Nava Atlas's Blog, page 50

Imagining Helen: The Life of Translator Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter

I first heard about Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter (1876 – 1963) when I fell in love with her grandson, a visiting American graduate student at my university in New Zealand. I knew of the great German novelist Thomas Mann but had not read his novels, and certainly had never wondered about how they came to appear in English.

“My grandmother was Mann’s translator,” my new boyfriend informed me. I was mildly impressed. He told me a little about her: how forbiddingly intellectual she was, how un-grandmotherly.

His mother, Patricia, who soon became my mother-in-law, always spoke with mixed awe and resentment of her illustrious mother, though adoringly of her illustrious father, a renowned paleographer.

I learned more when in her seventies Patricia set out to write a biography of both her parents. Helen’s achievement was extraordinary. Between 1924 and 1960 she translated twenty-two of Mann’s novels and nonfiction works, under contract to Knopf as his sole translator. Mann had been widely read and celebrated in Germany but was barely known to English-language readers.

Helen’s first translation, Buddenbrooks, brought Mann instant acclaim and a place in the pantheon. Three years later, after The Magic Mountain was published, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. The pace kept up for the next thirty-three years, until Helen at last withdrew to attend to her own long-deferred ambitions.

“The time has come for me to retire as your translator, after all these years,” she wrote to Mann with typical self-deprecation. “The reason is perhaps silly: in the end of my life I have so many things in my head that I find I must get them down, whether they ever find a publisher or no.”

She and Mann, by now both elderly, had become affectionate friends after years of tension: he had resented having a female translator and constantly pushed her to work faster, rarely expressing praise or appreciation for her meticulous work and its essential contribution to his vast success.

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Helen at age 18

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Patricia, an accomplished writer herself, delved deeply into her project, tracing her parents’ trajectories from the U.S. to Germany to England and back, interviewing relatives and colleagues, studying family history and the material her parents had left behind.

Her father, Elias Lowe, had been prolific, not only in published writing but in his letters and his pocket diaries, dozens of them, where he noted everything from the academic calendar at Oxford where he was a professor to the important people he had lunch with and the vagaries of his digestive system.

Helen, on the other hand, was elusive. She had produced thousands of pages of lucid and elegant translation. She wrote a long, insightful essay about Mann’s post-Second World War masterpiece Doctor Faustus, and another substantial essay about her career as his translator. But there was not much else–the correspondence over many years between herself, Mann, and the Knopfs, a few family letters.

Although Helen kept letters from her adult daughters, they did not keep hers. Despite the fact that she strove all her life to succeed as a writer of poetry and fiction, very little of her own creative writing has survived: a small book of poetry published by Oxford University Press, and her one solid success, the play Abdication, triumphantly produced in Dublin for its first and only run, and later published in book form by Knopf.

Patricia often spoke about her parents. Her narrative, long before she began writing about them, was that her father was charming and distinguished, earning her respectful devotion as a daughter, while her mother was distant and cold. Her mother’s work seemed less important than her father’s, with his magnum opus, the 12-volume Codices of ancient Latin manuscripts and his status not only as an Oxford don but as a founding member, with Einstein, of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.

Based in part on what I knew from my husband and his cousins, I had a less august impression of Elias. From them I’d formed a picture of a rather arrogant and selfish man who took others’ attention for granted. Most of the cousins felt, like Patricia, that Helen was intimidating. Their memories of her were thin.

In his final years, Elias confided in Patricia about the crisis from which his marriage had never recovered. When they first married he had persuaded his sexually inexperienced 30 year-old bride to allow him to sleep with other women on his frequent professional travels. But years later when he slept with a young friend of their eldest daughter, Helen was outraged and unforgiving.

Patricia found her mother’s reaction incomprehensible. Her parents’ relationship, she believed, was more intellectual than romantic, with her mother indifferent to his affairs. So why was she so distraught on this occasion? It wasn’t even his fault, Patricia said—the girl had come to their house in Oxford intent on seduction and he had succumbed.

Helen and Elias never divorced, but their life from then on alternated uneasily between separations and awkward attempts to live together again. The story sounded suspicious to me: it seemed far more likely that this lifelong philanderer, a man of status and influence, had been the aggressor.

Patricia and I shared a serious interest in writing and also in feminism, from our different generational perspectives. She thought I sometimes went too far, with my disregard of conventions; I thought she clung to conformity. Helen herself was an avowed feminist. It seemed to me that her life was a feminist cautionary tale: a gifted, educated woman whose own artistic commitment was constantly subordinated to the needs of the great writer as well as those of her husband and three children.

The struggles of her life had echoes in my own. I had no claims whatsoever to the kind of brilliance and achievement that Helen inarguably had, but I too wrestled with the competing needs of family and artistic calling, and with my own ambivalence around claiming any recognition. Helen was not my mother. I had not suffered, as my mother-in-law had, from feeling neglected by her. And so I was freer to empathize, to give Helen the benefit of the doubt, to imagine her subjective experience.

My defense of Helen might have prompted Patricia to see her mother in a more forgiving and sympathetic light, reflected in the portrait that she now drew in her memoir. Over the next few years she worked hard on research and writing, often sharing it with me as she went along. Sadly, before she had completed her biography she began to lose some of her own capacity.

Seeing that the project was not going to get finished, I helped her publish about 80 pages, along with some of her own poems and stories. The launch of this little volume, a few months before her death, was a happy moment for her: her mild dementia made her believe that she had become the celebrated writer she had always longed to be.

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Helen and daughters in 1920

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I inherited Patricia’s research: boxes of folders with documents, letters, notes on her reading and travels, newspaper clippings. I knew she would have wanted me to finish what she had tried so hard to do, and the knowledge weighed on me. But I had no interest in writing biography.

After a while, though, another idea took hold: the idea of writing fiction about this extraordinary and enigmatic woman. A short story? A novella? A novel? I wasn’t sure. I opened up the boxes of folders and spent hours with them. I read her play, which I’d always avoided, written in blank verse about the abdication of Edward Vlll in 1936—and found it beautiful and compelling.

I read some of Mann’s novels, marveling at the scale and depth of these mighty works, and what it must have taken to render them into English. I read biographies of Mann and a short biography of Helen, In Another Language, written soon after her death. The author glossed over Helen’s complexities but usefully noted the milestones of her work and her historical times. He mentioned a novel written after her retirement, Sea Change, that won praise from Mann and his wife but never found a publisher—a mystery, since no one in the family recalls ever seeing it.

I read Helen’s personal letters and others written to her, discovering a very likable, witty, politically aware woman who adored her children and friends. And, surprisingly, a woman who loved her husband passionately until their relationship was abruptly truncated by the crisis.

I read Elias’s diaries, now housed in the Morgan Library of New York. In that silent wood-paneled room, with stacks of his tiny diaries in front of me, I could almost hear the voice of this man across the decades. I learned that the story he had told Patricia about the “seduction” was not the whole truth. In the diaries he noted several meetings with the girl both before and after the moment that he’d confessed to, including at least one time in Paris. It was either a full-blown affair or he’d been grooming her. Helen was indeed grievously betrayed. He broke her heart.

I felt more and more that I knew this woman, my grandmother-in-law, and I liked her enormously. In this strange, one-sided, cross-generational way, reaching from the living to the dead, Helen became my friend. And I wanted very much to let the world see who she was—at least, my view of her. So I wrote my novel Anticipation, adding invented incidents and characters to the slender factual record — all the time with the uneasy awareness that this perennially self-critical woman would very likely disapprove.

Anticipation is still looking for a publisher. I hope it won’t share Sea Change’s fate. I want readers, especially those with curiosity about women whose brilliance is hidden behind towering male figures, to have the chance to meet Helen Lowe-Porter and follow her spirited, determined journey.

Contributed by Jo Salas, a New Zealand-born writer living in the Mid-Hudson Valley of New York. Her short fiction has appeared in literary journals and anthologies, earning awards and a Pushcart Prize nomination. Her novel Dancing with Diana was published in 2015 by Codhill Press. Jo also writes extensively about Playback Theatre, with numerous essays and three books including Improvising Real Life: Personal Story in Playback Theatre, now published in 10 languages.  Find her on the web at josalas.com.

References

Lowe-Porter, Helen Tracy. Abdication or All is True. Alfred A. Knopf, 1950.

Lowe-Porter, Helen Tracy. Casual Verse. Oxford University Press, 1957.

Lowe, Patricia Tracy. A Marriage of True Minds: A memoir of my parents, Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter and Elias Avery Lowe. Tusitala Publishing, 2006, 2016.

Mann, Thomas. The Magic Mountain. Translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter. Alfred A. Knopf, 1927.

