Nava Atlas's Blog, page 79

October 3, 2018

Alice Dunnigan, Trailblazing African-American Journalist

Alice Dunnigan (April 27, 1906 –May 6,1983), born Alice Allison, was the first black female correspondent to receive White House credentials, and was also the first black female member of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives press galleries. She covered Harry Truman’s 1948 presidential campaign, another first for an African-American female journalist. A true trailblazer, she was known for her tough, forthright questions. Her gutsy approach led her from journalism into a position that spanned the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. It’s exciting news that the Newseum in Washington, D.C. will have a life-size statue of her in honor of her contributions to American journalism.

As a girl growing up in Russellville, a rural Kentucky town, Alice dreamed of traveling the world as a reporter. By age thirteen, she had her sights set. For the daughter of a sharecropper and laundress in 1919, it was a daring ambition.

A top student and a dedicated teacher

Alice was so hungry for education that she walked miles to and from the segregated schoolhouse, and was always a top student. When it came time for college, she found that few doors were open to her as a black student in the 1920s. When she came upon a rare chance to get into a teacher’s college, she jumped at it.

In the segregated classroom where she wound up teaching, Alice passed along pride in the accomplishments of black Kentuckians to her students. With her own funds, she printed and distributed pamphlets on the subject to her students. She taught for nearly two decades, was briefly married (becoming Alice Dunnigan), had a son, and divorced. Pay for black teachers was meager, so she did laundry, cleaning, cooking — anything to make ends meet.

Though Alice loved teaching, she never forgot her original ambition of becoming a journalist. She wrote for newspapers on the side, publishing articles and stories in various Kentucky newspapers.

Starting anew in Washington, D.C.

As the U.S. entered World War II in the early 1940s, there was an increased need for government workers. Alice moved to Washington D.C. and was hired as a clerk-typist. She worked by day and took courses in journalism at Howard University at night.

After the war, Alice’s first job was as Washington correspondent for the Chicago Defender, a leading black newspaper. She gained press access to the Senate and House of Representatives to cover politics and civil rights for the paper. While she wrote about the segregation laws plaguing African-Americans in the 1940s and 1950s, she often faced discrimination herself. She wasn’t allowed into certain buildings to report on President Eisenhower, and when President Taft died, she was forced to sit with servants while covering his funeral.

Despite those frustrations, by the late 1940s, Alice had achieved her girlhood dream of seeing the world through her work as a journalist. She traveled all over North and South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East. Still, in her quest to be an excellent journalist, she struggled financially. Her jobs didn’t always pay well, and she was sometimes even compelled to fund her own travels. Still, she prevailed, with the belief that the work she did as a reporter and correspondent was worthy and important.

President Harry S. Truman speaks with Alice Dunnigan

Eisenhower refused to call on her

For black reporters accredited to the White House, it was a good opportunity to raise questions and get a direct reply on civil rights issues. It worked fairly well with Truman, with whose campaign she had traveled in 1948. He’d either say “no comment” or give a concise answer. Not so when Eisenhower became president in 1952. Not particularly friendly to anti-discrimination legislation, he became quite annoyed, and increasingly irate, when she raised such issues.

Some time in 1954, Alice posed a question on discrimination at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. She asked the president if he planned to take any steps recommended by the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC). Eisenhower was infuriated. A conservative columnist wrote a critical analysis of the questions raised by Alice and her colleague, Ethel Payne, writing, “the two gal reporters are hell-bent on competing with each other to see which one can ask President Eisenhower the longest questions.”

Eisenhower seemed to make up his mind never to call on Alice again. She went to every press conference and jumped to her feet between every question, just like all the reports. But the president just ignored her. This went on for a year, then another, until other news outlets started to notice.

The New York Post, ANP (Associated Negro Press, a syndicate of black newspapers), and The Daily Worker picked up the story, and it spread around the nation.

Recognized by Kennedy

The presidential boycott of Alice Dunnigan ended with the Eisenhower years. When she was called on by President Kennedy at his first live press conference on January 5, 1961, the headline in Jet magazine read, “Kennedy In, Negro Reporter Gets First Answer in Two Years.”

The story read: “… at his first nationally televised press conference, President John F. Kennedy “quietly scrapped a longstanding White House policy” which was to “ignore veteran correspondent Alice Dunnigan at press conferences.”

