Nava Atlas's Blog, page 60

Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen (1934)

Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen (1885 – 1962) is a masterful collection of short stories by the Danish author best known for Out of Africa (1937), a now-controversial memoir of her life as a coffee plantation owner in the colonized Kenya of the 1920s.

In 1931, the plantation’s fortunes collapsed, and she returned to her family home in Denmark from Kenya. Karen Christenze Dinesen was the author’s original name, and she was known as Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke, or simply Karen Blixen, during her disastrous marriage. Upon her return to her home country, she began writing in earnest. In 1934, Seven Gothic Tales, a collection of stories she had written in English, was published.

A surprise success by a Danish author in the U.S.

Seven Gothic Tales was a surprise success in the U.S., even becoming a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection. It set the stage for the thematic character of her fiction, which was an amalgam of the real and the mythic, and incorporating elements of Persian and West Indian exotica. Storytelling is actually a part of some of her stories — that is, stories are told within the stories; and characters are sometimes archetypes rather than fully fleshed-out people. She wrote of her work:

“Reality had met me … in such an ugly shape, that I have no wish to come into contact with it again. Somewhere in me a dark fear was still crouching and I took refuge within the fantastic like a distressed child in his book of fairy tales …

I belong to the ancient, idle, wild, and useless tribe, perhaps I am even one of the last members of it, who, for many thousands of years, in all countries and parts of the world,  has, now and again, stayed for a time among the hard working honest people in real life, and sometimes has thus been fortunate enough to create another sort of reality for them, which, in some way or another, has satisfied them. I am a storyteller … ”

 

The use of the term gothic

Commenting on the designation of these tales as gothic, the Karen Blixen Museum offers this insight: 

“Some of the foremost Anglo-Saxon authors of 19th century had written Gothic tales and novels: Robert Louis Stevenson, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe and William Faulkner – all of whom feature in Karen Blixen’s private library. Karen Blixen adopted a very free approach to the traditional Gothic genre, but she worked within a number of its parameters.

The themes of Gothic novels include: the collapse of feudal aristocracy; young heroes and heroines held captive in ancient castles and convents by powerful and manipulative men; the tyranny of the past stifling the hopes of the present generation. Women writers were especially fond of the genre – presumably because its traditional themes of oppression and persecution went hand-in-hand with women’s experience of lack of freedom and independence in a patriarchal society.”

 

Endeavoring to describe the indescribable

In her introduction to the 1934 Modern Library edition of Seven Gothic Tales, Dorothy Canfield Fisher endeavors to describe the unusual flavor, so to speak of the tales:

“Although solidly set in an admirably described factual background somewhere on the same globe we inhabit, in a past mostly no longer ago than sometime in the nineteenth century, although they are human beings, young men, maidens, old men, old women, they are unlike us and the people we know in books and in real life, because the attitude towards life which they have is different from ours, or from any attitude we have met in life or in books …

Where, you will ask yourself, puzzled, have I ever encountered such strange slanting beauty of phrase, clothing such arresting but controlled fantasy? As for me, I don’t know where.”

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Learn more about Isak Dinesen

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The following 1934 review reflects the accolades the book received in the U.S., even as reviewers attempted to define the ineffable quality of the writing:

 

A 1934 review of Seven Gothic Tales

From the original review of Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen in The Salt Lake Tribune, April 29, 1934:  One will find much difficulty in assaying this volume, in determining just wherein lies ints peculiar fascination. These Seven Gothic Tales, or novelettes, as they might be called have nothing of the manner or style of anything else being written contemporaneously.

There is an air of classicism about them, a suggestion of Bocaccio, of the German romantics, or even the richness of Scheherazade’s tales. Yet only a suggestion; they’re truly unlike anything else one can recall. The author takes us into a world peopled by characters that are strange to us, and who have a way of life that’s unfamiliar.

Filled with Danish history, lore, and legend

Isak Dinesen comes of an old Danish family, we are told, and while she chooses to write in English, it’s a Continental attitude of mind that’s revealed. Some of her tales are filled with Danish history, lore, and legend.

In “The Roads Round Pisa,” it is a young Danish nobleman who, seeking in a journey to Tuscany to learn something of the truth about himself, becomes a spectator at a curious chain of events. For this, as for any of the other tales, a proper preface might be found in the words of a character in “The Dreamers” — “It happened just as I tell it to you … You must take in whatever you can, and leave the rest outside. It is not a bad thing in a tale that you can understand only half of it.”

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Babette’s Feast, the 1958 Short Story by Isak Dinesen and 1987 Film

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Slightly grotesque characters grip the imagination

While the actors in these tales are strange, slightly grotesque, and their experiences fantastic, they grip the imagination. The Gothic mood of the stories grows on us, and while we read we’re bound by the author’s spell, and see these people as she saw them, as though she held some secret vision that we may not share.

All of the tales are set back in previous century, and are intricate in structure, designed like some exquisite early mosaic. “The Dreamers,” full of mystical meaning, tells of the beautiful opera singer who, grieving the loss of her voice, gives up her personality also. She becomes more than one person, a woman who never grows old.

Peculiar qualities of family and romance

That is also the peculiar quality of the family in “The Supper at Elsinore.” Two brilliant sisters, like a “pair of spiritual courtesans,” still keep their admirers; the pirate brother who returns long after his death to call upon these two women who loved him in a strange tryst.

A tinge of eroticism marks most of the tales, most especially “The Monkey.” In this tale, a noble Prioress goes to strange lengths to arrange a marriage to save a dissolute nephew, and a small gray monkey plays a weird part. At dinner with the young woman he is to marry, the thoughts of Boris, the nephew, are described:

“He thought that she must have a lovely, an exquisitely beautiful skeleton. She would lie in the round like a piece of matchless lace, a work of art in ivory … he imagined that he might be very happy with her, that he might even fall in love with her, could he have her in her beautiful bones alone … Many human relations, he thought, would be infinitely easier if they could be carried out in the bones only.”

Delicate beauty of writing

In “The Deluge at Norderney,” the most arresting of the tales, the flood that destroyed a coast town of Holstein — coming in summertime, it assumed “the character of a terrible, grim joke” — becomes the setting for the stories of four people: a cardinal who wasn’t a cardinal, a half-mad spinster of the noble Nat-of-Dag, and two unusual young people. These four are revealed during the hours of the night while the waters rise to the loft where they take shelter.

More than the unexpectedness of these tales, with their startling grotesqueries and fantastic incident, is the delicate beauty of the writing. This mysterious Danish author has mastered an exquisite prose style.

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Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen on Amazon*

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More about Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen

Wikipedia
Reader discussion on Goodreads
Margaret Atwood on the Show-Stopping Isak Dinesen

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12 African-American Suffragists Who Shouldn’t be Overlooked

The women’s suffrage movement in the United States led to the establishment of the legal right for women to vote nationally when the 19th amendment was ratified 1920. Here we present twelve African-American suffragists whose contributions shouldn’t be overlooked, a mere fraction of those who should be acknowledged and honored.

As women’s suffrage gained momentum in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, African-American women often were marginalized. Yet despite the odds, Black suffragists made important strides in the fight for voting rights. African-American women suffragists dealt with the political concerns of white suffragists who were aware that they needed the support of  Southern legislators both on the state and federal levels. 

In 1890, the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). NAWSA’s members excluded African-American women, believed that would gain them greater support. The view of women’s suffrage was thus narrowed, focusing primarily on white women.

Racism was as much an issue in the right to secure the vote for Black women as was sexism. Susan Goodier and Karen Pasternello, the authors of Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State, observed: 

“They [Black women] did not rely on white women to tell them they needed the right to vote; they began organizing for the franchise in New York State as early as the 1880s and, in spite of the racism they faced, they would actively seek their enfranchisement throughout the entire struggle. African-American women rarely separated the quest for the vote from the other activism in which they engaged.

Many Black women came to fear that white women would ‘devise something akin to an exclusionary ‘grandmother’s clause’ to keep Black women from voting once they won the vote. Some scholars argue that, in fact, ‘racist attitudes provided additional impetus” for Black women’s struggle.

Much of their activism and work for woman suffrage and women’s rights occurred as a fundamental component of their activities in clubs such as the Negro Women’s Business League or in the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs or its affiliates …”

Though there were many obstacles in the way, African-American women fought tirelessly on all fronts secure the vote. Thanks to the devoted and determined women who participated in the women’s suffrage movement and helped it progress, women gained the right to make their voices heard through voting, at least on paper. The passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, unfortunately, didn’t end the fight for voting rights for all women, as we well know. 

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Nannie Helen Burroughs (1871-1961)

Nannie Helen Burroughs was born in north-central Virginia and later attended school in Washington, D.C., where she graduated with honors. Due to racial bias, she was unable to find a job, neither in the D.C. schools, nor the federal government.

She relocated to Philadelphia and worked as a secretary for the Christian Banner, the National Baptist Convention’s paper. This experience motivated her to advocate for civil rights for African-Americans and women. One result was her founding the National Training School for Women and Girls.

Burroughs believed women should be given a fair opportunity to get an education and job training. She also discussed the need for Black and white women to unite in the fight voting rights; she strongly believed that suffrage for African-American women was necessary to protect their interests. In society which was often racist, she believed a Black woman’s vote was an essential antidote to racial and gender discrimination.

She left behind an impressive legacy, which included assisting Black women of the suffragist movement when they went through hard times. She’s also one of the most quoted suffragists of her time. One of her most memorable quotes was “Having standards isn’t really for anyone else. You should want to have them for yourself.”

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Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823 – 1893)

Mary Ann Shadd Cary was born into a family that lived to help others. As she grew up, her family was actively helping those seeking to escape slavery by participating in the Underground Railroad. This became ever more urgent after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed by Congress in 1850. Her drive toward social justice followed her into adulthood, as she became involved in the women’s suffrage movement among many other causes.

While in Washington D.C, she became a member of the National Woman Suffrage Association and spoke at their convention in 1878. She worked alongside Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to testify before the House Judiciary Committee and founded the Colored Women’s Progressive Franchise in 1880 to push for equal rights for women.