Mann, Thomas. Doctor Faustus. Translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter. Alfred A. Knopf, 1948.

Thirlwall, John C. In Another Language: A Record of the Thirty-Year Relationship between Thomas Mann and His English Translator, Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter. Alfred A. Knopf, 1966.

Discover other under-appreciated trailblazers in Other Rad Voices on this site.

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6 Essential Novels by Daphne du Maurier

If you want to delve into the novels of Daphne du Maurier (1907 – 1989), where should you begin? The prolific British novelist, playwright, and short-story writer started her publishing career at age twenty-two with The Loving Spirit (1931), her first novel, and went on to publish numerous works of full-length and short fiction as well as nonfiction and plays.

Arguably, Rebecca (1938) is du Maurier’s masterwork and best-known work. And there’s a group of novels among her canon that approach it in terms of quality and longevity.  Here we’ll list the books that Dame Daphne is best remembered for.

With the exception of The Loving Spirit, all of the following have also been made into well-known films, sometimes more than once.

The Loving Spirit (1931)

Though no longer as well known as some of du Maurier’s more iconic works, The Loving Spirit is included here because it was her first, and launched what would become a stellar career.

Beginning in the early 1800s, The Loving Spirit tells the story of the Coombes family and is mainly set in Cornwall, a part of England in which the author spent much of her life. Janet Coombes marries her cousin, Thomas Coombes, who is a shipbuilder. The novel follows the adventures and trials of this family for four generations.

A modern reprint of this novel rightly described it as having “established du Maurier’s reputation and style with an inimitable blend of romance, history, and adventure.”

Many readers who are familiar with du Maurier’s later, and more famous works, have been delighted to discover her first novel. More about The Loving Spirit.

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Jamaica Inn (1936)

Jamaica Inn is a period piece set in Cornwall, England in 1820. Central to the story is a group of “wreckers” — murderers who run ships aground, kill sailors, and steal cargo.

Upon her mother’s death, Mary Yellan moves from the farm in Helford where she was raised, to live with her mother’s sister. Her Aunt Patience is married to a vicious drunkard who has her completely intimidated.

Mary soon realizes that things aren’t as they should be at this inn, which never has guests and isn’t open to the public. Filled with fascinating and creepy characters, Jamaica Inn is one of Daphne du Maurier’s best-known works. The film adaptation of Jamaica Inn came out in 1939 and was directed by Alfred Hitchcock. More about Jamaica Inn.

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Rebecca (1938)

Rebecca is surely the most iconic of du Maurier’s novels. It celebrated its eightieth anniversary of publication in 2018, never having gone out of print. “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” is one of the most iconic first lines in English literature.

The story is cleverly told in the first person by the shy, awkward, and nameless young bride of the older, mysterious Maxim de Winter. She is, like the other inhabitants of Manderley castle, haunted by the shadow by her husband’s deceased first wife, Rebecca. Like the best of du Maurier’s works, this one keeps the reader guessing until the very end.

The film adaptation of Rebecca, also directed by Alfred Hitchcock, came out in 1940. There have been a few mini-series adaptations as well. More about Rebecca.

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Frenchman’s Creek (1941)

Frenchman’s Creek is another of du Maurier’s Cornwall-set historical novels. Set during the reign of King Charles II. the story centers on a love affair between Dona, Lady St. Columb, and Jean-Benoit Aubéry, a French pirate. The novel was reissued in a new edition in 2020. From the publisher (Sourcebooks):

“A classic from master of gothic romance and suspense, Daphne du Maurier, Frenchman’s Creek is an electrifying tale of love and scandal on the high seas. Jaded by the numbing politeness of London in the late 1600s, Lady Dona St. Columb revolts against high society. She rides into the countryside, guided only by her restlessness and her longing to escape. But when chance leads her to meet a French pirate, hidden within Cornwall’s shadowy forests, Dona discovers that her passions and thirst for adventure have never been more aroused.”

The first film adaptation of Frenchman’s Creek was released in 1944. It starred the versatile Joan Fontaine as Lady Dona, in a very different role than the one she portrayed as the second Mrs. de Winter in the first film version of Rebecca. More about Frenchman’s Creek.

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My Cousin Rachel (1951)

My Cousin Rachel, like Rebecca, is a romantic thriller. It’s set primarily on a large estate in Cornwall, England, where du Maurier drew real-life inspiration from Antony House. There she saw a portrait of a woman named Rachel Carew, and the creative spark was lit.

Told by Philip young man heir to the estate of his uncle. The uncle, who marries the mysterious Rachel, rapidly and mysteriously declines and dies. Has he been poisoned by his young wife? Rachel, like eponymous Rebecca, remains a puzzle to the end. Is she a devil or an angel? The reader must decide.

The first, and very well-received  film adaptation of My Cousin Rachel came out in 1951, starring Olivia de Havilland, with Richard Burton in his first film role. There have been several adaptations since. including the less-than-successful 2017 film. More about My Cousin Rachel.

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The Scapegoat (1957)

The Scapegoat was one of du Maurier’s successful mid-career novels, coming after Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, and My Cousin Rachel. In her skillful hands, this suspense novel makes an ingenious doppelgänger plot work on many levels.

It’s the story of a disaffected Englishman and an aristocratic Frenchman who meet by an accidental encounter and are at once struck by how much they resemble one another. John, an English academic, is compelled by Count Jean de Gué into switching places with him. What ensues is how he is swept into the count’s complicated intrigues and family life.

The 1959 film version of The Scapegoat starred Alec Guinness and Bette Davis. More about The Scapegoat.

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Daphne du Maurier page on Amazon*

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The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier (1969)

The House on the Strand  (1969) is one of prolific British author Daphne du Maurier’s later novels, and perhaps one of those less widely read and not as critically acclaimed.

The story, set in her own beloved Cornwall, is one of time travel, with elements of the gothic and supernatural. The narrator, Richard (Dick) Young, gains access to a drug that transports him from the present day (and a life he finds rather dreary) to the 14th century. There, he becomes involved in the lives of those he meets, and his two worlds collide.

A recent reconsideration of The House on the Strand on the official Daphne du Maurier site, sums up the novel’s storyline:

“In The House on the Strand, protagonist Dick Young agrees to test out a drug which his old university friend, Magnus, has developed. Staying in Magnus’s family home, Kilmarth, Dick takes the drug and is transported back in time to the fourteenth-century where he shadows his guide, Roger Kylmerth, and is immersed in a world of intrigue, adultery, and murder.

Increasingly frustrated with his modern day existence, Dick escapes into this secret other world, fascinated by the beautiful Isolda Carminowe, the adventurer Sir Otto Bodrugan, and his malevolent sister Joanna.

But Dick’s addiction to his ‘trips’ to the fourteenth-century soon becomes a danger to himself and those around him as by the end of the novel the professor is dead, Dick has tried to strangle his wife and he is experiencing paralysis.”

Both reader and critical reviews of this novel by Daphne du Maurier have proven more decidedly mixed than those of some of there other classics (including Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel, Jamaica Inn, and others), it has had its share of admirers on both sides of the Atlantic.

The following review captures the mixed reception the novel received upon its publication.

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You might also enjoy: The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier

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A 1969 review of The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier

From the original review by W.G. Rogers, Saturday Review Syndicate, October, 1969: Tywardreath, Par, Polmear, Polpey, the Gratten, Lampetho — these place names from Cornwall are as much tongue twisters as if they were Welsh.

This is the stony, bleak, Land’s End setting — endpapers chart it and you recognize this as the country of Daphne du Maurier herself and many of her books. It’s a tale that unwinds in two eras, two ages — in the first half of the 14th century and the last half of the comforting, familiar, un-spooky 20th century.

Richard Young, just out of a publishing position in London, is spending some idle weeks in a home, Kilmarth, lent by his friend Magnus Lane, a biophysicist. As students together, they often came there for vacations. Now Lane stays in London and Young waits not too impatiently for the arrival of his American wife Vita and her two sons by a former marriage.,

While waiting, he has been indulging in some fantastic back-tracking. Lane in off-duty hours has concocted a potion that whisks a man on a broomstick back six centuries. Three bottles of his drug, labeled A, B, and C, are locked in his cellar. One swig of A, at Lane’s request, and Young is off to adventure.

When the story opens, he is already traipsing around in the reign of Edward II and Edward III. For a guide he has Sir Roger, and the cast of medieval characters in the drama that he watches, unseen by them, includes the families of Ferrers, Bodrugan, Champernoune, and Carminowe.

