they can; they must “resort to artifice in order to obtain him.” And this artifice must be learned and practiced.

“In the love affair, as in sculpture, poetry, and every other fine art, no lasting success can be achieved without skill.” But, Cypria caveats, she is by no means advocating promiscuity – like a true artist, the woman must be selective in her pursuits; “An artist, whichever Muse he follow, must be exquisitely selective.”

One of Cypria’s first lessons is about chastity, or rather the need for a lack of it in the modern woman. In Victorian times, she says, women were “too delicate and romantically honourable for words . . . physical purity and innocence were then highly fashionable.” But in the modern, post-war world, these virtues have necessarily been greatly diminished.

Cypria: Money, birth, rank, respectability – they are all worth less than they were. It was not man, but woman herself, who relegated chastity to a more reasonable position among the virtues. Far be it from me to insinuate that she has discarded it, but she no longer vaunts it as her proudest boast. It is no longer her main-stay, her protection, her chief allurement.

Cypria also warns her young friend of the dangers of falling in love and thus losing control. For the woman of 1928, “the one thing essential is self-confidence.” If a young woman like Saccharissa is afraid of losing a man, he will soon gain “an importance in your thoughts quite disproportionate to his merits.”

Cypria tells her, “if you are unwaveringly sure of yourself, and are free from all the alarms of a woman troubled with a sense of inferiority, your judgement will be cool and clear, and, in short, you cannot become infatuated.” Also, says Cypria, the young woman must make sure not to give up her friends and interests in favor of a potential love interest:

Never will they be more useful to you than now, when you will need all the diversions at your command to prevent your mind from fixing to firmly on one object. Remember also that as often as your lover, or prospective lover, sees you engrossed with people and things to the apparent exclusion of himself, he will be stimulated to a fresh effort to win you. And should the affair eventually fall through, how much lighter will be your pangs if it is only one attachment severed among many that remain.

Another of Cypria’s lessons is in the use of flirtation to attract a man, this being another of the arts that a woman needs to master in the modern world of 1928; she needs to know exactly to what degree she can respond to the man’s advances. Saccharissa asks how much of a response she should give. Cypria implies that it is permissible to go the whole way, though only in very limited circumstances.

Cypria: As long as you do not respond as much as he would like – as long as you almost seem to be doing so under protest (not the protest of disinclination, mark you, but of modesty, or conventionality, or any other obstacle you may have chosen), you might make a little show of surrender.

Saccharissa: And that is called coquetry, I suppose. How long must I go on with that kind of thing?

Cypria: Almost for ever, I am afraid. You dare not cease to give a little less of yourself than is wanted, a little less than satisfies, save on the rarest occasions, and those should decidedly be foreign to the period of approach.

Cypria devotes considerable time to schooling Saccharissa in the art of capturing a man and making him want to marry her. But, even after marriage, she insists that a woman has to stay attentive, attractive and alluring. Cypria maintains that a married woman is perfectly entitled to flirt with other men, even if they themselves are married.

The word adultery is not used, but Cypria’s Machiavellian amorality comfortably encompasses it. She even advocates that for a married woman, as for an unmarried one, encouraging multiple suitors to compete with each other and even to compete with her husband, is a positive thing.

Cypria: Do you know, I’m beginning to believe that a wife ought to gather together a little circle of admirers in order to ensure the happiness of her home. It’s positively altruistic!

Saccharissa: You are joking now.

Cypria: Well, perhaps I am, but there’s a grain of truth in the jest.

Saccharissa: I suppose you would never pause to consider the men whose feelings are to be played upon for the diversion of the married woman?

Cypria: My dearest Saccharissa, after all the trouble I have taken with you, how can you be so naïve? I will not even ask you why such an unfortunate, handicapped creature as a woman should be expected to consider the feelings of the sex which has her at a disadvantage: I will merely put it to you that the men who take part in the flirtations we are discussing may derive easily as much pleasure and benefit from them as the woman.

Although Cypria’s views are obviously exaggerated for comic effect and to cause deliberate outrage, even offense, they probably do represent very closely the views of the twenty-six-year-old, independent-minded fashionable flapper that her author was and beautifully, hilariously capture the feelings of many characters in the 1928 novel.

. . . . . . . . .

Contributed by Francis Booth, the author of several books on twentieth-century culture: Amongst Those Left: The British Experimental Novel 1940-1960 (published by Dalkey Archive); Everybody I Can Think of Ever: Meetings That Made the Avant-Garde; Girls in Bloom: Coming of Age in the Mid-Twentieth Century Woman’s Novel; Text Acts: Twentieth-Century Literary Eroticism; Comrades in Art: Revolutionary Art in America 1926-1938; High Collars & Monocles: 1920s Novels by British Female Couples; and A Girl Named Vera Can Never Tell a Lie: The Fiction of Vera Caspary.

Francis has also published several novels: The Code 17 series, set in the Swinging London of the 1960s and featuring aristocratic spy Lady Laura Summers; Young adult fantasy series The Watchers; and Young Adult fantasy novel Mirror Mirror. Francis lives on the South Coast of England. 

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