Cary strongly advocated for the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments at a House Judiciary Committee hearing. The Fourteenth Amendment defined citizenship and the Fifteenth Amendment gave African-American men the right to vote. Though she supported the Fifteenth Amendment, she was vocal in her criticism of this amendment that left women out. Her hard work and dedication paid off when she testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Women and the Vote, after which she registered to vote in Washington, D.C.

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Coralie Franklin Cook (1861 – 1942)

Coralie Franklin Cook was an outspoken leader in the African-American community, best known in West Virginia and Washington, D.C. She was a very powerful public speaker, a professor, appointed Board of D.C, a leader in the Black women’s club movement.

She focused primarily on issues of women’s suffrage and education. She was an active member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and took part in participating in the association’s inner circles. The NAWSA hierarchy acknowledged her hard work, though rather patronizingly praised her as an educated, professional, middle-class woman who she matched the intelligence of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Cook was disheartened by the reality that African-American women weren’t a priority for white women active in the suffrage movement and insisted that they do not ignore the political rights of the less fortunate.

She even addressed Susan B. Anthony, saying “…and so Miss Anthony, on behalf of the hundreds of colored women who wait and hope with you for the day when the ballot shall be in the hands of every intelligent woman; and also in behalf of the thousands who sit in darkness and whose condition we shall expect those ballots to better, whether they be in the hands of white women or Black, I offer you my warmest gratitude and congratulations.”

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Anna Julia Cooper (1858 – 1964)

Anna Julia Cooper (1858 – 1964) was born to a house slave named Hannah Stanley Haywood in Raleigh, North Carolina. In the course of her long life, she lived through slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the early Civil Rights movement. She also lived to see the fruits of the women’s suffrage movement.

Not only was Cooper an author and educator, but she was also a social commentator. She participated in numerous conferences, including Woman Suffrage Congress in 1893, where she delivered formidable speeches focusing on racial and gender equality and education. She was among one of the most dedicated of African-American women suffragists.

Cooper encouraged women of color to push back against the belief that a Black man’s experiences and needs were the same as theirs. They needed a voice — and a vote — of their own. She became known for her statement, “Only the BLACK WOMAN can say when and where I enter in the quiet undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence or special patronage; then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.”

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Charlotte Forten Grimké (1837 – 1914)

Charlotte Forten Grimké married Presbyterian minister Francis J. Grimké, making her the aunt of Harlem Renaissance poet and journalist Angelina Weld Grimké. She was an abolitionist and diarist who grew up in a prominent and abolitionist family of color in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Grimké was an influential activist and civil rights leader. In 1892 she formed the Colored Women’s League in Washington, D.C. as a service-oriented club working to promote unity, social progress, and other interests of the Black community. She contributed much to the formation of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896.

Even as she grew older, she continued to speak publicly on abolitionist issues and also arranged lectures for other prominent speakers. Grimké continued to stay an active force advocating for the rights of African-Americans until the time of her death.

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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825 – 1911)

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper combined her talents as a writer, poet, and public speaker with a deep commitment to abolition and social reform. She was an avid supporter of progressive causes both before and after the American Civil War, including prohibition and women’s suffrage.

Her life changed after a trip to the South when she witnessed the mistreatment of Black women during Reconstruction. She gave lectures on the need for racial equality along with women’s rights. Years later, she founded the YMCA Sunday Schools and become the leader in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. She also joined the American Equal Rights Association and the American Woman’s Suffrage Association to help fight for racial and women’s equality.

In 1866, Harper gave a speech demanding equal rights for everyone, including Black women, before the National Woman’s Rights Convention. She stated:

“We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul. You tried that in the case of the Negro … You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs. I, as a colored woman, have had in this country an education which has made me feel as if I were in the situation of Ishmael, my hand against every man, and every man’s hand against me …”

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Adella Hunt Logan (1863 – 1915)

Adella Hunt Logan was an African-American writer, educator, administrator, and suffragist. She was active in advocating for education and voting rights for women of color. 

The National American Woman Suffrage Association held a convention in Atlanta in 1895. At the time, the organization was having a difficult time gaining support for a constitutional amendment on women’s suffrage, so they turned to southern states for help. NAWSA appealed to white southerners because it observed segregation and had previously barred African-American men and women from their conventions.

Around this time, Mississippi and other southern states had passed a constitution to disenfranchise Black citizens through 1908. Although the atmosphere was extremely unwelcoming to African-Americans, Logan attended the convention. She was inspired by a speech by Susan B. Anthony and became a member shortly after.

She began writing for NAWSA’s newspaper, The Woman’s Journal, and contributed to other magazines (including NAACP’s The Crisis) to promote women’s suffrage. Logan also campaigned for women’s voting rights in western states that had statewide suffrage, and argued that African-Americans should have the right to vote in order to have a say in education legislation. 

Though her life ended sadly in depression and suicide, Logan’s contributions to the cause of suffrage were significant.

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Gertrude Bustill Mossell (1855 – 1948)

Gertrude Bustill Mossell was a journalist, author, teacher, activist, and suffragist. She was able to utilize her skills as a writer to give a voice to the ideas of Black women who advocated for women’s suffrage.

Although Mossell came from a comfortable family, she chose to give a voice to African-American women suffragists who were often ignored. She began supporting the women’s suffrage movement when she began writing a woman’s column for T. Thomas Fortune’s Black newspaper, The New York Freeman. Her first article for the column was “Woman Suffrage,” which encouraged Black women to educate themselves about the movement and get involved to work for its success.

She also encouraged women to become journalists to write articles for numerous publications and share their views on current events. Mossell personally favored the Constitutional amendment route favored by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton over the state-by-state method favored by Lucy Stone.

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Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (1842 – 1924)

Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin was a journalist, publisher, civil rights leader, editor of the Woman’s Era, and suffragist. She was best known for creating the club movement that encouraged Black women to fight for civil rights and suffrage.

Ruffin joined Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone to create the American Woman Suffrage Association in Boston. She became the first Black member of the New England Women’s Club, a group created by Howe, Stone, and other AWSA members, when she joined in the mid 1890s.

After Massachusetts granted women the right to vote in School Committee elections, she became the founder of the Massachusetts School Suffrage Association. Here, she advocated for women’s suffrage and candidacy for office. Years later, she became the President of the West End League of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association.

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Mary B. Talbert (1866 – 1923)

Mary B. Talbert (also known as Mary Burnett Talbert) was an American orator, reformer, activist, and suffragist called “the best known Colored Woman in the United States,” as she was one of the most distinguished African-Americans of her time.

In 1905, W.E.B Dubois, John Hope, and thirty others secretly met in Talbert’s home to discuss the civil rights resolution that eventually led to the founding of the Niagara Movement. Dubois stated: “We want full manhood suffrage and we want it now …” Though Talbert was unable to become a member of the Niagara Movement, it served its purpose as the forerunner of the NAACP. The latter allowed her to become a vice president and a board member of the organization from 1919 until her death.

Talbert used the media of the day to educate the public about suffrage and persuade African-American women to fight for their right to vote. In a 1915 article in The Crisis she wrote, “It should not be necessary to struggle forever against popular prejudice, and with us as colored women, this struggle becomes two-fold, first because we are women and second because we are colored women.”

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Mary Church Terrell (1863 – 1954)

Mary Church Terrell, the well-known activist for civil rights, was one of the first African-American woman to earn a college degree. Her interest in suffrage began when she was an Oberlin College student, and she continued her involvement in many aspects of activism into her later years. 

As a member of NAWSA, Terrell created a group of African-American women to combat racial issues such as lynching, educational reform, and more. 

Terrell gave a speech called “The Progress of Colored Women” at a NAWSA session in Washington, D.C. as a call for the association to fight for Black women’s lives. The speech received a great response from the association which led Terrell to serve as their unofficial African-American ambassador. She went on to give other addresses aimed at uniting Black people in various causes.

Terrell led the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority women of Howard University in a suffrage rally, and became the first Black woman to hold a position in the District of Columbia Board of Education. 

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Ida B. Wells (1862 – 1931)

Ida B. Wells (also known as Ida B. Wells-Barnett) was an intrepid journalist, activist, and suffragist. She started her advocacy for women’s suffrage while also working for other forms of social and racial justice.

In 1913 Wells created the Alpha Suffrage Club, a women-focused political group. The club’s work laid bare that truth that many Black women didn’t have sufficient education to take part in politics and the electoral process. This inspired her to reach out to other clubs that catered to Black women to help remedy this situation.

This same year, she also traveled to the first suffrage parade in Washington, D.C. organized by NAWSA. At the parade, she and sixty Black women were told to march in the back. To this, Wells responded “Either I go with you or not at all. I am not taking this stand because I personally wish for recognition. I am doing it for the future benefit of my whole race.”

Wells’ great-granddaughter, Michelle Duster, described her:

“… as an African-American woman who battled both racism and sexism at a time when it was extremely dangerous to speak out… She used her gift of writing, speaking and organizing to help shed light on injustice. She was extremely brave and held steadfast to her convictions despite being criticized, ostracized and marginalized by her contemporaries.”

More African-American Suffragists worth a mention

Sojourner Truth (1797 –1883)
Charlotte Vandine Forten (1785 –1884)
Harriet Forten Purvis (1810 – 1875)
Margaretta Forten (1806 – 1875)
Sarah Remond (1826 – 1887)
Hallie Quinn Brown (1845 – 1949)
Charlotta (Lottie) Rollin (1849 – ?)
Fannie Barrier Williams (1855 – 1944)
Janie Porter Barrett (1865 – 1948)
Naomi Talbert (Anderson; 1863 – ?)
Margaret Murray Washington (1865 – 1925)
Lucy Laney (1854 – 1933)
Lugenia Burns Hope (1871 – 1947)
Josephine Bruce (1853 – 1923)
Verina Morton Jones (1865 – 1943)


More about African-American women suffragists

Black Women’s Integral Role in the Women’s Suffrage Movement
How Black Women Suffragists Fought for the Right to Vote and a Modicum of Respect
Black Women and the Suffrage Movement, 1848 – 1923

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Skyler Isabella Gomez is a 2019 SUNY New Paltz graduate with a degree in Public Relations and a minor in Black Studies. Her passions include connecting more with her Latin roots by researching and writing about legendary Latina authors.