After that, she received letters and telegrams from people who had seen her on television, congratulating her for being the first black reporter to ask the new president a question, as well as the first female reporter to do so.

With controversy behind her, Alice said, “I continued my normal routine of covering White House press conferences.” Alice was an avid proponent of a vibrant black press:

“Without black writers, the world would perhaps never have known of the chicanery, shenanigans, and buffoonery employed by those in high places to keep the black man in his (proverbial) place by relegating him to second-class citizenship.”

A presidential appointment

Soon after, she left journalism to embark on her third act. President Kennedy was so impressed with her that he appointed her as an educational consultant on an important committee, making her the first black woman to be appointed to the new administration. She served on the new President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity as an educational consultant. She continued that work with the next First Lady, Mrs. Johnson, touring the country with her to visit schools and report on their progress. She logged many miles in that position, but it was somewhat easier than the roads she’d paved as a journalist.

In 1970, after serving nine years on that committee as well as the President’s Council on Youth Opportunity, she “walked out of the federal government, out of the political arena, out of journalism, out of that mad, mad, world of work, and into the serenity of a quiet, comfortable home life where there is peace, contentment, and happiness.”

Alone Atop the Hill by Alice Dunnigan on Amazon

Legacy

After Alice retired, she wrote her life story, A Black Woman’s Experience: From Schoolhouse to the White House (1974). A newer version of the book now called Alone Atop the Hill, came out in 2015. Her hope for her legacy was this:

“It is my fondest hope that the story of my life and work will by interpretation, investigation, information, and inspiration, encourage more young writers to use their talents as a moving force in the forward march progress and that their efforts will soon result in giving Americans the kind of nation that those of my generation so long hoped and worked for.”

With her steely determination and love of learning, Alice Allison Dunnigan was always willing to fight for race and gender equality. She said, “I hope to live to see an ordinary woman go as far as an ordinary man. A woman has to work twice as hard.” And this, too: “Race and sex were twin strikes against me. I’m not sure which was the hardest to break down,”

Alice Allison Dunnigan won more than 50 awards for her work in journalism. In 1985, two years after she died, she was inducted into the Black Journalist Hall of Fame. She died in Washington, D.C., in 1983.

Alice Dunnigan’s firsts

Alice Dunnigan was the first black woman …

… to gain press credentials to the White House.

… to travel with the US president (Truman) on a campaign.

…to get press access to the House and Senate galleries, Department of State, and the Supreme Court.

…to be voted into the White House Newswomen’s Association and The National Women’s Press Club.

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

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Published on October 03, 2018 12:58

October 2, 2018

Rebecca West

Rebecca West (December 21, 1892 – March 15, 1983), British novelist, journalist, and essayist, was born Cicely Isabel Fairfield in County Kerry, Ireland. Her mother was a pianist; her father, a would-be journalist and ne’er-do-well, abandoned his family when West was eight years old, after which they moved to Edinburgh, Scotland. There she was educated at George Watson’s Ladies College, though contrary to its name, was a secondary school.

At age 14, she survived tuberculosis, and had to end her education at age 16, due to lack of finances. Some time later she studied drama at a London academy. With an unhappy childhood behind her, she assumed the name Rebecca West after a strong-willed woman in Rosmersholm, a play by Ibsen.

West was a woman of many trades and talents early on: she studied as an actress, started working as a journalist in 1911 at The Freewoman, and was active in the woman’s suffrage movement. In her work as a journalist, she wrote essays and reviews for publications like New York Herald Tribune, The Daily Telegraph, The New Republic and New York American. Her first book, Henry James: A Critical Biography, was published in 1916.

Rebecca West Quotes on Art, Experience, and Human Nature

Scathing review of H.G. Wells leads to a love affair

After writing a scathing review of H.G. Wells’ Marriage in 1912, calling him “the Old Maid among novelists,” the two met. The following year they become lovers and had a ten year long affair, which produced a son, Anthony West. Her relationship with both father and son were stormy. Her son resented her absences from him during his childhood, yet never blamed his father for even more prolonged absences. He rather idolized his father, and grew up to be a talented writer. In a thinly veiled autobiographical novel (Heritage, 1955) he portrayed his mother in a very unflattering light, for which she never forgave him.