The switch over the six-century gap is abrupt and drastic. First, we have Mrs. Collins, caretaker in the 1960s, plus auto, railroad, telephone, mail, and motorboard. Then in contrast there is primitive, thatched, horseback-riding Cornwall with true and furze for the fireplace, rushes for carpet, muddy roads, stables, peasants, the belt with dagger, and also mysterious potions almost as powerful as the modern ones.

Even the geography has changed. Railroad tracks are gone, estuary replaces marsh, and winter surprisingly replaces summer. The daring visits have some ill consequences for Young like nausea and confusion, but the effects of this time machine in reverse, this fanciful looking back ward, wear off quickly.

There are other complications. Vita and the boys show up earlier than expected. Vita doesn’t understand the mystifying phone conversations between Lane and her husband. She also is upset by his unexplained disappearances — is he having an affair? When he is still under the influence of the drugs, he looks to her simply and disgustingly drunk.

He is in fact drunk with his baffling adventure. He witnesses a brutal murder six hundred years in the past, and with his tongue still loose as an effect of the hallucination, he mentions it most indiscreetly to 20th-century listeners.

There is a death and maybe a murder in the present, followed by an inquest. Some research in genealogies and musty histories is partially revealing. There’s enough to make you suspect that somewhere in this labyrinthine situation there is some truth.

Perhaps in a tale of this ephemeral nature the truth has to be elusive The key device is trite, and for all of this author’s demonstrated skill in plotting and working up goosebumps, a lot of this is hard to believe, even as a fantastical tale.

This is no match for Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel, The Scapegoat, or many other novels among du Maurier’s titles. In a world rent by many dreadful problems, it seems a wast to write this story or to read it. On the other hand, if you’v had enough of problems, here’s an escape.

Start reading by lamplight if you’d like, for the beginning is slow. But du Maurier after a while whips up some suspense and you should finish by light of day.

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The House on the Strand on Amazon*

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More about The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier

The Addiction of Time Travel (review on Tor)
Wikipedia
Review on She Reads Novels
Reader discussion on Goodreads

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Rule Britannia by Daphne du Maurier (1972)

Rule Britannia (1972) was the last novel written by Daphne du Maurier, who was known for her tightly plotted, exquisitely crafted thrillers, including the iconic Rebecca (1938).

The story, set in a future version of England, envisioned the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EEC (European Economic Community), a body that was incorporated into the European Union in 1993, well after du Maurier’s time. It was almost as if she was envisioning Brexit.

In fact, the Times of London called it a “Brexit novel,” placing it among others that envisioned Britain striking off on its own in an April 2019 article by Lucy Scholes:

“What are the Brexit novels? Ali Smith’s Autumn, Jonathan Coe’s Middle England, Sam Byers’s Perfidious Albion, Daphne du Maurier’s Rule Britannia? Yes, you read that correctly: nearly 50 years ago the writer famous for her 1938 bestseller Rebecca all but predicted Brexit in her final novel.”

Virago Modern Classics reissued Rule Britannia in 2004, and summarized the plot as follows:

“Emma wakes up one morning to an apocalyptic world. The cosy existence she shares with her grandmother, a famous retired actress, has been shattered: there’s no post, no telephone, no radio —  and an American warship sits in the harbor.

As the two women piece together clues about the ‘friendly’ military occupation on their doorstep, family, friends and neighbors gather round to protect their heritage. In this chilling novel of the future, Daphne du Maurier explores the implications of a political, economic and military alliance between Britain and the United States.”

Du Maurier seemed to enjoy writing the novel, finding it clever and satirical. This one was a departure from her usual style, and the result was not kindly met by critics. Some called it absurd or silly; even her biographer, Margaret Foster, deemed it her worst book.

However, the book is being reconsidered in the light of today’s politics. It’s not as far-fetched as it seemed upon first publication. Reader ratings of Rule Britannia on Goodreads are mixed, though a number of them enjoyed the book and noted that it was quite prescient.

And not all critics were scathing at the time it was published; the following review of the novel upon its American publication was a bit more measured.

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Rule Britannia on Amazon*

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A 1973 review of Rule Britannia by Daphne du Maurier

From the original review of Rule Britannia by Daphne du Maurier in The Anniston Star, January 1973:  It is an England of some unspecified future year, close enough that most resent day people and events are still very much in evidence.

But history is shifting, economically, culturally, and socially, and the powers that be have secretly taken matters into their own hands to form a union of the English-speaking people of Great Britain and America.

The first inkling Ellen, Mad and the boys have of the coalition out there in Cornwall is the sound of planes and the sudden appearance of American marines in their own field. It seems they are in protective custody of some sort, and things are rapidly going from bad go worse.

Now, Mad is not the sort of woman to take such things docilely. At nearly eighty, this famous retired actress still maintains a lively interest in everything, especially her only granddaughter, Ellen, and the six assorted boys, ranging from three years to late teens, that Mad has adopted over the years and set up housekeeping for here in the country.

The Americans get off on the wrong foot by shooting the pet dog of Mr. Trembath, the neighboring farmer. Andy, one of Mad’s boys, eventually retaliates by shooting an American between the eyes with a steel-tipped arrow just outside the house.

This serious matter erupts into a full-scale struggle, as the local people, aided by the mysterious man who lives in the abandoned cottage in the woods, conspire to hide the and protect Andy. And Mad, in her typical unsubtle manner, manages to provoke everyone from the local woman politician to the military authorities, all in the name of protest against the unpopular USUK coalition.

By turns funny and serious, Rule Britannia is surprisingly un-du Maurier, a far cry in theme and style from Rebecca or Frenchman’s Creek, the sort of thing Dame Daphne is famous for.

Like her previous novel, The House on the Strand, it brings in new ideas and new styling, not nearly so appealing, to this reviewer at least, as her finer, more traditional work.

More about Rule Britannia by Daphne du Maurier

Wikipedia
Did Daphne du Maurier Predict Brexit?
Review of Rule Britannia on Heavenali

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Angelina Weld Grimké

Angelina Weld Grimké (February 27, 1880 – June 10, 1958), was an American playwright, poet, and educator. She rose to prominence as a figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, though most of her major works were created before that era.

As a writer and woman of color, she was deeply concerned about African-American issues and pervasive racism. Themes of race played a prominent role in her poetry and plays.

 

Family and background

Angelina was born in Boston, Massachusetts, into a prominent family of biracial civil rights activists and abolitionists. Her father, Archibald Grimké, was the son of a slave and a wealthy white aristocrat. He was the second Black man to graduate from Harvard Law School and for a time served as Vice-President of the NAACP. Her mother, Sarah, came from a middle-class white family of European origin.

With a mixed-race father and a white mother, Angelina was at least 75% white. She was considered Black and identified as such. Angelina’s parents met in Boston, where her father practiced law. They separated when Angelina was a child, and she was raised by her father in Boston.

Angelina’s great-aunts Sarah and Angelina Grimké Weld (the latter practically a namesake) were well-known abolitionists and influential advocates for women’s rights. The elder Angelina had taken a bold step to acknowledge her half-black nephews who were the children of her brother and one of his slaves. Hence, the connection between the Grimké Weld and the Weld Grimké families.

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Education and teaching

In 1902 Angelina graduated from the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics, where she earned her degree in physical education. She also attended Wellesley College and Boston University College of Health and Rehabilitation sciences.

After completing her studies, Angelina taught English and physical education in Washington, D.C. She had moved to Washington with her father to be close to her aunt and uncle.

While living in Washington, she taught at the Armstrong Manual Training School, in the city’s segregated area. Angelina also taught at Dunbar High School, a school for black students, which was known for its excellence in academics.

Angelina later connected with another longtime resident of Washington, D.C., fellow poet Georgia Douglas Johnson. Though the two women were affiliated with the Harlem Renaissance literary movement, neither had actually lived in Harlem. Still, they did encounter fellow authors, as the Johnson home was a literary salon for those who were visiting the nation’s capital.

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Goldie, Rachel, and Mara: Protest Works

Much of Angelina’s early work was focused on the theme of lynching. Rachel, Angelina’s three-act dramatic play, was one of her earliest milestones. She was inspired to write it after the NAACP’s call for works to counteract the racist, pro-Klan film, The Birth Of A Nation.

First staged in Washington, D.C. in 1916, the production was one of the first dramatic presentations to feature an all-Black cast. As a vehicle to enlighten the American public to the anguish suffered by Black Americans as a result of the brutal practice of lynching, it was generally well-received, though some critics viewed it as overly sentimental for the subject.

The NAACP declared that Rachel was “the first attempt to use the stage for race propaganda in order to enlighten the American people relating to the lamentable condition of ten millions of Colored citizens in this free republic.”

While it may not have had the impact the author intended, it did go on to be staged in New York after its Washington, D.C. run and was officially published in 1920.