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Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life by Marta McDowell

If you or someone you love is both an Emily Dickinson aficionado and an avid gardener, Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life by Marta McDowell is a book to treasure. This 2019 publication (Timber Press, Portland, OR) is a full color, lushly illustrated homage to an enigmatic woman who was not only a brilliant poet, but a keen observer of the natural world around her.

Organized by season, this gorgeous book is revised from an edition first published in 2004, by an author whose expertise in gardens dovetails with an avid interest in classic women authors who cultivated them. From the publisher:

Emily Dickinson is among the most important of American poets, a beloved literary figure whose short, complex life continues to fascinate readers. But she was also an avid gardener and plant lover.

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Learn more about Emily Dickinson

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In Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Iconic Poet, Marta McDowell traces Dickinson’s life as a gardener and reveals many ways in which her passion for plants is evident in her extensive collection of poems and letters.

The book follows Dickinson’s love of nature and plants through an entire year — forced hyacinth bulbs in winter, saved seeds in summer, and pressed flowers to include in correspondence. Packed with contemporary and historical photography, botanical illustrations, excerpts from Dickinson’s letters, and some of her most cherished poetry, this revealing book is a must-have keepsake for Dickinson fans.

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You might also enjoy: Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life by Marta McDowell

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Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life: An introduction

Marta McDowell, author of Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life and The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder introduces Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life:

Emily Dickinson was a gardener.

When you hear the name “Emily Dickinson,” it may bring to mind a white dress of a well-known image of a sixteen-year-old girl staring boldly out of a daguerrotype. Poetry, of course. Probably not gardening.

Emily Dickinson as a gardener doesn’t fit with the Dickinson mythology. The myths were based real phobias of her later years and were also stoked by her first editor, Mabel Loomis Todd, to promote book sales. Since her death in 1886, she has been psychoanalyzed, compared to medieval cloistered mystics, and called “the madwoman in the attic.” All she lacked was a cloister.

Beyond the stuff of literary legend, she was a person devoted to her family, with pleasures and pastimes and deep friendships. She shared a love of plants with her parents and siblings. To friends, she sent bouquets, and to some her numerous correspondents — over one thousand of her letters have been found — pressed flowers.

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Emily Dickinson collected, pressed, and identified leaves and flowers

in a carefully arranged herbarium

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She collected wildflowers, walking with her dog, Carlo. She studied botany at Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke. She tended both a small glass conservatory attached to the front of the house and a long flower garden sloping down the spacious east side of the grounds.

In winter, she forced hyacinth bulbs and in summer she knelt on a red blanket in her flower borders, performing horticulture’s familiar rituals. This book proceeds in calendar fashion, following the seasons. Welcome to Emily Dickinson’s gardening year.

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Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life is available on Amazon*

and wherever books are sold

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Answer July —

Where is the Bee —

Where is the Blush —

Where is the Hay?

Ah, said July —

Where is the Seed —

Where is the Bud —

Where is the May —

Answer Thee — Me —

Nay — said the May —

Show me the Snow —

Show me the Bells —

Show me the Jay!

Quibbled the Jay —

Where be the Maize —

Where be the Haze —

Where be the Bur?

Here — said the Year —

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See also: Laura Ingalls Wilder:

Late-Blooming Author with a Passion for Nature

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About Marta McDowell

Marta McDowell lives, gardens, and writes in Chatham, New Jersey. She consults for public gardens and private clients, writes and lectures on gardening topics, and teaches landscape history and horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden, where she studied landscape design.

Marta’s particular interest is in authors and their gardens, the connection between the pen and the trowel. In 2018, she was the Emily Dickinson Museum’s Gardener-in-Residence, and she is the 2019 winner of the Garden Club of American’s award for outstanding literary achievement. Her other books include Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life, The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and All the President’s Gardens.

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The Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, MA

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*This is an Amazon Affiliate link. 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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10 Fascinating Facts About Louisa May Alcott, Author of Little Women

Louisa May Alcott (1832 – 1888) may be best known as the author of Little Women and its sequels, but there was more to her than these genteel (yet gently subversive) domestic tales. She was a complex woman whose views were reflected in her literary output. The following fascinating facts about Louisa May Alcott are sure to surprise those who don’t know a lot about the woman behind Little Women.

From her teen years, Louisa was determined to make a living as a writer. She became the Alcott family’s primary breadwinner in her family at a young age, mostly by authoring anonymous thrillers, or what she called “blood and thunder” tales. And from there her life unfolded, often in unexpected ways.

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She never went to school and grew up “free-range”

Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, Louisa grew up in Boston and then in Concord, Massachusetts. In a sketch of her childhood, she recalls the delights of “running away” and being allowed to wander around Boston by herself from a very young age.

Always self-identified as a tomboy, she adored running and even wrote that she “must have been a deer or a horse in some former state, because it was such a joy to run.” She never had a formal education other than getting lessons from her father, yet she grew up absorbing the world she grew up in.

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Louisa wrote thrillers to help support her family

Especially at the start of her writing endeavors, Louisa produced a large body of thrillers (otherwise known as gothic or sensational tales) whose sales supported her family. Amos Bronson Alcott was an impractical philosopher without any talent for earning money. Her beloved mother, Abigail May Alcott, did whatever work a woman could get to put food on the table. Louisa wanted nothing more than to ease her “marmee’s” burden.

Using various pseudonyms, Louisa seemed to take perverse pleasure in dark themes, returning to the genre even after financial need no longer compelled her to do this sort of formula writing. The first modern compilation of what Louisa called “blood and thunder tales” was Behind a Mask: The Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott, published in 1975.

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She promoted women’s rights and abolition

Her views were often expressed by the female characters in her books, strong young women who wanted more from life than to get married and have babies. Louisa May Alcott expert Susan Bailey explains that: “Louisa’s feminism was based on autonomy – the right of every woman to be autonomous,  the freedom for each woman to realize her true potential as a whole person.”

Louisa  contributed to a women’s rights periodical in the 1870s. At the end of the decade, Massachusetts passed a law allowing women to vote in local elections. Louisa registered at once, becoming the first woman to vote in Concord.

She and her family were also ardent abolitionists, a view that was not as widely popular in relatively liberal Massachusetts as one would think. Her father had been one of the earliest abolitionists, having joined the American Anti-slavery Society with William Lloyd Garrison. One of her early memories was of the fugitive slave whom her mother had hidden in their oven.

. . . . . . . . . .

Louisa served briefly as a Union nurse during the Civil War

 “I WANT something to do,” she wrote of her desire to contribute to the Union Army’s effort. If women had been allowed to serve as soldiers, Louisa would have surely taken up arms. But as it was, the only direct way women could serve was to volunteer as nurses, and that’s just what she did, dispatching herself to serve at the Union Hotel in Washington, D.C., which had been turned into a makeshift hospital. 

Not even a month into her service, Louisa came down with typhoid pneumonia, complete with a horrendous cough and a high fever. She was taken home and suffered a long, grueling recovery; the illness may have caused permanent damage to her health. Yet from her brief stint, Louisa was able to convert the journals she kept into a book called Hospital Sketches, which was a modest success.

. . . . . . . . . .

She was reluctant to write a “girl’s story”

The first novel Louisa published under her real name was Moods. Published in 1864, it followed the modest success of Hospital Sketches. But the reception of Moods was disappointing. Tired of churning out sensational tales, Louisa felt a bit adrift as a writer. In 1868, her publisher offhandedly asked her to try writing a “girls’ story” for their list. She cranked out the semi-autobiographical (albeit idealized) novel in two and a half months, though her heart wasn’t in it.

At first, neither Louisa nor her publisher thought the book was in any way remarkable. Yet it truly was an overnight success, with no one more surprised Louisa, who came to appreciate its merits.

  . . . . . . . . . .

Many women writers have been inspired by the fictional Jo March

Jo March, the standout sister among the quartet in Little Women, is one of the most iconic and influential female characters in literature. Tomboyish and ambitious, with a bit of a temper, she was an idealized alter ego of her creator, Louisa May Alcott. Many women writers, famous and otherwise, have named  named Jo as a major inspiration. Here are 10 of them, from Simone de Beauvoir to Patti Smith.

. . . . . . . . . .

Louisa was alarmingly naïve about her sexuality 

Despite all that she’d seen in life, Louisa confessed in an 1883 interview: “I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man’s soul, put by some freak of nature into a woman’s body … because I have fallen in love in my life with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.”

Perhaps unknowingly, the repressed nature of her sexuality helped her avoid the circumscribed path of marriage and motherhood, and allowed her to view the institution dispassionately.

. . . . . . . . . .

One of her anonymous thrillers was rediscovered and published in 1995

A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866) stands squarely in the “woman in peril” genre — it’s a chilling portrait of a woman being stalked by an unstable husband. This novel would be the longest and last of Louisa’s “sensation tales.” Written under the pseudonym A.M. Barnard, it would take nearly 130 years for it to see the light of day again, and to be attributed to its now-famous author.

Thriller master Stephen King, reviewing A Long Fatal Love Chase in the New York Times, concluded “Genius burned for Louisa May Alcott following A Long Fatal Love Chase, brightly but never again with such primitive and joyful heat. One wonders what kind of writer she might have been had she been able to cast the malignantly conventional spirit of Professor Bhaer from her, and to take her thrillers as seriously as her feminist editors and elucidators do today.”

. . . . . . . . . .

She raised her sister’s daughter for nine years

May Alcott Niereker, the youngest Alcott sister (loosely portrayed as Amy in Little Women), trained as an artist in Europe (subsidized by Louisa’s earnings). There she met a man, married, and had a daughter.

May died within a year of giving birth. Louisa earned the father’s family’s consent raise the child. Adopted at the age of two, the little girl was her Aunt Louisa’s namesake (and nicknamed Lulu). Louisa herself never married nor had her own children, yet from all accounts, the nine years they spent together were happy ones. It was Louisa’s death that ended this lovely and unexpected journey into parenthood.

. . . . . . . . . .

Louisa may have had lupus or another autoimmune disease

Louisa was 55 years old when she died of a stroke in Boston in 1888, her death following just two days after her father’s. She’d long been in poor health, which she and others blamed on the mercury-laced medicine she took for the typhoid fever contracted while serving as a Civil War nurse. However, modern scholars have had other theories for her chronic illness, which included headaches, skin rashes, vertigo, rheumatism, and other symptoms compatible with lupus or other autoimmune diseases. 