Among her other lovers were Charlie Chaplin and Lord Beaverbrook, a newspaper tycoon. As a witty and beautiful woman, men were drawn to her wherever she went on her far-flung travels. In 1930 she married Henry Maxwell Andrews, a banker, and they remained together, though spending much time apart, until his death in 1968.

Novels and non-fiction

In 1918 The Return of the Soldier was published. This, her first novel, was a study of what was then called shell-shock (now more often called PTSD). Her subsequent novels, all considered extremely fine yet undervalued by critics, included Harriet Hume (1929), The Thinking Reed (1936), The Fountain Overflows (1957), and The Birds Fall Down (1966).

The Birds Fall Down by Rebecca West

Travels and politics

Rebecca West loved travel and politics, both of which figured significantly in her writing. Traveling to countries such as Mexico, Yugoslavia, and South Africa influenced her works, notably Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), considered a classic of literature that spans the genres of travel, culture, and politics.

Other works of nonfiction included The Meaning of Treason (1949), about the role of the intellectual, scientist, and traitor in society; A Train of Powder (1955), which included reports of criminal trials; and The Court and the Castle (1958), which examines how political and religious ideas interact in literature.

In addition to her books, West wrote countless articles and essays for a number of publications on both sides of the Atlantic, including The New Yorker.

A life against tyranny and prejudice

As described in Rebecca West: A Life by Carl Rollyson, “West’s restless, ferocious intelligence took her into every corner of the world in every conceivable genre, and her ability to astonish with what she found there was seemingly never-ceasing. But if her gifts were protean, here agenda was immutable, to make of her life a campaign against tyranny and prejudice.

“A novelist, critic, biographer, travel writer, and investigative journalist, West had a keen eye for conflict, and a razor tongue for battle. Called ‘George Bernard Shaw in skirts’ by pundits, she was a woman both feted for her achievements and feared for her cunning wit — ‘with malice toward all’ was her motto, and her barbs are legend.”

Doris Lessing said of West that she had not been given her due for her vast accomplishments: “She was the best woman journalist of her time, playing an important role in informing public opinion about extremist politics, both communist and fascist. She wrote one of the most remarkable books of the century, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, about traveling in the Balkans … but it is much more than that, a meditation about the nature of the human animal.”

An original thinker

Rebecca West is considered one of the great minds of the twentieth century. She looked at the human condition with the dispassionate eye of a journalist and the heart of a feminist. For example, from a 1928 speech to the Fabian Society:

“There is one common condition for the lot of women in Western civilization and all other civilizations that we know about for certain, and that is, woman as a sex is disliked and persecuted, while as an individual she is liked, loved, and even, with reasonable luck, sometimes worshipped.”

7 Thought-Provoking Views by Rebecca West

Honors and legacy

In 1949 she was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and ten years later became a Dame Commander of the Order, hence her oft-used title, Dame Rebecca West. West’s writing won her the Women’s Press Club Award for Journalism in 1948 in the United States. In 1982, her first novel, Return of the Soldier, was made into major film. She was friends and colleagues with numerous other literary, artistic, and political figures of her time.

Dame Rebecca West became increasingly frail and lost eyesight in her last years. She basically died of old age in 1983, at the age of 90, still bemoaning the fraught relationship with her son on her deathbed.

William Shawn, then the editor-in-chief of The New Yorker, wrote upon learning of her death: “Rebecca West was one of the giants and will have a lasting place in English literature. No on in this century wrote more dazzling prose, or had more wit, or looked at the intricacies of human character and the ways of the world more intelligently.” All that said, along with the many accolades she received in her lifetime, is her legacy secure? Is she still as widely read as she deserves to be?

Rebecca West page on Amazon

More about Rebecca West on this site

Rebecca West Quotes on Art, Experience, and Human Nature
7 Thought-Provoking Views by Rebecca West

Major works

West produced a vast body of work, both fiction and nonfiction. This is but a small sampling of her most enduring.