The short story “Goldie” was based on the true incident of the killing of Mary Turner in Georgia in 1918. Mary was the Black mother of two children, and pregnant with a third, and was murdered while protesting the lynching of her husband.

Angelina’s second play, Mara, also focused on the theme of lynching.

 

Poetic Works

One of her early achievements was having poems, short stories, and essays published in The Crisis. The editor of the official publication of the NAACP was the eminent W.E.B. DuBois, and it was a vehicle that helped launch many a literary career.

Her poems were published in The New Negro, a publication by Alain Locke, one of the leading intellectuals in the Black Rights Movement in the earliest part of the 20th-century. He earned a PhD. in Philosophy at Harvard and became the head of the Philosophy Department. He was also a significant supporter of the Black Renaissance and an influence in Angelina’s life.

Angelina’s poetry continued to be included in several anthologies. They included Negro Poets and Their Poems, published in 1923, Caroling Dusk (1927), and The Poetry of the Negro (1949).

A number of poems express her profound feelings, sense of solitude, and longing for affection and love. Her poems, “El Beso” and “Dawn” are written in this fashion. “El Beso” was published in 1909 and expressed her feelings of desire and isolation.

In the poem “Dawn,” she reflects on an early morning when the world is grey, and no stars are visible, then a thrush calls out to announce the dawning of the day.

Some of her poems, including “Beware Lest He Awakes” and “The Black Finger” were written to draw attention to racism and the treatment of Black Americans. Other well-known poems include “The Eyes of My Regret,” “At April,” “The Closing Door,” and “Trees.”

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Sexuality

It’s widely believed that Angelina was a lesbian or bisexual, something her poems and letters hint at. As something to be kept secret in her time, thwarted desire and loneliness are theme expressed in some of her work. It seemed that she was aware of her leanings from an early age. At 16, she wrote to a female friend,

“I know you are too young now to become my wife, but I hope, darling, that in a few years you will come to me and be my love, my wife! How my brain whirls how my pulse leaps with joy and madness when I think of these two words, ‘my wife.’”

Suspicion of her sexuality may have caused friction between Angela and her father, who seemed quite interdependent. Gloria T. Hull wrote of the dilemma in Color, Sex, and Poetry (Indiana University Press, 1987):

“Being a Black lesbian poet in America at the beginning of the twentieth century meant that one wrote (or half wrote) in isolation — a lot that she did not show and could not publish. It meant that when one did write to be printed, she did so in shackles — chained between the real experience and the conventions that would not give her voice.

It meant that one fashioned a few race and nature poems, transliterated lyrics and double-tongued verses that sometimes got published. It meant, finally, that one stopped writing altogether, dying ‘with her real gifts stifled within’ (Alice Walker’s words) and leaving behind the little that managed to survive of one’s true self in fugitive pieces.”

In her March 1988 review of Gloria T. Hull’s Color, Sex, and Poetry in the San Francisco Examiner, Melanie Lawrence wrote:

“Grimke was a gifted poet and playwright who also envisioned herself as a fragile child-woman lost in a hostile world.

She overcame this shyness to teach, travel, and agitate against racism but ended life as a neurotic recluse, her writing abandoned. Hull hypothesizes that Grimke’s melancholy was rooted both in her unusual background and in her thwarted love for women, a love that apparently only blossomed in some exquisite and unpublished poetry.”

For instance:

If I might taste but once, just once

The dew

Upon her lips.

 

Reclusive later years

Angelina’s father took ill in 1928, and she tended to him until he died in 1930. She then moved to New York City and there she stayed, living out her days as a semi-recluse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Though her poetry continued to be anthologized, she didn’t publish anything new.

Angelina Weld Grimké died in New York City in 1958, at age 78.

More about Angelina Weld Grimké

More informaton

Poetry Foundation
Blackpast
Britannica

Further reading

Lift Up Thy Voice: The Grimke Family’s Journey from Slaveholders to Civil Rights Leaders by Mark Perry (2002)
Color, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance by Gloria T. Hull (1987)
The Selected Works of Angelina Weld Grimké (edited by Carolivia Herron, 1991)

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Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019) was an American poet whose work reflects a deeply rooted harmony with the natural world. No Voyage and Other Poems, her first collection, was published in 1963. Since then, books and numerous collections of her poems were published.

Born in Maple Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, Mary’s parents were Edward and Helen Oliver. Edward worked in the Cleveland public school system as an athletic coach and social studies teacher.

 

Adopting New England as a home

Oliver began writing at the age of fourteen, creating her earliest poems.When she was seventeen, Oliver visited the home of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. The poet’s sister Norma was the owner of the house in Austerlitz, New York. The two women became good friends, and Oliver lived on the 800-acre property for about seven years. She was Norma’s companion and assisted her in organizing papers of the late poet.

Oliver again visited Austerlitz toward the end of the 1950s. She became acquainted with photographer Molly Malone Cook, whose photography studio was in Massachusetts. The two began a relationship that lasted more than forty years, and resided together in Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod.

Although she was a native of Ohio and was influenced by her early life there, Oliver adopted New England as her home and set many of her poems around Provincetown, where she and Molly made their home. She derived much of her inspiration from nature and spent hours taking long walks in the woods, ponds, and the Provincetown harbor.

Oliver was exceedingly private and rarely gave interviews. In one very rare interview, she stated that when a walk is successful, it doesn’t go anywhere in particular, allowing her to stop and write. She never left home without her notebook. When inspired, she wrote down her thoughts while they were fresh in her mind.

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Many published collections

Although Oliver attended Ohio State University and Vassar College, she never earned her degree. The influence of Edna St. Vincent Millay is evident in No Voyage and Other Poems, the first book of poetry she published in 1963.

Memories of her childhood were a significant influence in a lot of her writing, especially in The River Styx, Ohio, and Other Poems, which was published in 1972. Classic mythological tales were the influence of  The Night Traveler (1978).

Oliver was fascinated by the bucolic life that was expressed in many of the writings of Henry David Thoreau. The natural world and its solitude were celebrated in her collection, American Primitive (1983).

The seclusion, peace, and quiet that one finds in nature is a theme in House of Light, published (1990). Early works included White Pine (1994), Blue Pastures (1995), and West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems (1997). Later works include Why I Wake Early (2004), and A Thousand Mornings (2012).

Some individual poems that have become reader favorites include “Wild Geese,” “The Summer Day,” “The Journey,” and “When Death Comes.”

Mary Oliver’s contributions to the literary world included two volumes for aspiring writers about writing poetry. A Poetry Handbook was published in 1995, and A Handbook For Writing and Reading Metrical Verse was released in 1998. Winter Hours (1999) was a volume of prose poems, poetry, and essays about other poets. She explored the connection of landscape to the soul in Long Life: Essays and Other Writings (2004).

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Mary Oliver page on Amazon*

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Major milestones and awards

Oliver was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Art, U.S. and Canada in 1980. A milestone was the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for the celebrated volume, “American Primitive,” in 1984.

She won the Laurence L. and Thomas Winship/PEN New England Award in 1991 and a National Book Award for Poetry for New and Selected Poems in 1992. In 1998 the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry was awarded to her. She was described by The New York Times as America’s best-selling poet.

In addition to being one of the most influential poets of our time, Oliver spent time teaching and was on the faculty of Bennington College in Vermont from 1996 until 2001. She received Honorary Doctorates from The Art Institute of Boston, Dartmouth College, Marquette University, and Tufts University.

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Mary Oliver’s legacy

For more than sixty years, Mary Oliver inspired readers around the world. She faced a lot of personal challenges in her life, in addition to the abuse as a child. She never let it keep her from expressing herself in a quiet, compassionate manner. Through her writing, she had a way of gently guiding readers in to see the wonders of nature and the world through her eyes.

In “Mary Oliver Helped Us Stay Amazed,” a remembrance published in The New Yorker just after her death in early 2019, Rachel Syme wrote in The New Yorker:

“With her consistent, shimmering reverence for flora and fauna, Oliver made herself one of the most beloved poets of her generation. She worked in the Romantic tradition of Wordsworth or Keats, but she also infused a distinctly American loneliness into her words—the solitary reflections of Thoreau gazing over a lake, or of Whitman peering from the Brooklyn Ferry at the shuffling tides below his feet.

Hers were not poems about isolation, though, but about pushing beyond your own sense of emotional quarantine, even when you feel fear. Everywhere you look, in Oliver’s verse, you find threads of connectivity.”

Mary Oliver died of lymphoma in her Florida home at the age of 83.

More about Mary Oliver

Major Works

Poetry Collections

Oliver was an incredibly prolific poet, with published collections too numerous to list here. Here is a full listing, the following is the selection mentioned in the biography above.