The post 10 Fascinating Facts About Louisa May Alcott, Author of Little Women appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

13 Modernist Poems by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)

Hilda Doolittle (1886 – 1961), known by her nom de plume H.D., was an American-born poet, novelist, translator, and essayist. Modernism, psychoanalysis, and feminism were all influences on her work, as were the effects of World Wars I and II. Following is a selection of poems by H.D. that speak to her experimental and innovative approach to the craft. 

H.D has earned her place among iconic modernist writers including T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams.

Oread



Whirl up, sea—
whirl your pointed pines,
splash your great pines
on our rocks,
hurl your green over us,
cover us with your pools of fir.







At Baia



I should have thought
in a dream you would have brought
some lovely, perilous thing,
orchids piled in a great sheath,
as who would say (in a dream),
“I send you this,
who left the blue veins
of your throat unkissed.”

Why was it that your hands
(that never took mine),
your hands that I could see
drift over the orchid-heads
so carefully,
your hands, so fragile, sure to lift
so gently, the fragile flower-stuff—
ah, ah, how was it

You never sent (in a dream)
the very form, the very scent,
not heavy, not sensuous,
but perilous—perilous—
of orchids, piled in a great sheath,
and folded underneath on a bright scroll,
some word:

“Flower sent to flower;
for white hands, the lesser white,
less lovely of flower-leaf,”

or

“Lover to lover, no kiss,
no touch, but forever and ever this.”







Sea Rose



Rose, harsh rose,
marred and with stint of petals,
meagre flower, thin,
sparse of leaf,

more precious
than a wet rose
single on a stem—
you are caught in the drift.

Stunted, with small leaf,
you are flung on the sand,
you are lifted
in the crisp sand
that drives in the wind.

Can the spice-rose
drip such acrid fragrance
hardened in a leaf?







Sea Poppies



Amber husk
fluted with gold,
fruit on the sand
marked with a rich grain,

treasure
spilled near the shrub-pines
to bleach on the boulders:

your stalk has caught root
among wet pebbles
and drift flung by the sea
and grated shells
and split conch-shells.

Beautiful, wide-spread,
fire upon leaf,
what meadow yields
so fragrant a leaf
as your bright leaf?







Loss



The sea called—
you faced the estuary,
you were drowned as the tide passed.—
I am glad of this—
at least you have escaped.

The heavy sea-mist stifles me.
I choke with each breath—
a curious peril, this—
the gods have invented
curious torture for us.

One of us, pierced in the flank,
dragged himself across the marsh,
he tore at the bay-roots,
lost hold on the crumbling bank—

Another crawled—too late—
for shelter under the cliffs.

I am glad the tide swept you out,
O beloved,
you of all this ghastly host
alone untouched,
your white flesh covered with salt
as with myrrh and burnt iris.

We were hemmed in this place,
so few of us, so few of us to fight
their sure lances,
the straight thrust—effortless
with slight life of muscle and shoulder.

So straight—only we were left,
the four of us—somehow shut off.

And the marsh dragged one back,
and another perished under the cliff,
and the tide swept you out.

Your feet cut steel on the paths,
I followed for the strength
of life and grasp.
I have seen beautiful feet
but never beauty welded with strength.
I marvelled at your height.

You stood almost level
with the lance-bearers
and so slight.

And I wondered as you clasped
your shoulder-strap
at the strength of your wrist
and the turn of your young fingers,
and the lift of your shorn locks,
and the bronze
of your sun-burnt neck.

All of this,
and the curious knee-cap,
fitted above the wrought greaves,
and the sharp muscles of your back
which the tunic could not cover—
the outline
no garment could deface.

I wonder if you knew how I watched,
how I crowded before the spearsmen—
but the gods wanted you,
the gods wanted you back.







Leda



Where the slow river
meets the tide,
a red swan lifts red wings
and darker beak,
and underneath the purple down
of his soft breast
uncurls his coral feet.

Through the deep purple
of the dying heat
of sun and mist,
the level ray of sun-beam
has caressed
the lily with dark breast,
and flecked with richer gold
its golden crest.

Where the slow lifting
of the tide,
floats into the river
and slowly drifts
among the reeds,
and lifts the yellow flags,
he floats
where tide and river meet.

Ah kingly kiss—
no more regret
nor old deep memories
to mar the bliss;
where the low sedge is thick,
the gold day-lily
outspreads and rests
beneath soft fluttering
of red swan wings
and the warm quivering
of the red swan's breast.







Heat



O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air—
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat—
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.







Pear Tree



Silver dust
lifted from the earth,
higher than my arms reach,
you have mounted.
O silver,
higher than my arms reach
you front us with great mass;

no flower ever opened
so staunch a white leaf,
no flower ever parted silver
from such rare silver;

O white pear,
your flower-tufts,
thick on the branch,
bring summer and ripe fruits
in their purple hearts.







Stars Wheel in Purple



Stars wheel in purple, yours is not so rare
as Hesperus, nor yet so great a star
as bright Aldeboran or Sirius,
nor yet the stained and brilliant one of War;

stars turn in purple, glorious to the sight;
yours is not gracious as the Pleiads are
nor as Orion's sapphires, luminous;

yet disenchanted, cold, imperious face,
when all the others blighted, reel and fall,
your star, steel-set, keeps lone and frigid tryst
to freighted ships, baffled in wind and blast.







Adonis



1.

Each of us like you
has died once,
has passed through drift of wood-leaves,
cracked and bent
and tortured and unbent
in the winter-frost,
the burnt into gold points,
lighted afresh,
crisp amber, scales of gold-leaf,
gold turned and re-welded
in the sun;

each of us like you
has died once,
each of us has crossed an old wood-path
and found the winter-leaves
so golden in the sun-fire
that even the live wood-flowers
were dark.

2.

Not the gold on the temple-front
where you stand
is as gold as this,
not the gold that fastens your sandals,
nor thee gold reft
through your chiselled locks,
is as gold as this last year's leaf,
not all the gold hammered and wrought
and beaten
on your lover's face.
brow and bare breast
is as golden as this:

each of us like you
has died once,
each of us like you
stands apart, like you
fit to be worshipped.







Helen



All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.

All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.

Greece sees, unmoved,
God's daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses.







The Mysteries Remain



The mysteries remain,
I keep the same
cycle of seed-time
and of sun and rain;
Demeter in the grass,
I multiply,
renew and bless
Bacchus in the vine;
I hold the law,
I keep the mysteries true,
the first of these
to name the living, dead;
I am the wine and bread.
I keep the law,
I hold the mysteries true,
I am the vine,
the branches, you
and you.







All Mountains

“Give me all mountains.”

Hymn to Artemis

Give me all mountains.
City, town, the precinct
of temple,
the crowded town gate,
I have no love for:
walls must crush or hide
whether of market
palace court
or precinct.
Give me the stream's cold path,
the grove of pine,
for garden terrace
the unclaimed
bleak
wild stretches
of the mountain side.

Give me no earth
crushed flat
with cruel layer
of fitted square
or meted length,
but boulders
unhewn
but set apart
as secret altars,
high in the loveliest
alder grove
or poplar.
Give me for altar fire
the wild azalia;
let Phoebos keep
the fervid market place.

Give him white marble,
him the luminous white
of sheltering porch,
carved pillar,
portico.
Give him the wharf,
the quay,
the street,
the market,
street-corner
and the turning of the street.
Nor do I envy him,
my fiery brother,
who count as fair
only the reach of snow
set stark
in midair.

Marble of islands,
snow of distant points,
threatened with wave of pine,
with wash of alder,
my islands
shift and change,
now here now there,
dazzling,
white,
granite,
silver
in blue ether.
I swim
who tread the mountain path as air.

Let Phoebos keep the market,
let white Love
claim all the islands
of sea-port or river;
would I contend with these?
Nay,
I would rather pity him, my brother,
pity white, passionate Love
who only knows
the prompting
of the restless, thwarted seas,
shivering in porches
from the bitter air.
Ah Zeus,
ennoble,
care for these thy children,
but give me the islands of the upper air,
all mountains
and the towering mountain trees.

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10 Poems by Anne Spencer about Nature, Love, and Life

Anne Spencer, born Annie Bethel Bannister (February 6, 1882 – July 27, 1975), was an African-American poet, teacher, librarian, gardener, and civil rights activist. She’s best remembered as a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance. In this sampling of poems by Anne Spencer, we experience her affinity for nature, love, and life itself.

Spencer’s literary career began as she was a student in Virginia Seminary with her first poem, “The Skeptic.” After creating this poem, she continued to write on any surface she could find to record her thoughts, including the walls of her home and random scraps of paper. She was an outspoken advocate for women’s rights, civil rights, and granting the right of respect to everyone.

 

For Jim, Easter Eve

If ever a garden was a Gethsemane,

with old tombs set high against

the crumpled olive tree—and lichen

this, my garden has been to me.

For such as I none other is so sweet;

Lacking old tombs, here stands my grief,

and certainly its ancient tree.

Peace is here and in every season

a quiet beauty.

The sky falling about me

evenly to the compass . . .

What is sorrow but tenderness now

in this earth-close frame of land and sky

falling constantly into horizons

of east and west, north and south;

what is pain but happiness here

amid these green and wordless patterns,

indefinite texture of blade and leaf;

Beauty of an old, old tree,

last comfort in Gethsemane.

 

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

Lines to a Nasturtium (A Lover Muses)

Flame-flower, Day-torch, Mauna Loa,

I saw a daring bee, today, pause, and soar,

Into your flaming heart;

Then did I hear crisp, crinkled laughter

As the furies after tore him apart?

A bird, next, small and humming,

Looked into your startled depths and fled . . .

Surely, some dread sight, and dafter

Than human eyes as mine can see,

Set the stricken air waves drumming

In his flight.

Day-torch, Flame-flower, cool-hot Beauty,

I cannot see, I cannot hear your flutey;

Voice lure your loving swain,

But I know one other to whom you are in beauty

Born in vain:

Hair like the setting sun,

Her eyes a rising star,

Motions gracious as reeds by Babylon, bar

All your competing;

Hands like, how like, brown lilies sweet,

Cloth of gold were fair enough to touch her feet. 