The Return of the Soldier (1918)
The Judge (1922)
The Thinking Reed (1936)
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941)
A Train of Powder (1955)
The Fountain Overflows (1956)
The Birds Fall Down (1966)

Biographies about Rebecca West

Dangerous Ambition: Rebecca West and Dorothy Thompson by Susan Hertog
Rebecca West by Victoria Glendinning
Rebecca West: A Life by Carl Rollyson

More Information

Wikipedia
Reader discussion of West’s books on Goodreads
Rebecca West’s obituary in the New York Times

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

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Published on October 02, 2018 13:18

September 30, 2018

7 Later Novels by Willa Cather

Willa Cather (1873 – 1947), it could be argued, wrote several Great American Novels, characterized by their stark beauty and economy of language. Her earlier novels include several that have remained classics, notably, O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia — all of which came out in quick succession in the nineteen-teens. Several novels, all well received, came out in the twenties. One of Ours (1922) received a Pulitzer Prize the following year. Here we take a brief look at the seven later novels of Willa Cather, beginning with A Lost Lady (1923).

In the post World War I years, Cather was distressed by the growth of materialism and the loss of the pioneering spirit of the country that had informed so many of her most successful works. Cather is described in the Library of America omnibus collecting her later works as “among the most accomplished American writers of the twentieth century, are at once intensely lyrical and highly controlled. Their formal perception and expansiveness of feeling are an expression of Cather’s dedications both to art and to the open spaces of America.”

The following descriptions of the later novels of Willa Cather, with the exception of My Mortal Enemy, are from the 1990 Library of America edition of Cather: Later Novels, published by Library Classics of the United States.

A Lost Lady

A Lost Lady (1923) exemplifies Willa Cather’s principle of conciseness. It concerns a lady of uncommon loveliness and grace who lends an aura of sophistication to a frontier town, and explores the hidden passions and desires that confuse those who idealize her. The recurrent conflict in Cather’s work, between frontier culture and an encroaching commercialism, is nowhere more powerfully articulated.

More about A Lost Lady

A Lost Lady on Amazon

The Professor’s House

The Professor’s House (1925) encapsulates a story within a story. In the framing narrative, Professor St. Peter, a prize-winning historian of the early Spanish explorers, finds himself disillusioned with family, career, even the house that reflects his success Within this story is another, of St. Peter’s friend Tom Outland, whose brief but adventurous life still shadows those he loved.

More about The Professor’s House

The Professor’s House on Amazon

Death Comes for the Archbishop

Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) tells the story of the first bishop of New Mexico in a series of tableaux modeled on the medieval lives of the saints. Cather affectionately portrays the refined French Bishop Later and his more earthy assistant within the harsh and beautiful landscape of the Southwest and among the Mexicans, Indians, and settlers they were sent to serve.

More about Death Comes for the Archbishop

Death Comes for the Archbishop on Amazon

My Mortal Enemy

My Mortal Enemy (1928) From the very first sentence to the very last of My Mortal Enemy, Cather holds the interest of the reader by telling the story, not of an incident, but of a life. In just some 120 pages, the tragic story of a great artist is told. Has the author tried to undo her A Lost Lady? There is a definite mark of similarity between the two books, but one feels that she has not come up to her earlier mark, though she has done so admirably.

More about My Mortal Enemy

My Mortal Enemy on Amazon

Shadows on the Rock

Shadows on the Rock (1931), though its setting and subject are unusual for Cather, expresses her fascination with the “curious endurance of a kind of culture, narrow but definite.” It is a re-creation of 17th-century Quebec as it appears to the apothecary Auclaire and his daughter Cécile: the town’s narrow streets, the supplies ships on its great river, its merchants, profligates, explorers, and missionaries, and towering personalities like Frontenac and Laval, all parts of a colony struggling to survive.

More about Shadows on the Rock

Shadows on the Rock on Amazon

Lucy Gayheart

Lucy Gayheart (1935) returns to the themes of Cather’s easier writings, in a more somber key. Lucy, talented, spontaneous, and eager to explore the possibilities of life, leaves her prairie home to pursue a career in music. After a happy interval, her life takes an increasingly disastrous turn.

More about Lucy Gayheart

Lucy Gayheart on Amazon

Sapphire and the Slave Girl

Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940) marks a conclusion to Cather’s career as a novelist. Set in Virginia five years before the Civil War, the story shows the effects of slaveholding on Sapphira Colbert, a woman of spirit and common sense who is frighteningly capricious in dealing with people she “owns,” and on her husband, who hates slavery even while he conforms to the social order that permits it. When, through kindness, he refuses to sell a slave, Sapphira’s jealous reaction precipitates a sequence of events that registers a conflict of cultural as well as personal values.