No Voyage and Other Poems (1963)
The River Styx, Ohio, and Other Poems (1972)
The Night Traveler (1978)
American Primitive (1983)
House of Light (1990)
White Pine (1994)
Blue Pastures (1995)
West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems (1997)
Why I Wake Early (2004)
A Thousand Mornings (2012)

Nonfiction and essays

A Poetry Handbook (1995)
A Handbook For Writing and Reading Metrical Verse (1998)
Winter Hours (1999)
Long Life: Essays and Other Writings (2004)
Upstream: Selected Essays (2019)

More information

Mary Oliver on What Attention Really Means
Mary Oliver website at Beacon Press
Poetry Foundation
On Being — Mary Oliver: Listening to the World (podcast)
Reader discussion on Goodreads

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Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee (1989)

Bharati Mukherjee (1940 – 2017), who made her life in America, has written many books about the immigrant experience. Jasmine, published in 1989, is probably among the best as it picks up on the transition in a very nuanced fashion, not sparing us the horrors, either.

It is quite likely that the author’s personal experiences have contributed to the deep insights that can grab readers and keep them riveted. Mukherjee was born in what is now called Kolkata (Calcutta at the time she was born when under Indian rule). In the course of her prolific career, she wrote many works of fiction and nonfiction and taught at a number of American universities.

 

Changing names, transforming identities

The protagonist of Jasmine starts her life with the name Jyoti, then adopts the name Jasmine, when her husband lovingly rechristens her. Finally, she becomes Jane, after making the move to America. The names that Bharati chooses for her character become synonymous with the transformations within and without, as she is tossed from one life-changing reality to another; each one stripping her of an identity.

The story starts with Jyoti recalling her life in a small village in Punjab in the North of India where an old astrologer predicts that she will be widowed and then exiled from her own country. But she is Jane now, age twenty-four and living in Baden, Elsa Country, Iowa, with her partner, Bud Ripplemeyer, who is a much-older divorcee and wheelchair-bound after a shooting accident.

Jane is carrying Bud’s child and he would like for them to be married, but she resists. She has already seen tragedy, having been widowed at seventeen. She lost a husband who loved her dearly and whose dream it was to move to Florida in the U.S. It is to fulfill his dream that she makes the long journey out of India, suffering trials and tribulations along the way.

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Bharati Mukherjee

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Adapting to American life

Modern notions in India of the 1970s are also revealed through the views of Prakash, Jasmine’s futuristic husband who believed, “love was letting go. Independence, self-reliance.” He also believed that to have a “real life,” they had to go to America.

The author uses the first-person and several flashbacks as the story unfolds. As much as Jane attempts to understand the American ways, she brings a bit of India into the lives of the people around. She writes, “They get disappointed if there’s not something Indian on the table” and about how a farmer in the vicinity helps her plant Indian herbs like coriander, fenugreek, and “five kinds of chili peppers.”

The Asian transformation has made Bud “reckless and emotional,” which also has him adopt a teenage Vietnamese boy to “make up for fifty years of selfishness.”

Quite often across the narrative, one finds Jane holding things back, “I have to be careful about nearly everything I say.” Original perspectives also come into play as to why she finds herself hoarding water in all the used-up receptacles around the house in Baden. Her mind wanders back to “water famines in Hasnapur, how at the dried-out well, docile women turned savage for the last muddy bucketful.”

The author’s problems with her adopted country also reveal themselves in the narrative as when she writes, “this country has so many ways of humiliating, of disappointing.” Jane has to accept terms like she is a “dark-haired girl’ or has a “darkish complexion.”

But, even she has to admit that when she is hired to work as an au pair with the Taylor family in New York, they are “democratic” in the way that they treat her, providing her a room to herself, fixed working hours and substantial wages.

It may also interest readers to know that whilst Bharati Mukherjee wrote of hyphenated identities, she always fought shy of that label saying, “I am American, not an Asian-American.”

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Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee on Amazon*

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Despite a hint of fatalism, a satisfying ending

The clash of philosophical beliefs also unfurl in Jasmine when Jane tries to explain to Taylor, “a whole life’s mission might be to move a flowerpot from one table to another,” and he replies, “I couldn’t live in a world like yours … If rearranging a particle of dust is as important as discovering relativity, that’s a formula for total anarchy. Total futility. Total fatalism. Where’s the incentive to do anything?”

Despite the hint at fatalism, Jane tells herself, “I do believe that extraordinary events can jar the needle arm, jump tracks, rip across incarnations, and deposit a life into a groove that was not prepared to receive it.”

And finally, the happy but unexpected ending, when Jane makes peace with her foretold destiny and whispers an imagined rejoinder to the astrologer, “Watch me reposition the stars.”

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RELATED CONTENT BY MELANIE KUMAR

10 Classic Indian Women Authors

Remembering Meena Alexander, Indian Poet & Scholar

A House with Four Rooms by Rumer Godden

Melanie P. Kumar is a  Bangalore, India-based independent writer who has always been fascinated with the magic of words. Links to some of her pieces can be found at gonewiththewindwithmelanie.wordpress.com.

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A Selection of 10 Poems by Charlotte Brontë

The Brontë sisters — Charlotte, Emily, and Anne — literary geniuses all, are best known for their classic novels, but each was a poet in her own right. Though Emily’s has come to be known as the best among their poetic works, poems by Charlotte Brontë are more than meriting of a consideration.

Charlotte is best known for Jane Eyre (1847) and also wrote Shirley (1849) and Villette (1853). Before attempting to publish novels, Charlotte undertook the task of finding a home for a collaborative book of poems, thinking it would be a good stepping stone (it wasn’t, as it turned out). The sisters took masculine, or at least indeterminate, noms de plume. In Charlotte’s words:

“We had very early cherished the dream of one day becoming authors. This dream, never relinquished even when distance divided and absorbing tasks occupied us, now suddenly acquired strength and consistency: it took the character of a resolve. We agreed to arrange a small section of our poems, and, if possible, get them printed.

… The book was printed: it is scarcely known, was published and advertised at the sisters’ own expense and sold two copies) and all of it that merits to be known are the poems of Ellis Bell.”

The resulting book, The Poems of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, published in 1846 at the sisters’ own expense, sold exactly two copies. Charlotte didn’t think much of her own poetry, nor apparently that of Anne’s, recognizing even then that Emily (who went by Ellis) had the true poetic talent of the trio. Find out more about the Brontë sisters’ path to publication.

Of Charlotte’s poetic work, The Poetry Foundation observes:

“Like her contemporary Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Brontë experimented with the poetic forms that became the characteristic modes of the Victorian period—the long narrative poem and the dramatic monologue—but unlike Browning, Brontë gave up writing poetry after the success ofJane Eyre.

… Brontë’s decision to abandon poetry for novel writing exemplifies the dramatic shift in literary tastes and the marketability of literary genres—from poetry to prose fiction—that occurred in the 1830s and 1840s.”

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Learn more about Charlotte Brontë
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A selection of poems by Charlotte Brontë

The first seven poems in this selection are from The Poems of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. The poems reprinted here are the shortest of her works in this book; the others are nearly epic in length. You can read a later edition of the book, with an addendum by Charlotte, on Project Gutenberg. 

“Speak of the North ! A Lonely Moor” is the 8th poem in the following selection; it’s not known exactly when Charlotte wrote it. And the last two are sad tributes to her sisters Emily and Anne, who died within months of one another at ages thirty and twenty-nine, respectively.

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You may also enjoy: 5 Poems by Emily Brontë

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Life

Life, believe, is not a dream

So dark as sages say;

Oft a little morning rain

Foretells a pleasant day.

Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,

But these are transient all;

If the shower will make the roses bloom,

O why lament its fall?

Rapidly, merrily,

Life’s sunny hours flit by,

Gratefully, cheerily,

Enjoy them as they fly!

What though Death at times steps in

And calls our Best away?

What though sorrow seems to win,

O’er hope, a heavy sway?

Yet hope again elastic springs,

Unconquered, though she fell;

Still buoyant are her golden wings,

Still strong to bear us well.

Manfully, fearlessly,

The day of trial bear,

For gloriously, victoriously,

Can courage quell despair!

Analysis of Life

 

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The Letter

What is she writing? Watch her now,

How fast her fingers move!

How eagerly her youthful brow

Is bent in thought above!

Her long curls, drooping, shade the light,

She puts them quick aside,

Nor knows that band of crystals bright,

Her hasty touch untied.

It slips down her silken dress,

Falls glittering at her feet;

Unmarked it falls, for she no less

Pursues her labour sweet.