Ah, how the sense reels at my repeating,

As once in her fire-lit heart I felt the furies

Beating, beating.

. . . . . . . . . .

[Earth, I thank you]

Earth, I thank you

for the pleasure of your language

You’ve had a hard time

bringing it to me

from the ground

to grunt thru the noun

To all the way

feeling seeing smelling touching

—awareness

I am here!

. . . . . . . . . .

He Said

“Your garden at dusk

Is the soul of love

Blurred in its beauty

And softly caressing;

I, gently daring

This sweetest confessing,

Say your garden at dusk

Is your soul. My Love.”

 

. . . . . . . . . .

1975

Turn an earth clod

Peel a shaley rock

In fondness molest a curly worm

Whose familiar is everywhere

Kneel

And the curly worm sentient now

Will light the word that tells the poet what a poem is.

. . . . . . . . . . .

 

Life-Long, Poor Browning

Life-long, poor Browning never knew Virginia,

Or he’d not grieved in Florence for April sallies

Back to English gardens after Euclid’s linear:

Clipt yews. Pomander Walks, and pleached alleys

Primroses, prim indeed, in quiet ordered hedges,

Waterways, soberly, sedately enchanneled,

No thin riotous blade even among the sedges,

All the wild country-side tamely impaneled  . . .

Dead, now, dear Browning lives on in heaven, —

(Heaven’s Virginia when the year’s at its Spring)

He’s haunting the byways of wine-aired leaven

And throating the notes of the wildings on wing:

Here canopied reaches of dogwood and hazel,

Beech tree and redbud fine-laced in vines,

Fleet clapping rills by lush fern and basil,

Drain blue hills to lowlands scented with pines  . . .

Think you he meets in this tender green sweetness

Shade that was Elizabeth . . . immortal completeness!

. . . . . . . . . .

Requiem

Oh, I who so wanted to own some earth,

Am consumed by the earth instead:

Blood into river

Bone into land

The grave restores what finds its bed.

Oh, I who did drink of Spring’s fragrant clay,

Give back its wine for other men:

Breath into air

Heart into grass

My heart bereft — I might rest then.

. . . . . . . . . .

Taboo

Being a Negro Woman is the world’s most exciting

game of “Taboo”: By hell there is nothing you can

do that you want to do and by heaven you are

going to do it anyhow —

We do not climb into the jim crow galleries

of scenario houses we stay away and read

I read garden and seed catalogs, Browning,

Housman, Whitman, Saturday Evening Post

detective tales, Atlantic Monthly, American

Mercury, Crisis, Opportunity, Vanity Fair,

Hibberts Journal, oh, anything.

I can cook delicious things to eat. . .

we have a lovely home—one that

money did not buy—it was born and evolved

slowly out of our passionate, poverty-

stricken agony to own our own home.

Happiness.

 

. . . . . . . . . .

The Wife-Woman

Maker-of-Sevens in the scheme of things

From earth to star;

Thy cycle holds whatever is fate, and

Over the border the bar.

Though rank and fierce the mariner

Sailing the seven seas,

He prays as he holds his glass to his eyes,

Coaxing the Pleiades.

I cannot love them; and I feel your glad,

Chiding from the grave,

That my all was only worth at all, what

Joy to you it gave,

These seven links the Law compelled

For the human chain —

I cannot love them and you, oh,

Seven-fold months in Flanders slain!

A jungle there, a cave here, bred six

And a million years

Sure and strong, mate for mate, such

Love as culture fears;

I gave you clear the oil and wine;

You saved me your hob and hearth—

See how even life may be ere the

Sickle comes and leaves a swath.

But I can wait the seven of moons,

Or years I spare,

Hoarding the heart’s plenty, nor spend

A drop, nor share —

So long but outlives a smile and

A silken gown;

Then gaily I reach up from my shroud,

And you, glory-clad, reach down.

. . . . . . . . . .

Lines to a Nasturtium

A lover muses

Flame-flower, Day-torch, Mauna Loa,

I saw a daring bee, today, pause, and soar,

Into your flaming heart;

Then did I hear crisp crinkled laughter

As the furies after tore him apart?

A bird, next, small and humming,

Looked into your startled depths and fled . . .

Surely, some dread sight, and dafter

Than human eyes as mine can see, 

Set the stricken air waves drumming 

In his flight.

Day-torch, Flame-flower, cool-hot Beauty, I cannot see, I cannot hear your fluty

Voice lure your loving swain,

But I know one other to whom you are in beauty

Born in vain; 

Hair like the setting sun, 

Her eyes a rising star,

Motions gracious as reeds by Babylon, bar

All your competing;

Hands like, how like, brown lilies sweet,

Cloth of gold were fair enough to touch her feet . . .

Ah, how the senses flood at my repeating,

As once in her fire-lit heart I felt the furies

Beating, beating. 

. . . . . . . . . .

 

Learn more about Anne Spencer

. . . . . . . . . .

Skyler Isabella Gomez is a 2019 SUNY New Paltz graduate with a degree in Public Relations and a minor in Black Studies. Her passions include connecting more with her Latin roots by researching and writing about legendary Latina authors. 

The post 10 Poems by Anne Spencer about Nature, Love, and Life appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

6 Literary Gift Books for 2019 Holiday Giving and Beyond

For the book-lover in your life, here are a half dozen literary gift books — all related, directly or fancifully — to a few of the beloved literary ladies on this site. These 2019 publications (with the exception of the Brontë collection boxed set, late 2018), offer some fresh takes in homage to (or by) some of our favorite authors.

Here you’ll find a beautiful, full-color book on Emily Dickinson’s affinity for gardens and botany; a new collection of words of wisdom from Toni Morrison; quotes from Agatha Christie’s amateur sleuth Miss Marple; a retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice from the standpoint of Charlotte Lucas; a fun compilation of Austen-inspired cocktails; and a beautiful boxed set of the Brontë sisters most iconic novels. 

. . . . . . . . .;

Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life

by Marta McDowell

From the publisher: “In Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life (Timber Press, $24.95), Marta McDowell traces the beloved poet’s life as a gardener and reveals the many ways in which her passion for plants is evident in her extensive collection of poems and letters. The book follows Emily Dickinson’s love of nature and plants through an entire year — forced hyacinth bulbs in winter, saved seeds in the summer, and pressed flowers to include in correspondence.

Packed with contemporary and historical photography, botanical illustrations, excerpts from Dickinson’s letters, and some of her most cherished poetry, this revealing book is a must-have keepsake for Dickinson fans.”

Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life on Amazon*

. . . . . . . . . .

The Measure of Our Lives:

A Gathering of Wisdom by Toni Morrison

The Measure of Our Lives: A Gathering of Wisdom by Toni Morrison, is described by the publisher as: “At once the ideal introduction to Toni Morrison and a lovely and moving keepsake for her devoted readers: a treasury of quotations from her work. With a foreword by Zadie Smith.

This inspirational book juxtaposes quotations, one to a page, drawn from Toni Morrison’s entire body of work, both fiction and nonfiction–from The Bluest Eye to God Help the Child, from Playing in the Dark to The Source of Self-Regard–to tell a story of self-actualization. It aims to evoke the totality of Toni Morrison’s literary vision. The Measure of Our Lives brims with elegance of style and mind and moral authority.”

The Measure of Our Lives on Amazon*

. . . . . . . . . .

Murder, She Said: The Quotable Miss Marple

Murder, She Said: The Quotable Miss Marple by Agatha Christie (William Morrow, $16.99) is described by its publisher: “Christie’s witty and wise sleuth, Miss Marple, takes center stage in this stylishly packaged collection just in time for the holidays. The razor-sharp mind of the world’s favorite armchair sleuth is brilliantly revealed in Murder, She Said, an anthology of Miss Marple insights and bon mots, curated from Agatha Christie’s classic novels featuring the delightful amateur detective.

The perfect addition to the Miss Marple mysteries for both aficionados and new fans, this companion volume also includes Agatha Christie’s illuminative essay, ‘Does a Woman’s Instinct Make Her a Good Detective?'”

Murder, She Said on Amazon*

. . . . . . . . . .

The Clergyman’s Wife: A Pride and Prejudice Novel

by Molly Greeley

Retellings of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen are perennial favorites in the literary world. Most feature the ever‐popular Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, sometimes set in different time periods or new worlds. The Clergyman’s Wife (William Morrow, $15.99) is the first retelling about Charlotte Lucas, and, with its themes of status, love, and loss, will be sure to attract smart women who read, and will resonate with Pride and Prejudice fans.

Engrossing and charming in its own right, The Clergyman’s Wife is full of sharp observations—heartfelt and occasionally subversive‐‐about one woman’s experience of motherhood, marriage, loss, love, and hope in Jane Austen’s 18th century.

The Clergyman’s Wife on Amazon*

. . . . . . . . . .

Gin Austen by Colleen Mullaney

Another gift for Janeites, Gin Austen: 50 Cocktails to Celebrate the Novels of Jane Austen by Colleen Mullaney (Sterling Epicure, $16.95) is a clever little book celebrating the exquisite novels of Jane Austen with boozy delicacies and attendant wordplay. From the publisher:

“In six enduring novels, Jane Austen captured the fancies and foibles of Regency England, and this book celebrates the picnics, luncheons, dinner parties, and glamorous balls of Austen’s world. Learn what she and her characters might have imbibed, and what tools, glasses, ingredients, and skills you simply must possess. Sample a cocktail from Gin Austen.”

Gin Austen on Amazon*

. . . . . . . . . .

The Brontë Collection Boxed Set

This boxed set features the most iconic works of the Brontë sisters (Arcturus Publishing Limited , $33.49). From the publisher: “Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë were not prolific novelists, but those that they did write have become some of the best-loved works in English literature.

Collected together here are six titles, beautifully bound, that make the perfect introduction to the sisters’ work. They include: Jane Eyre; Agnes Grey; Villette; Wuthering Heights; The Professor, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Moving from the wilds of Yorkshire to small-town France, these are tales of passion and romance.”

The Brontë Collection Box Set on Amazon*

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Hilda Doolittle (H.D.)