More about Sapphira and the Slave Girl

Sapphira and the Slave Girl on Amazon

Willa Cather: Later Novels on Amazon

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Published on September 30, 2018 13:37

September 28, 2018

The Wine of Astonishment by Martha Gellhorn (1948)

Martha Gellhorn (1908 – 1998) covered nearly every global conflict, from the Spanish Civil War to Vietnam. She reported on virtually every major world conflict that took place during her 60-year career, and is considered one of the greatest war correspondent of the twentieth century. It’s a fitting legacy, but she also produced a body of fine fiction. The Wine of Astonishment (1948) is directly inspired by her first-hand experiences as a World War II correspondent.

The protagonist of the novel, Jacob Levy, witnessed the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, and the shock of the experience changes everything. The novel examines the horrors of war and the issues of personal responsibility that still resonate today. When the The Wine of Astonishment was first published, it was a New York Times bestseller. It was long out of print, and was reissued in 2016 as The Point of No Return in paperback and as an e-book.

A 1948 review of The Wine of Astonishment

The Feminine View on War, a review of The Wine of Astonishment by Martha Gellhorn in The Daily Oklahoman, November 7, 1948: Until World War II, women were generally denied the experience for writing intimately and authentically of men in battle. That this is no longer true is shown in Martha Gellhorn’s novel about soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge and the Allied drive into Germany.

Miss Gellhorn’s book is written against a background of nine years observance of war as a correspondent covering the war in Spain, the Russo-Finish war, the Sino-Japanese war before Pearl Harbor, World War II in Europe, and lastly the post-war fighting in Java.

In her account of soldiers, Miss Gellhorn can be as tough minded as the early Dos Passos or Norman Mailer or as tender as Ernest Hemingway in his love story placed in a battle setting in A Farewell to Arms. In fact, Miss Gellhorn merits comparison on the individuality of her characters and in her softly modulated style.

Point of No Return (first published as The Wine of Astonishment)

is now available as an e-book on Amazon

This novel, beginning with the fighting in Belgium, focuses on two soldier-characters — Lieutenant Colonel Smithers, a Georgian who is a battalion commander, and his jeep driver, Jacob Levy, a handsome Jewish boy from St. Louis. In Luxembourg for a two-week rest period. Smithers seeks love and an understanding of the meaning of human existence in an affair with a disillusioned Red Cross girl; and Levy finds what Smithers fails to discover in his love for a gentle and lovely country girl.

The novel reaches a climax in an unreasonable act of violence committed by Levy after a visit to the Dachau crematory, when he first realizes the horror and magnitude of Nazi repudiation of humanity.

Miss Gellhorn’s handling of her interrelated themes is skillful, her characterization is understanding and believable, and her prose style is flexible and perceptive. The Wine of Astonishment is certainly one of the best novels of World War II.

The New York Times’ 1948 review titled “Taut, Tender, Tough” began by doing something that Martha always loathed — comparing her writing with that of Ernest Hemingway, her ex-husband. But it was laudatory on its own terms, concluding:

“Memorable … are her pictures of men at the front, on leave, at parties, in the rubbled towns of Germany and amid its fat, prosperous looking farms. In her scenes of action she achieves those two contradictory parts of the military whole: she pins down the irreducible incident with perfect lucidity at the same time that she conveys an impression of battle-blurring confusion.Miss Gellhorn’s talent were never better exhibited than in this humanly penetrating novel of war.”

Read the New York Times‘ full review of The Wine of Astonishment.

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Published on September 28, 2018 07:13

September 27, 2018

Dodie Smith

Dodie Smith (May 3, 1896 – November 24, 1990) was born Dorothy Gladys Smith in Lancashire, England, and was one of the most successful female dramatists of her generation. The British novelist and playwright is best known for her novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians (later better known as The 101 Dalmatians) and the young adult novel I Capture the Castle.

Dodie Smith came to her love of theatre early, with many of her family members either enthusiasts or amateurs in that realm. She studied at the Academy of Dramatic Art, exploring a short career in acting before becoming a successful playwright and novelist.