The very loveliest hour that shines,

Is in that deep blue sky;

The golden sun of June declines,

It has not caught her eye.

The cheerful lawn, and unclosed gate,

The white road, far away,

In vain for her light footsteps wait,

She comes not forth to-day.

There is an open door of glass

Close by that lady’s chair,

From thence, to slopes of messy grass,

Descends a marble stair.

Tall plants of bright and spicy bloom

Around the threshold grow;

Their leaves and blossoms shade the room

From that sun’s deepening glow.

Why does she not a moment glance

Between the clustering flowers,

And mark in heaven the radiant dance

Of evening’s rosy hours?

O look again! Still fixed her eye,

Unsmiling, earnest, still,

And fast her pen and fingers fly,

Urged by her eager will.

Her soul is in th’absorbing task;

To whom, then, doth she write?

Nay, watch her still more closely, ask

Her own eyes’ serious light;

Where do they turn, as now her pen

Hangs o’er th’unfinished line?

Whence fell the tearful gleam that then

Did in their dark spheres shine?

The summer-parlour looks so dark,

When from that sky you turn,

And from th’expanse of that green park,

You scarce may aught discern.

Yet, o’er the piles of porcelain rare,

O’er flower-stand, couch, and vase,

Sloped, as if leaning on the air,

One picture meets the gaze.

‘Tis there she turns; you may not see

Distinct, what form defines

The clouded mass of mystery

Yon broad gold frame confines.

But look again; inured to shade

Your eyes now faintly trace

A stalwart form, a massive head,

A firm, determined face.

Black Spanish locks, a sunburnt cheek

A brow high, broad, and white,

Where every furrow seems to speak

Of mind and moral might.

Is that her god? I cannot tell;

Her eye a moment met

Th’impending picture, then it fell

Darkened and dimmed and wet.

A moment more, her task is done,

And sealed the letter lies;

And now, towards the setting sun

She turns her tearful eyes.

Those tears flow over, wonder not,

For by the inscription see

In what a strange and distant spot

Her heart of hearts must be!

Three seas and many a league of land

That letter must pass o’er,

Ere read by him to whose loved hand

‘Tis sent from England’s shore.

Remote colonial wilds detain

Her husband, loved though stern;

She, ‘mid that smiling English scene,

Weeps for his wished return.

 

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Passion

Some have won a wild delight,

By daring wilder sorrow;

Could I gain thy love to-night,

I’d hazard death to-morrow.

Could the battle-struggle earn

One kind glance from thine eye,

How this withering heart would burn,

The heady fight to try!

Welcome nights of broken sleep,

And days of carnage cold,

Could I deem that thou wouldst weep

To hear my perils told.

Tell me, if with wandering bands

I roam full far away,

Wilt thou to those distant lands

In spirit ever stray?

Wild, long, a trumpet sounds afar;

Bid me—bid me go

Where Seik and Briton meet in war,

On Indian Sutlej’s flow.

Blood has dyed the Sutlej’s waves

With scarlet stain, I know;

Indus’ borders yawn with graves,

Yet, command me go!

Though rank and high the holocaust

Of nations steams to heaven,

Glad I’d join the death-doomed host,

Were but the mandate given.

Passion’s strength should nerve my arm,

Its ardour stir my life,

Till human force to that dread charm

Should yield and sink in wild alarm,

Like trees to tempest-strife.

If, hot from war, I seek thy love,

Darest thou turn aside?

Darest thou then my fire reprove,

By scorn, and maddening pride?

No—my will shall yet control

Thy will, so high and free,

And love shall tame that haughty soul—

Yes—tenderest love for me.

I’ll read my triumph in thine eyes,

Behold, and prove the change;

Then leave, perchance, my noble prize,

Once more in arms to range.

I’d die when all the foam is up,

The bright wine sparkling high;

Nor wait till in the exhausted cup

Life’s dull dregs only lie.

Then Love thus crowned with sweet reward,

Hope blest with fulness large,

I’d mount the saddle, draw the sword,

And perish in the charge!

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Evening Solace

The human heart has hidden treasures,

In secret kept, in silence sealed;—

The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,

Whose charms were broken if revealed.

And days may pass in gay confusion,

And nights in rosy riot fly,

While, lost in Fame’s or Wealth’s illusion,

The memory of the Past may die.

But there are hours of lonely musing,

Such as in evening silence come,

When, soft as birds their pinions closing,

The heart’s best feelings gather home.

Then in our souls there seems to languish

A tender grief that is not woe;

And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish

Now cause but some mild tears to flow.

And feelings, once as strong as passions,

Float softly back—a faded dream;

Our own sharp griefs and wild sensations,

The tale of others’ sufferings seem.

Oh! when the heart is freshly bleeding,

How longs it for that time to be,

When, through the mist of years receding,

Its woes but live in reverie!

And it can dwell on moonlight glimmer,

On evening shade and loneliness;

And, while the sky grows dim and dimmer,

Feel no untold and strange distress—

Only a deeper impulse given

By lonely hour and darkened room,

To solemn thoughts that soar to heaven

Seeking a life and world to come.

 

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Parting

There’s no use in weeping,

Though we are condemned to part:

There’s such a thing as keeping

A remembrance in one’s heart:

There’s such a thing as dwelling

On the thought ourselves have nursed,

And with scorn and courage telling

The world to do its worst.

We’ll not let its follies grieve us,

We’ll just take them as they come;

And then every day will leave us

A merry laugh for home.

When we’ve left each friend and brother,

When we’re parted wide and far,

We will think of one another,

As even better than we are.

Every glorious sight above us,

Every pleasant sight beneath,

We’ll connect with those that love us,

Whom we truly love till death!

In the evening, when we’re sitting

By the fire, perchance alone,

Then shall heart with warm heart meeting,

Give responsive tone for tone.

We can burst the bonds which chain us,

Which cold human hands have wrought,

And where none shall dare restrain us

We can meet again, in thought.

So there’s no use in weeping,

Bear a cheerful spirit still;

Never doubt that Fate is keeping

Future good for present ill!

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Regret

Long ago I wished to leave

” The house where I was born; ”

Long ago I used to grieve,

My home seemed so forlorn.

In other years, its silent rooms

Were filled with haunting fears;

Now, their very memory comes

O’ercharged with tender tears.

Life and marriage I have known,

Things once deemed so bright;

Now, how utterly is flown

Every ray of light !

‘Mid the unknown sea of life

I no blest isle have found;

At last, through all its wild wave’s strife,

My bark is homeward bound.

Farewell, dark and rolling deep!

Farewell, foreign shore!

Open, in unclouded sweep,

Thou glorious realm before!

Yet, though I had safely pass’d

That weary, vexed main,

One loved voice, through surge and blast,

Could call me back again.

Though the soul’s bright morning rose

O’er Paradise for me,

William ! even from Heaven’s repose

I’d turn, invoked by thee!

Storm nor surge should e’er arrest

My soul, exulting then:

All my heaven was once thy breast,

Would it were mine again!

Stanzas

If thou be in a lonely place,

If one hour’s calm be thine,

As Evening bends her placid face

O’er this sweet day’s decline;

If all the earth and all the heaven

Now look serene to thee,

As o’er them shuts the summer even,

One moment—think of me!

Pause, in the lane, returning home;

‘Tis dusk, it will be still:

Pause near the elm, a sacred gloom

Its breezeless boughs will fill.

Look at that soft and golden light,

High in the unclouded sky;

Watch the last bird’s belated flight,

As it flits silent by.

Hark! for a sound upon the wind,

A step, a voice, a sigh;

If all be still, then yield thy mind,

Unchecked, to memory.

If thy love were like mine, how blest

That twilight hour would seem,

When, back from the regretted Past,

Returned our early dream!

If thy love were like mine, how wild

Thy longings, even to pain,

For sunset soft, and moonlight mild,

To bring that hour again!

But oft, when in thine arms I lay,

I’ve seen thy dark eyes shine,

And deeply felt their changeful ray

Spoke other love than mine.

My love is almost anguish now,

It beats so strong and true;

‘Twere rapture, could I deem that thou

Such anguish ever knew.

I have been but thy transient flower,

Thou wert my god divine;

Till checked by death’s congealing power,

This heart must throb for thine.

And well my dying hour were blest,

If life’s expiring breath

Should pass, as thy lips gently prest

My forehead cold in death;

And sound my sleep would be, and sweet,

Beneath the churchyard tree,

If sometimes in thy heart should beat

One pulse, still true to me.

 

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Winter Stores

We take from life one little share,

And say that this shall be

A space, redeemed from toil and care,

From tears and sadness free.

And, haply, Death unstrings his bow,

And Sorrow stands apart,

And, for a little while, we know

The sunshine of the heart.