Hilda Doolittle (September 10, 1886 – September 27, 1961) was an American-born poet, novelist, translator, and essayist who wrote under the pen name H.D. Her work was heavily influenced by the effects of the World War I and the subsequent trends of modernism, psychoanalysis, and feminism.

Her work is often framed within the context of other important modernist writers such as T.S.Eliot, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams. Today, she’s best remembered for her innovation and experimental approach in poetry.

Early life

Hilda’s early years were spent in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in a close-knit Moravian community founded in the 18th century by a small group of strict Protestants. Her father Charles was a professor of astronomy at Lehigh University, while her mother Helen taught music and painting at the Moravian Seminary. Later, when Hilda was nine years old, her father became professor of astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania and the family moved to the Flower Observatory in Upper Darby.

The only surviving daughter in a family of five sons, she was her father’s favorite child and he was ambitious for her to become a scientist like himself. Hilda, however, was more drawn to the arts and struggled to reconcile the two when her father forbade art school and her mother, a traditional wife who bowed to her husband’s opinions and decisions, did not support her ambitions.

Hilda was an intelligent child and did well at school. In 1905 she enrolled at Bryn Mawr instead of the art college that she would have preferred, but withdrew less than two years later after achieving poor results in both maths and English. She longed instead for a stimulating artistic community in which to share ideas and her love of books and poetry, and felt like “a disappointment to her father, an odd duckling to her mother, an importunate overgrown, unincarnated entity that had no place here.”

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Intertwined relationships

Rather than in conventional education, Hilda found the stimulation she craved in her personal relationships. She had met Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams around 1901 when both men were studying at the University of Pennsylvania (where her father taught). Both were already passionate about literature and regularly visited Hilda at the Flower Observatory to share their love of books and poetry. By the time Hilda started at Bryn Mawr, she and Pound were lovers.

Pound was Hilda’s first love, an intense one, and the one she often returned to in later writings. Her father’s disapproval did not halt their engagement, but Hilda became increasingly disillusioned with the idea of marriage as their relationship progressed. She had dreamed of a bohemian, free life with Pound, but felt that the longer they were together the more conventional their relationship became. He, it seemed, was the writer, and she, like so many before her, merely his muse.

This disenchantment paralleled her deepening involvement with Frances Josepha Gregg, whom she met through a college friend in around 1910. Their affair was a troubled and stormy one; while Hilda found some of the freedom she craved and the inspiration to write, she was devastated when Gregg had a short liaison with Pound. Loving both, Hilda felt torn, and the pull of her bisexuality remained one of the central themes in her life and writing.

 

Expatriate life and marriage

In 1911 Hilda set off for a short visit to Europe with Frances. Pound was already in Europe and had spent time there in previous years, and through him, she found an almost ready-made literary circle that gave her the artistic and creative stimulation she had been seeking.

Although their romantic relationship was over, Pound introduced her to many of the writers and artists who would form her community — Richard Aldington, T.S.Eliot, John Gould Fletcher, and Ford Madox Ford.

Unwilling to return to the US, Hilda eventually persuaded her parents to let her stay in London but was hurt once more when Frances refused to stay with her. Frances’ return to the US and her subsequent marriage marked the end of the short but intense affair between the two women, although they stayed in touch periodically until 1939.

Now settled in London, Hilda began to spend more time expanding her circle and working on her writing. She spent increasing amounts of time with Richard Aldington, with whom she shared poetry and worked on translations from Greek. It was the first time she had felt like an artistic equal in a relationship, and after trips to Italy and Paris, they married on October 1913. Apart from short trips much later in life, she would never again return to the U.S.

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Imagist poetry and a nom de plume

Hilda’s writing career was already well underway by the time she married. She had a strong reputation as one of the best of the new ‘Imagist’ poets — a short-lived but influential movement in poetry that favored hardness, clarity, and intensity in words.

In September 1912, in the tea room at the British Museum, HD gave Pound three new poems, Epigram, Hermes of the Ways, and Priapus (later renamed Orchard). Later, in her memoir End to Torment, Hilda would recall how Pound said, “but this is poetry!” After some impromtu editing, he said that he would send them to Harriet Monroe of Poetry magazine, and at the bottom of the page he scrawled ‘H.D., Imagiste.’

Hilda accepted the new name, and the loss of her surname, presumably with enthusiasm (although recent commentators have pointed out that Pound’s power and autonomy in this renaming suggest an ominous undertone to his support — something that she would later explore in her roman à clef HERmione).

She certainly enjoyed the ambiguity that the initials created, and in 1917 was furious when Amy Lowell published an author photo without her permission in Tendencies in Modern American Poetry,  saying that “the initials … had no identity attached; they could have been pure spirit. But with this I’m embodied.”

Monroe published the new poems in the January 1913 edition of Poetry under the name ‘H.D., Imagiste,’ and more poems rapidly followed with the ‘Imagiste’ signature. An ‘Imagist’ anthology was published in 1914, which included poems by not only H.D. but also Richard Aldington, F.S.Flint, and Pound, and which was financed by Amy Lowell. After the publication of three more anthologies, the group effectively disbanded at the end of WW1.

H.D’s first book of poetry, Sea Garden, was published in 1916 towards the end of the Imagist years and marked the beginning of her use of the natural world and its symbolism to explore ideas of consciousness and spirituality. She was expanding her interest in the classics, and together with Aldington started the Poets’ Translation Series of pamphlets which highlighted translation from Latin and Greek.

She also became assistant editor of the magazine The Egoist (effectively replacing her husband who had enlisted in the army to avoid conscription), and won awards from Poetry magazine and from the Little Review for her work.

 

A Post-war breakdown

While her literary and artistic career was flourishing, H.D.’s personal relationship with Aldington was deteriorating. Their only child was stillborn in 1915, and Aldington subsequently had several affairs, including one with H.D.’s close friend Brigit Patmore. When her brother Gilbert was killed in action in 1918, H.D. retreated to Cornwall to stay with the composer Cecil Gray, whom she had met through their mutual friend D.H.Lawrence.

With her husband’s full knowledge, H.D. embarked on an affair with Gray which resulted in another pregnancy. While this upset Aldington, she refused to either abort the child or marry Gray, and Aldington promised to care for both her and the child despite the effective end of their marriage.

Her daughter Frances Perdita Aldington (known as Perdita) was born in March 1919, but the trauma of the war and a serious bout of influenza just before she was due to give birth left H.D. shattered. In her memoirs, she would refer to March 1919 as a “psychic death” from which she didn’t really recover until World War II. The result was her own personal “war phobia” — for years afterwards, the threat or reality of war triggered associations of personal and societal breakdown.

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Bryher and the inter-war years

Towards the end of the war, H.D. met Annie Winifred Ellerman, known as Bryher. Also a writer, Bryher came from a wealthy family and was the daughter of shipping magnate Sir John Ellerman. The two became lovers and would remain intimate for the rest of H.D.’s life, supporting and sustaining each other and sharing the responsibility of parenting H.D.’s daughter Perdita.

However, theirs was not an exclusive partnership. Both took other lovers, and in 1921 Bryher entered into a marriage of convenience with the American writer and publisher Robert McAlmon.

This arrangement enabled Bryher to keep her traditional family at arm’s length, and allowed McAlmon to use her wealth to set up his own press, Contact Editions. When they divorced in 1927, Bryher went on to marry H.D.’s friend and lover Kenneth Macpherson. Macpherson and Bryher later formally adopted Perdita to avoid any parental challenges from Aldington.

The relationship between Bryher and H.D. was never an easy one. H.D. still struggled with the effects of trauma from the war, while Bryher grappled with gender and sexual identities and with suicidal depressions. However, their travels from 1919 through 1923 — to England, Greece, New York, Paris, and Switzerland, sometimes with McAlmon in tow as well — gave H.D. renewed inspiration and impetus to write.

She started three projected cycles of novels: the first, Magna Graeca, consisted of Palimpsest (1921) and Hedylus (1928) which were heavily inspired by Greece and the classics; the second, Madrigal, consisted of HERmione, Bid Me To Live, Paint It Today and Asphodel, all of which were mostly autobiographical, and focused both on women as artists and the tension between heterosexual and lesbian desire.

The third cycle, Borderline, included the novellas Kora and Ka and The Usual Star, dealing with different psychic states and their relationship to reality. H.D. also published four full-length volumes of poetry and one verse drama, many of which were inspired by her trips to Greece and Egypt and which reinterpret the classical myths and the role of women in them. Heavily influenced during this period by Sappho, she published translations of Sappho’s work as well as an essay.

H.D. wrote constantly, and in a letter to her American friend Viola Jordan said, “I sit at my typewriter until I drop. I have in some way, to justify my existence, and then it is also a pure ‘trade’ with me now. It is my ‘job’.”

She suffered a period of severe writer’s block during the 1930s but continued to maintain and expand her circle of avant-garde literary and artistic friends that now included Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Nancy Cunard, Man Ray, Berenice Abbott, Sylvia Beach, and Marianne Moore.

Hilda maintained an unusual family life, living together with Bryher, Macpherson, and Perdita in Switzerland. Their common passions were literature and cinema. In 1927 Bryher and Macpherson established the film journal Close Up, to which H.D. contributed several reviews.

She also acted in three films directed by Macpherson: Wing Beat (1927), Foothills (1928) and Borderline (1930). At one point she thought seriously about becoming an actor; however the rise of fascism in Berlin had a heavy impact on the European film industry and Close Up folded in 1933.

 

Psychoanalysis, Freud, and World War II

Just as important to H.D.’s creativity and direction was the science of psychoanalysis. She met Sigmund Freud in 1927 and began analysis with Hanns Sachs in 1928, largely funded by Bryher (who at one point planned on becoming an analyst herself).

In 1933, she began sessions with Freud himself, starting what would become a lifelong studentship. Daily sessions in Vienna were cut short by the rise of Nazism, but she continued less intensive analysis and her memoir Tribute to Freud was published in 1956.

The late 1930s were difficult years. The rise of fascism triggered H.D.’s “war phobia,” which she didn’t feel that she could discuss with Freud because he was Jewish, and she ultimately cut all ties to her former lover Ezra Pound because of his pro-Fascist position.