Existence seems a summer eve,

Warm, soft, and full of peace,

Our free, unfettered feelings give

The soul its full release.

A moment, then, it takes the power

To call up thoughts that throw

Around that charmed and hallowed hour,

This life’s divinest glow.

But Time, though viewlessly it flies,

And slowly, will not stay;

Alike, through clear and clouded skies,

It cleaves its silent way.

Alike the bitter cup of grief,

Alike the draught of bliss,

Its progress leaves but moment brief

For baffled lips to kiss

The sparkling draught is dried away,

The hour of rest is gone,

And urgent voices, round us, say,

“Ho, lingerer, hasten on!”

And has the soul, then, only gained,

From this brief time of ease,

A moment’s rest, when overstrained,

One hurried glimpse of peace?

No; while the sun shone kindly o’er us,

And flowers bloomed round our feet,—

While many a bud of joy before us

Unclosed its petals sweet,—

An unseen work within was plying;

Like honey-seeking bee,

From flower to flower, unwearied, flying,

Laboured one faculty,—

Thoughtful for Winter’s future sorrow,

Its gloom and scarcity;

Prescient to-day, of want to-morrow,

Toiled quiet Memory.

‘Tis she that from each transient pleasure

Extracts a lasting good;

‘Tis she that finds, in summer, treasure

To serve for winter’s food.

And when Youth’s summer day is vanished,

And Age brings Winter’s stress,

Her stores, with hoarded sweets replenished,

Life’s evening hours will bless.

 

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Speak of the North! A lonely moor

Speak of the North! A lonely moor

Silent and dark and tractless swells,

The waves of some wild streamlet pour

Hurriedly through its ferny dells.

Profoundly still the twilight air,

Lifeless the landscape; so we deem

Till like a phantom gliding near

A stag bends down to drink the stream.

And far away a mountain zone,

A cold, white waste of snow-drifts lies,

And one star, large and soft and lone,

Silently lights the unclouded skies.

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On the Death of Emily Jane Brontë

My darling thou wilt never know

The grinding agony of woe

That we have bourne for thee,

Thus may we consolation tear

E’en from the depth of our despair

And wasting misery.

The nightly anguish thou art spared

When all the crushing truth is bared

To the awakening mind,

When the galled heart is pierced with grief,

Till wildly it implores relief,

But small relief can find.

Nor know’st thou what it is to lie

Looking forth with streaming eye

On life’s lone wilderness.

“Weary, weary, dark and drear,

How shall I the journey bear,

The burden and distress?”

Then since thou art spared such pain

We will not wish thee here again;

He that lives must mourn.

God help us through our misery

And give us rest and joy with thee

When we reach our bourne!

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On the Death of Anne Bront

There’s little joy in life for me,

And little terror in the grave;

I ‘ve lived the parting hour to see

Of one I would have died to save.

Calmly to watch the failing breath,

Wishing each sigh might be the last;

Longing to see the shade of death

O’er those belovèd features cast.

The cloud, the stillness that must part

The darling of my life from me;

And then to thank God from my heart,

To thank Him well and fervently;

Although I knew that we had lost

The hope and glory of our life;

And now, benighted, tempest-tossed,

Must bear alone the weary strife.

Analysis of “On the Death of Anne Brontë”

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10 Modernist Women Writers Who Shouldn’t be Forgotten

Female authors have always been overshadowed by men, but this does not make their writing any weaker or lesser than. Though popular Modernist works in today’s day tend to gravitate toward the male voice, the following Modernist women writers were well known in their day.

Some of their work has fallen into a literary abyss, where little attention has been given to them almost a century later. Their names appeared regularly on bestseller lists in the 20th century, and they were no strangers to readers. At right, May Sinclair.

Most of these women were connected to one another in some way, either through schooling, a crossing of literary paths, or in reviewing another’s work.

What makes these names critical in understanding Modernist literature is that most, if not all, of these women were not confined to writing within the parameters of fiction. Their words wove through and throughout non-fiction, playwriting, criticism, literary magazines, poetry, translating, and more.

This presence of literary versatility flourished during the Modernist period for both women and men. Not only were structural and stylistic constraints in the traditional novel broken, contorted, and subverted, but the same was done to societal conventions.

Artistic movements, like Dadaism and Surrealism, additionally captured the absurdity of tradition. Though some of the following women writers stayed within the confines of traditional literature, their writing converges in the ideal that their work is still deserving of attention and admiration.

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Dorothy Richardson (1873 – 1957)

Dorothy Richardson was best known for her Pilgrimage novels, which were precursors to and champions of the stream-of-consciousness narrative technique.

Often unmentioned in discussions about Modernism and stylistic conventions for the period, Pilgrimage is Richardson’s magnum opus. It is comprised of thirteen novels that she considered to be chapters. Beginning with Pointed Roofs and ending with March Moonlight, the Pilgrimage novels all follow the life of Miriam Henderson and her quotidian responsibilities. Today, her novels are still in print, but not in all countries.

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May Sinclair (1863 – 1946)

At the time when May Sinclair’s writing was featured in The Egoist, she was a well-known literary critic and novelist. In The Egoist, she reviewed Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage, coining the now-popular term “stream-of-consciousness,” which Richardson detested.

She was on cordial terms with the three leading Imagist revolutionaries: Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington, and H.D. Her novel, The Three Sisters, parallels the lives of the Brontë sisters in some respects, while Mary Olivier: A Life is mostly known for being featured in The Little Review alongside James Joyce’s Ulysses (rather than for its content).

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Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman; 1894 – 1983)

 Known primarily as Bryher, Annie Winifred Ellerman came from an affluent family, as her father was a shipping magnate. With her wealth, Bryher funded the endeavors of her literary friends.

In Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris, Noel Riley Fitch writes that Bryher gave Sylvia Beach, owner of Shakespeare and Company in Paris, “nearly $1,400” (in 1937) just to help keep the bookshop afloat. Bryher married fellow writer Robert McAlmon as a means of convenience, causing her then-husband to be nicknamed “Robert McAlimony,” according to his archives at Yale.

Bryher’s most known-of relationship is with poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle). A novelist in her own right, Bryher published over a dozen novels, including memoirs and poetry collections.

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Storm Jameson (1891 – 1986)

Penning nearly fifty novels, Storm Jameson wrote two series — Triumph of Time and Mirror in Darkness — and fifteen non-fiction works. Like many other female writers during the Modernist period, Jameson and her work are overlooked.

In British Fiction After Modernism, Elizabeth Maslin writes a chapter titled, “The Case for Storm Jameson.” There, she argues that because the weight tends to land on high Modernists, like Virginia Woolf, novelists that did not ascribe to the new novelistic conventions during the time are overshadowed.

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Dorothy Sayers (1893 – 1957)

 

Dorothy Sayers was known for being, among other things, a translator, detective novelist, Oxford alumna, and literary critic. While a statue of her proudly stands in Essex, she took on the arduous task of translating Dante’ The Divine Comedy. Today, some of her works remain out-of-print, but others can be found in local bookstores today – mostly her detective fiction.

However, you can still find her name inside Penguin editions of The Divine Comedy, where her name is listed as the translator. Her brief biography in the edition lauds her work The Nine Tailors as “fascinating” and notes the breadth of her capabilities, stating that she “also wrote religious plays.”

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Margaret Kennedy (1896 – 1967)

 

Margaret Kennedy’s work made it onto the big screen in her day, but before that, she went to school with writers Sylvia Thompson and Winifred Holtby.

In 1925 – the year that marks the publication of The Great Gatsby and Mrs. Dalloway – Kennedy’s novel, The Constant Nymph, reigned as the number two bestselling book. On the charts, it sat five spots above Sinclair Lewis’s Arrowsmith. The Constant Nymph was just one of her works to make it to become a stage production.

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Winifred Holtby (1898 – 1935)

 

Besides Winifred Holtby’s schooling with other novelists including her good friend Vera Brittain, she knew Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf’s husband. In 1932, she published Virginia Woolf: A Critical Memoir. In its Author’s Note, she references meeting Virginia Woolf only a couple of times, yet she expresses her gratitude to her for aiding the composition of the book.

Holtby not only interviewed Woolf but, Woolf supplied her with “copies of some of her critical articles.” Most known for her posthumously-published book South Riding, Holtby wrote short stories and plays, as well. South Riding made it to the big screen in 1938, three years after her death.

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Mary Butts (1890 – 1937)

 Though her name was no stranger to literary magazines, like The Little Review, during Mary Butts’ lifetime, her paternal great-grandfather was friends with William Blake.

The Modern Novel states that “In Paris [she] came in contact with many of the glitterati of the time – the painter, Nina Hamnett, the writers Ezra Pound, Djuna Barnes, Ford Madox Ford, Bryher, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many others.” Even though her work has been reprinted in the late 20th century and the 21st century, insight about her life and works remain scant today, though Armed with Madness is considered to be her best and most enduring novel.

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Mazo de la Roche (1879 – 1961)

Known for her Jalna series, which spans sixteen books, four of Mazo de la Roche’s Jalna novels graced the top ten bestsellers lists in the 1900s: Jalna (1927), Jalna (1928), Finch’s Fortune (1931), and The Master of Jalna (1933).

The Library of Congress holds that the Jalna series contains “the story of the Canadian Whiteoak family from 1854 to 1954, although each of the novels can also be enjoyed as an independent story.” Despite the changes throughout the century, the Whiteoaks maintain a sense of stasis, as “the manor house and its rich surrounding farmland known as ‘Jalna’” never changes in some ways.

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E.M. Delafield (1890 – 1943)

Born to a count and a novelist, Diary of a Provincial Lady is one of several works that gave E.M. Delafield a name in her own right. As recently as May 2020, The Guardian featured an article by Kathryn Hughes claiming that Delafield should be more prevalent in contemporary literary discussions.

Though Diary of a Provincial Lady has not been out of print, Hughes attributes the “dusty and quaint” title and “the comedy servants” as possible reasons for warding away readers.

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Contributed by Francesca Mancino

Francesca Mancino is a Master’s in English student at Case Western Reserve University. After this degree, she hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in English, where she can study Lost Generation literature and culture, along with Modernist female writers that have strayed from the canon. Find more of her writing at Lost Modernists.

MORE MODERNIST AUTHORS ON THIS SITE

Djuna Barnes

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)

Marianne Moore

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An 1848 Review of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was published in 1848 under Anne Brontë ’s pseudonym, Acton Bell. It’s now considered one of the earliest feminist novels. Following you’ll find an original review of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, first published  under Anne’s pseudonym, Acton Bell.

More so than Anne’s quieter first novel, Agnes Grey (1847), The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was an immediate success. That was despite its being considered shocking by some readers and critics for its unflinching look at the harms of alcoholism and abuse that arose from it.

The novel tells the story of the mysterious Helen Graham, and her arrival at Wildfell Hall with her young son and a servant. Through a series of letters from another character, we learn of Helen’s troubled past. 

If you’re interested in the history of this novel, be sure to read this 19th-century introduction by Mary Ward, which discusses the effect that the troubled Brontë brother, Branwell, might have had on the sisters’ work, particularly on The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

When the novel was first published, reviews on both sides of the Atlantic identified it as the work of Currer Bell (Charlotte Brontë‘s pseudonym), author of Jane Eyre, or Ellis Bell (Emily Brontë), author of Wuthering Heights, or both. The three sisters were often assumed to be one writer. And most of the public and critics believed at first that the writer — or writers — of these books was a man. It was the intention of the sisters to conceal their identities.

Anne only lived to the year following the publication of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. She died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-nine in 1849.

It’s always exciting to find an original review of a classic novel, especially one published so long ago. Following is one from 1848, the year in which the novel was published, in a British newspaper.

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See also: Quotes from Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

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An 1848 review of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

From the original review of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Acton Bell in The Manchester Weekly Times and Examiner, July 8, 1848: Our readers remember our introduction of Jane Eyre, a novel singularly impressive, and yet, in style and incident, singularly simple.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is from the pen of a brother* of the author of Jane Eyre, to which it bears a strong family likeness.

[*note from Literary Ladies Guide: this review was published at a time when the Brontë sisters were publishing under pseudonyms and it was still generally believed that they were men. Anne wrote under the name of Acton Bell.]

Here we have the same rigid, direct, compressed tone of narrating which, with its undercurrents of humour and wayward pathos, was so striking in Jane Eyre.

Here, too, the effect produced arises out of combinations of the most unpretending and familiar kind — the daily, real-life police reports furnish of “savage ill-treatment by a husband of his wife,” raised a step or two in the social scale, and told with a hard, faithful minuteness that moves the stoutest reader.

A few other figures there are, all drawn from the most unexciting sphere of English country life; the parson and the old lady, the blackguard English country gentleman, the meddling squire, and the village flirt of everyday existence.

Yet, out of these unpromising elements, and with little of anything like reflection, philosophy, or beautiful delineation, Bell has managed to frame a tale which we defy the most blasé novel reader to yawn over.

A strange, mysterious, gloomy fascination, the wild, bleak scenery we are carried through, does exert. It is a book which should be read on a comfortless day, with a scowling sky and fitful gusts of sulky wind sighing and groaning without; with such accompaniments, and alone in some isolated, deserted country mansion, the reader will be made as painfully happy as the novel reader can desire.

Helen Lawrence, the heroine, who, in a diary stretching through some half of the novel, tells us her own story. She is a young English lady of the best kind, full of quiet ardour and quiet wit, accomplished, resolute, and beautiful.

Motherless, the daughter of a country squire, she is brought up at a distance from her father’s estate, unknown, therefore, to the people of the district in which that lies, and where the hero of the novel will be afterwards found residing.

Out of the many suitors for her hand, she selects a Mr. Huntington, a bold, dissipated country gentleman, whose character is drawn with uncommon skill and truth to nature, a riotous enjoyer of life, and with the dashing forwardness which such habits give; yet, he is capable of assuming a respectful tenderness, which, in combination with his beauty of person and manly courage, quite captivate poor Helen’s heart.

Hoping to convert him from his dissipated ways, she becomes his wife and they settle down at Glassdale Manor, Mr. Huntington’s county seat. It is now that the author’s knowledge, seemingly very exact, comes into play.

With the lapse of the honeymoon, all that is bad in the unregulated, uncultivated country gentleman makes its appearance. Abandonment of home for orgies in London with his old club-friends is succeeded by a series of orgies at home. The endeavors and remonstrances by Helen to reform her husband, change his penitent tenderness into indifference and disgust. The radiant, fascinating gentleman sinks into an infuriated and savage sot.

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The Tenant of Wildfell Hall on Amazon*

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The stern accuracy of this part of the book has something wonderfully engrossing, in spite of all the repulsiveness of the details. A domestic tragedy of the deepest kind is brought before us — a company of blackguard gentlemen at their disgusting revels, alone with a modest and gentle lady, in the solitude of a squirearchical estate.

Helen lingers on in the hope of yet weaning her husband from his evil ways’ but when, at last, she finds him seeking to inoculate their little son with all the wickedness of grown-up vice, she resolves on flight to a ruined old house. Wildfell Hall, in the neighbourhood of her brother’s estate, is where she can live in secrecy, beyond the reach of her brutal husband, and support herself on the fruits of her skillful pencil.

It is at this point of the heroine’s history that the novel opens, introducing us to Gilbert Markham, by whom, with the introduction of Helen’s diary, the whole story is told in the form of an autobiography.

Gilbert is a gentleman farmer, and hastens to make us acquainted with the people of his own household and neighbourhood. Among them are a certain Frederick Lawrence, a quiet, reserved young gentleman, who has a sister of whom we know something — though not so Gilbert and his friends.

The neighbourhood is agog with the news that a widow-looking lady and a little boy have come to inhabit some rooms in the ruined Wildfell Hall, and Gilbert’s worthy old mother and pretty sister are soon off to visit Mrs. Graham (how Helen identifies herself), the beautiful and sad newcomer.

She returns the call, and a kind of acquaintance, through intimacy she repels, springs up between Gilbert and herself, chiefly through the little boy’s fondness of Gilbert’s dog; the acquaintance proceeds, and is very charmingly painted as on its way to deeper feeling.

Meanwhile, the village gossips are busy speculating on who Mrs. Graham is, and eagerly spy on her to find more about her ways. Frederick Lawrence is discovered to be in the habit of paying her visits, innocent enough ones, as we know, but which lead Gilbert to look upon his friend as a rival, the more so that he warns him against his passion for Helen.

Finally, the brother is horsewhipped by the lover. Things come to a crisis; Gilbert declares himself. And to excuse her rejection, Helen gives him to read the diary of her married life, which clears up the whole mystery for him.

Just at this juncture, she hears that her husband, Mr. Huntington, is dying — neglected and untended — and goes off to nurse him. He dies, and after due delays and misunderstandings, she gives her hand to Gilbert.

On reflection, it seems, this review gives rather too gloomy a portrait of this very clever and powerful book.

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The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (mini-series) on Amazon*

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More about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

Wikipedia
Reader discussion on Goodreads
An Entire Mistake: The Suppression of  The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Review on Smart Bitches Trashy Books

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*This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!

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