Bryher, meanwhile, assisted over 100 refugees, mostly Jewish, in escaping Germany between 1933 and 1939. When war broke out in 1939, H.D. and Bryher moved to London.

Far from providing a retreat, living in London confronted H.D. with the worst of the war. She sought to find some meaning in the catastrophe by delving deep into hermetic tradition, finding there a larger pattern that pointed to regeneration amidst the rubble.

Like Eliot’s journey through the wasteland, H.D.’s journey through London in the war took her through a “city of ruin” and into an almost religious epiphany that appears in the form, not of the established church, but of a woman who was “Love, the Creator.”

H.D. had a resurgence of creativity in her writing, and during the 1940s wrote Bid Me To Live (published in 1960), The Gift (her memoir of her childhood and family life in Pennsylvania, published in 1980), and Trilogy (1942 –1944), consisting of The Walls do not Fall, Tribute to the Angels and The Flowering of the Rod. Her new work was praised highly by other writers, friends and reviewers, including Marianne Moore and Edith Sitwell.

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Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) page on Amazon*

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Post-war writing and later years

H.D. took great comfort in spirituality throughout the war and often attended spiritualist circles and seances. Bryher, however, was not a believer, and tensions grew between them as H.D. became more and more involved. In addition, history appeared to be repeating itself as, at the end of the war, H.D. suffered a severe breakdown triggered by news of the atomic bomb, and exacerbated by severe anemia and a bout of meningitis.

As news from Japan filtered through to the West, and as she attended more and more seances and spiritualist meetings, H.D. believed that World War Three had begun. Unable to persuade her otherwise, Bryher eventually took her to a clinic in Switzerland in May 1946. While daily letters and regular visits attest to their continued intimacy, the two would never live together again.

H.D. recovered within 6 months, and once again emerged to another period of intense creativity. Her last years saw her produce an extraordinary amount of poetry, most notably Helen in Egypt, Sagesse, Winter Love and Hermetic Definition. Living alone, mostly in Switzerland and Italy and with visits to the US to see her grandchildren, H.D. was able to concentrate on her writing. She was the recipient of the poetry award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1960.

After a brief illness and subsequent stroke, H.D. died in Zurich on September 27, 1961 and her ashes were taken back to Bethlehem, PA. Fittingly, her epitaph is a poem:

So I may say,

“I died of living,

having lived one hour”;

So they may say,

“she died soliciting

illicit fervour,”

So you may say,

“Greek flower; Greek ecstasy

reclaims for ever

one who died

following

intricate song’s lost measure.”

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Contributed by Elodie Barnes. Elodie is an author, poet and artist with a serious case of wanderlust. She is originally from the UK, but has spent time abroad in Europe, the United States and the Bahamas. When not traveling or working on her current projects — a chapbook of poetry, “The Cabinet of Lost Things,” and a novel based on the life of modernist writer and illustrator Djuna Barnes — she can be found with her nose in a book, daydreaming her way back to 1920s Paris. Visit her on the web at Elodie Rose Barnes.

More about Hilda Doolittle (H.D.)

Major Works

Poetry collections

Sea Garden (1916)
The God (1917)
Choruses from Iphigenia in Aulis (1919)
Translations (1920)
Hymen (1921)
Heliodora and Other Poems (1924)
Hippolytus Temporizes (1927)
Red Roses for Bronze (1932)
Euripides’ Ion (1937)
The Walls Do Not Fall (1944)
Tribute to the Angels (1945)
Trilogy (1946)
The Flowering of the Rod (1946)
By Avon River (1949)
Helen in Egypt (1961)

Prose works

Notes on Thought and Vision (1919)
Palimpsest (1926)
Kora and Ka (1930)
Nights (1935)
The Hedgehog (1936)
Tribute to Freud (1956)
Bid Me to Live (1960)

Autobiography

Bid Me to Live (1960)
End to Torment: A Memoir of Ezra Pound  (posthumous, 1979)

Biography and Letters

Herself Defined: The Poet HD and Her World by Barbara Guest (1984)
Richard Aldington & H. D.: The Early Years in Letter, ed. by Caroline Zilboorg (1995)
Analyzing Freud: The Letters of H.D., Bryher and Their Circle (2002)

Posthumously published works

HERmione, New Directions (1981)
The Gift, New Directions (1982)
Paint it Today (1921;, published 1992)
Asphodel (1921–22; published 1992)
Pilate’s Wife (1929-1934; published 2000)
The Sword Went Out to Sea (1946–47; published 2007)
Majic Ring (1943–44; published 2009)
White Rose and the Red (1948; published 2009)
The Mystery (written 1948–51; published 2009)
Vale Ave. (2013)

More information and sources

H.D. International Society
Representative Poetry Online (University of Toronto)
Teaching H.D.: Curriculum and Resources
Wikipedia
Reader discussion of H.D.’s works on Goodreads
Poetry Foundation
Academy of American Poets

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Anne Spencer

Anne Spencer (born Annie Bethel Bannister; February 6, 1882 – July 27, 1975) was an American poet, teacher, librarian, gardener, and civil rights activist. She’s best known for being an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance and the second African American poet to be included in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.

Anne was born in Henry County, Virginia, to  Joel Cephus Bannister and Sarah Louise Scales. Both parents were part of the first generation of African Americans born into bondage whose childhood followed the end of slavery. As an only child, she was the center of her parent’s lives and they were determined to make a better life for her.

 

Early years 

Soon after Anne’s birth, the family moved to Martinsville, where her father opened a saloon. Within a few years, her parents started to have disagreements in the way they should raise her, which ultimately led to the end of their relationship.

After her parents’ separation, Anne moved with her mother to West Virginia and settled in Bramwell, a town that was somewhat averse to accepting African Americans and immigrants. Her mother also changed Anne’s name to Annie Scales, her own maiden name.

Her mother worked hard as a cook at a local inn to support their new life in Bramwell. While she worked, William and Willie Belle Dixie, a prominent Black couple, cared for Anne in their home along with their own five children. In the Dixie household, Anne didn’t have any responsibilities, including chores or school, unlike the Dixie children, who attended school daily and completed household chores. Anne’s mother remained dedicated to her and believed that local schools were not beneficial for her.

With all the freedom that Anne was given, she was able to discover her love for poetry and had time to develop her skills through the solitude she found in the Dixie’s outhouse, the only private place that she had. In this outhouse, she would look through the Sears and Roebuck catalog and imagine herself as a reader.

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Education 

Although Anne’s parents were separated, they remained in contact concerning their daughter. Joel was upset with Sarah’s decision to withhold their daughter from school. He gave her an ultimatum that Anne must attend school or he would take her to live with him. With this in mind, Sarah enrolled her daughter at the Virginia University of Lynchburg (previously known as the Virginia Theological Seminary and College) in 1893 when she was eleven years old.

Despite having no formal education, Anne excelled academically and even delivered the valedictory address when she graduated six years later in 1899. During her school breaks and over the summer, Anne would return to Bramwell. After graduating, she taught school in Elkhorn and Maybeury, West Virginia from 1899 to 1901.

 

Marriage and family 

While attending Virginia Seminary, Spencer met Charles Edward Spencer, a fellow student. The two got married on May 15, 1901, at Dixie’s home and permanently moved to Lynchburg in 1903. Here, they built a home at 1313 Pierce Street and raised three children together, two daughters, Alroy and Bethel, and a son, Chauncey Spencer. Years later, Anne’s children produced ten grandchildren, and she expanded her home to accommodate their frequent visits.

Chauncey continued his mother’s legacy of activism and had a major role in his military service during World War II. Chauncey’s actions and determination led to the formation of the Tuskegee Airmen. He became a noted member of the group at a time when African Americans were refused military service as pilots in the the segregated armed forces.

Before Anne began her career as a writer, she worked at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, an all-Black local high school. There she worked as a librarian for more than twenty years. The library had a small collection, so she donated books from her own collection to add to its holdings.

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Books and films by and about Anne Spencer

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Start of a literary career 

Anne Spencer’s literary career began while she was a student in Virginia Seminary. There she wrote her first poem called “The Skeptic,” which is now lost. She continued writing poetry throughout her life and used any scrap of paper she could find to write down her thoughts.

It was some time later that she planned on opening a chapter of the NAACP in Lynchburg. In an effort to do so, she hosted James Weldon Johnson, then the organization’s traveling representative, in her home. It was during this visit that Johnson discovered Anne’s poetry. Her first published poem, “Feast at Shushan,” appeared in the February 1920 issue of The Crisis, the NAACP’s literary magazine. By the time her first poem was published, Anne was forty years old.

 

The Harlem Renaissance

Many of Anne Spencer’s works were published during the 1920s, in the Harlem Renaissance era. During her lifetime, she published more than thirty poems. Her work was featured in Alain Locke’s famous 1925 anthology, The New Negro: An Interpretation, connecting her to the literary heart of the Harlem Renaissance.

Her poems were also included in The Book of American Negro Poetry, which was edited by James Weldon Johnson, a prominent figure of the Harlem Renaissance. In addition, she earned a spot in the esteemed Norton Anthology of American Poetry for her writing, making her the second African American to be featured in this work.

 

Themes in Anne Spencer’s work

Anne Spencer’s work drew respect for its exploration of the themes of race, nature, and feminism. Some critics interpret her poem “White Things” to be a comparison of the subjugation endured by the Black race with the destruction of nature.

She maintained a strong belief in individual liberty and freedom to convey and uphold one’s personal ideals. She also displayed strong objections to various beliefs that interfered with her own ideals. In addition, she had a life-long admiration for poets and paid tribute to Chatterton, Shelley, and Keats in her poem, “Dunbar.”

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Anne Spencer’s home in Lynchburg, Virginia

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Awards and honors

In 2016, the Library of Virginia and Dominion Power honored Anne Spencer as one of their Strong Men and Women in Virginia History.

The home in Lynchburg where she resided and worked is now a museum, known as the Anne Spencer House and Garden Museum. The museum is dedicated to preserving the beloved poet’s legacy and connection to the Harlem Renaissance.

Her papers and books from her library are at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia. Some of her correspondence with James Weldon Johnson, specifically selected by her, are part of the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection at the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library at Yale University.

In 2019, the United States Postal Service announced that Anne Spencer will be featured in a 2020 Forever stamp honoring figures of the Harlem Renaissance.

 

Legacy of Anne Spencer

Anne Spencer passed away at the age of ninety-three on July 27, 1975. She is buried alongside her husband Edward, who died in 1964, in the family plot at Forest Hill’s Cemetery in Lynchburg.

After her death, much of her work was published in Time’s Unfading Garden: Anne Spencer’s Life and Poetry. She was later featured in Shadowed Dreams: Women’s Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance.

Some of her lost work was found and published by other famous poets in the later half of the twentieth century.

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More about Anne Spencer

Major works (poetry)

The Poems (1977)
Before the Feast at Shushan (1920)
Dunbar (1920)
White Things (1923)
Lady, Lady (1925)
Lines to a Nasturtium: A Lover Muses  (1926)
Rime for the Christmas Baby (1927)
Grapes: Still-Life (1929)
Requiem (1931)




Biographies


 

Anne Spencer : Poet of the Harlem Renaissance  by Brucella Jordan (2016)
Half My World: The Garden of Anne Spencer, A History and Guide

by Rebecca T. Frischkorn and Reuben M. Rainey (2003)

More information and sources 

Wikipedia
Anne Spencer Museum
Poetry Foundation 
Poets.org

Skyler Isabella Gomez is a 2019 SUNY New Paltz graduate with a degree in Public Relations and a minor in Black Studies. Her passions include connecting more with her Latin roots by researching and writing about legendary Latina authors.

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Books by Zora Neale Hurston: Fiction, Folklore, and More

Zora Neale Hurston (1891 – 1960), the African-American author and anthropologist, was a natural storyteller. Her love of story resulted in an array of novels and short stories as well as collections gathered from the oral traditions of the Black cultures of the American South and the Caribbean. Presented here is a survey of books by Zora Neale Hurston’s — fiction,  ethnographical collections, and other writings.

Zora made a name for herself during the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1920s, when she began producing novels, short stories, plays, essays, and a modest output of poetry. Upon graduating from Barnard College in 1928, she embarked on a parallel career as an anthropologist.

Though her literary works sold fairly well and gained many admirers, they had their share of detractors. Some Black writers objected to her use of dialect. Other contemporaries were troubled by her political conservatism.

Today, it may be surprising to learn that in the course of her lifetime, Zora’s reputation began to decline. By the time she died in 1960, forgotten and alone, most of her works were out of print. Fortunately for contemporary readers, that situation has been remedied. Her work is now back in print, readily available, and widely studied.

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Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934)

Jonah’s Gourd Vine was Zora’s first novel, published in 1934. It’s the story of a Black plantation worker, John Buddy Pearson, who aspires to be a preacher. Once he achieves his goal, he devotes Sundays to giving powerful sermons, and the rest of the week, he indulges in extramarital dallying with the women of his congregation. According to the publisher of the edition reissued in 2008:

“In this sympathetic portrait of a man and his community, Zora Neale Hurston shows that faith, tolerance, and good intentions cannot resolve the tension between the spiritual and the physical. That she makes this age-old dilemma come so alive is a tribute to her understanding of the vagaries of human nature.”

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Mules and Men (1935)

Mules and Men   is an ethnographical collection of stories in the oral tradition that Zora collected on two trips — one in Florida, including Eatonville (the town in which she was raised) and Polk County, and the other in New Orleans. In Florida, she documented some seventy folktales, while in New Orleans, she documented voodoo traditions and other stories. In The Journal of American Folklore (summer, 1996), Susan Meisenhelder wrote of this book:

“While Mules and Men seems (and was, in fact, read by most of her contemporary reviewers as) a straightforward depiction of the humor and “exoticism” of African American folk culture, Zora Neale Hurston carefully arranged her folktales and meticulously delineated the contexts in which they were narrated to reveal complex relationships between race and gender in Black life.”

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Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

Their Eyes Were Watching God   Zora’s third published book and second novel is her best-known work, and has become something of a feminist classic. Janie, the story’s heroine, searches for independence, identity, love, and happiness over the course of twenty-five years and several relationships. This story is not unlike Zora’s own, though it could be argued that she never found true happiness.

Though always somewhat controversial, the book was generally well-received upon initial publication. A 1937 review stated:

“Their Eyes Were Watching God is a moving story, told with humor and great understanding. Miss Hurston has a sense of the dramatic which lifts and speeds her novel. There is a tendency to write preciously and with an intoxication with words, both of which tend to clutter a bit the simple story. On the other hand there is skillful writing and really magnificently handled dialog.”

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Tell My Horse (1938)

Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (1938) is based on Zora’s firsthand research of Voodoo practices in Haiti and Jamaica. In 1936, Zora received a Guggenheim fellowship, which allowed her to delve even more deeply into her research. She traveled to Jamaica and Haiti to collect stories and collecting material on African rituals and voodoo. Her research resulted in two nonfiction collections about the culture and language of the people she researched — Mules and Men (1935), and this one.

For these collections, Zora traveled to Jamaica and Haiti. While in the two island nations in the late thirties, Zora participated as an initiate, not just an observer. Tell My Horse peers into the mysteries of Voodoo and paints a unique portrait of its rituals, beliefs, ceremonies, customs, and superstitions.

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Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939)

Moses, Man of the Mountain  demonstrates Zora’s strength as a writer through character development and use of narration. This novel tells the story of Moses and the Book of Exodus from an African-American perspective. The Zora Neale Hurston Digital archive describes the book: 

“Moses, Man of the Mountain is Zora Neale Hurston’s attempt at re-writing (or re-righting) the Bible from an Afro-American perspective. She retells the story of the Exodus, which is the triumphant tale of Moses and the Israelites’ escape from Egyptian slavery.”

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Dust Tracks on a Road (1942)

Dust Tracks on a Road, Zora’s 1942 autobiography, has confounded readers and scholars since its publication. Some critics have even argued that this book might have damaged her reputation. Is it a true memoir or partially apocryphal? Was the story of her life, as she told it, impressionistic rather than realistic? In her foreword to the 2006 edition, Maya Angelou wrote:

“Zora Neale Hurston chose to write her own version of life in Dust Tracks on a Road. Through her imagery one soon learns that the author was born to roam, to listen, and to tell a variety of stories …

In this autobiography, Hurston describes herself as obstinate, intelligent, and pugnacious. the story she tells of her life could never have been told believably by a non-Black American, and the details even in her own hands and words offer enough confusions, contusions, and contradictions to confound even the most sympathetic researcher.”

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Seraph on the Suwanee (1948)

Seraph on the Suwanee, Zora’s last full-length work of fiction, featuring white main characters — a departure for her. It has not been well received by African-American critics. From the publisher of the 2008 edition:

“Alive with the same passion and understanding of the human heart that made Their Eyes Were Watching God a classic, Hurston’s Seraph on the Suwanee masterfully explores the evolution of a marriage and the conflicting desires of an unforgettable young woman in search of herself and her place in the world.

Hurston explores new territory with her novel Seraph on the Suwanee, a story of two people at once deeply in love and deeply at odds, set among the community of ‘Florida Crackers’ at the turn of the twentieth century. Full of insights into the nature of love, attraction, faith, and loyalty.”

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Posthumous collections
I Love Myself When I Am Laughing … (1979)

 I Love Myself: When I am Laughing … and Then Again When I am Looking Mean and Impressive is an anthology of Zora Neale Hurston‘s work, including essays as well as portions of her novels and memoirs. This collection demonstrates how fortunate it is for new generations of readers that Alice Walker (who served as its editor) revived Zora’s work and reputation.

It pays tribute to Hurston’s role in black literature of the early twentieth century, including famous essays like “How it Feels to Be Colored Me” and “Crazy for This Democracy;” full short stories like “The Gilded Six-Bits;” and portions from her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road, as well as her ethnographic studies, notably Tell My Horse. This collection is a nice introduction for those just starting to gain an appreciation of Zora Neale Hurston.

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Every Tongue Got to Confess (2001)

Every Tongue Got to Confess  collects a selection of Zora’s ethnographic writings. According to the publisher of this 2001 publication:

“These hilarious, bittersweet, often saucy folk-tales — some of which date back to the Civil War — provide a fascinating, verdant slice of African-American Life in the rural South at the turn of the twentieth century. Arranged according to subject — from God Tales, Preacher Tales, and Devil Tales to Heaven Tales — they reveal attitudes about slavery, faith, race relations, family, and romance that have been passed on for generations. They capture the heart and soul of the vital, independent, and creative community that so inspired Zora Neale Hurston.”

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Barracoon (2018) 

Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” caused quite a bit of literary excitement when it was published for the very first time in 2018. From the publisher: “In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston traveled to Plateau, Alabama, to visit eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis, a survivor of the Clotilda the last slaver known to have made the transatlantic journey. Illegally brought to the United States, Cudjo was enslaved fifty years after the slave trade was outlawed.

Barracoon employs Hurston’s skills as both an anthropologist and a writer, and brings to life Cudjo’s singular voice, in his vernacular, in a poignant, powerful tribute to the disremembered and the unaccounted. This profound work is an invaluable contribution to our history and culture.”

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Hitting a Straight Lick With a Crooked Stick (2020)

Hitting a Straight Lick With a Crooked Stick, a newly discovered collection of Zora’s works, will surely be as much cause for excitement as was the discovery of Barracoon. From the publisher:

“Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African American folk culture. Brought together for the first time in one volume, they include eight of Hurston’s ‘lost’ Harlem stories, which were found in forgotten periodicals and archives.

These stories challenge conceptions of Hurston as an author of rural fiction and include gems that flash with her biting, satiric humor, as well as more serious tales reflective of the cultural currents of Hurston’s world. All are timeless classics that enrich our understanding and appreciation of this exceptional writer’s voice and her contributions to America’s literary traditions.”

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Short Stories by Zora Neale Hurston

Some of Zora’s short stories have become well known and are still read and studied. They were collected in The Complete Stories in 2008. A few that are covered here on Literary Ladies:

“Spunk” (full text; 1925)
“Sweat” (1926; read  an analysis here )
“The Gilded Six-Bits” (1933; read  an analysis here )

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Books by Zora Neale Hurston on Amazon*

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