Early life

Born as an only child to Ernest and Ella Smith, her father died in 1898 when she was two years old. Dodie and her mother moved in with her grandparents, William and Margaret Furber. She credits her theater-loving grandfather in her autobiography, Look Back with Love (1974), as one of the reasons she became a playwright.

At age ten, Dodie wrote her first play, and she began acting in small roles during her teen years at the Manchester Athenaeum Dramatic Society.

When Dodie was fourteen years old, her mother remarried and they moved to London with her new husband. Dodie attended school at St Paul’s Girls’ School and later at age eighteen, Dodie entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She landed her first acting role in Arthur Wing Pinero’s play, Playgoers.

Success in the theater

Dodie’s acting pursuits led her to land stints with a traveling YMCA company to entertain troops during World War I, as well as touring with the French comedy French Leave. She sold a movie script, Schoolgirl Rebels, under the pen name Charles Henry Percy and wrote a one-act play, British Talent.

In 1931 she wrote her first full-length play, Autumn Crocus, using the pseudonym C.L. Anthony. She need not have hidden behind her nom de plume, as the piece was quite successful. When the true identity was exposed, newspapers called her the “shopgirl playwright” because she had worked in retail stores.

Dodie wrote a string of successful plays that made it to the London stage in the 1930s and 1940s, including the aforementioned Autumn Crocus, as well as Call It A Day (the longest running of all her work), Dear Octopus, and Lovers and Friends.

I Capture the Castle

In 1939 Smith married Alec Beesley, who was a longtime friend and her manager from the furniture shop. The two moved to the U.S. in the 1940s due to his stance as a conscientious objector in Britain. Her homesickness for England inspired her to write I Capture the Castle, her first novel, which was published in 1948. It was an immediate hit and still enjoys a devoted following. It begins with the unforgettable line, “I sit here writing this in the kitchen sink.”

The Forgotten Authors series highlighting Dodie Smith in the U.K.’s Independent encapsulates I Capture the Castle as:

” … both a parallel to and the opposite of The Catcher in the Rye, published three years later. It should surely be regarded as an equal, but whereas Holden Caulfield became an eternal symbol for rebellion, Cassandra Mortmain, Smith’s teenaged heroine, was possibly hampered by her background. She is, after all, a naive, optimistic bohemian trapped in her family’s collapsing castle in the middle of nowhere, while her beloved father, a blocked one-time novelist who keeps the family in penury and isolation, struggles with his demons.”

The 101 Dalmatians

Dodie and Alex returned to England in the early 1950’s, much to Dodie’s delight. Her years in the United States were never completely content, as she suffered from homesickness and guilt at abandoning her country in time of war. During their time in America, the couple became friends with fellow writers, such as Christopher Isherwood and Charles Brackett.

After their return to England, Dodie’s The Hundred and One Dalmatians was published in 1956. Pongo, the four-legged main character, was named after Dodie’s own pet Dalmatian. The novel was adapted by Disney into a 1961 animated film, called One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Dodie wrote a sequel, published in 1967, called The Starlight Barking.

101 Dalmatians (1996 film) on Amazon

Film Adaptations

One Hundred and One Dalmatians was released to theaters in January, 1961 and was an immediate success with audiences. Critics generally liked it as well, though they didn’t put it in the same league as other Disney animated films. “While not as indelibly enchanting or inspired as some of the studio’s most unforgettable animated endeavors,” wrote Variety, “this is nonetheless a painstaking creative effort.”

In 1996, Walt Disney adapted the book into a live-action film, with the streamlined title 101 Dalmatians. The live-action version wasn’t as well received. One critic encapsulated the general response: “Neat performance from Glenn Close aside, 101 Dalmatians is a bland, pointless remake.”

Additionally, a British film adaptation of I Capture The Castle was released in the UK in 2003, and shortly thereafter in the U.S. It’s available for streaming on Amazon.

These were the best known film adaptations from Dodie’s works, though there were others, including: Looking Forward (1933, adapted from Service), Autumn Crocus (1934), Call it a Day (1937), and Dear Octopus (1943). All of these were adapted from plays rather than novels.

You may also enjoy: Quotes from I Capture the Castle

Later life

Dodie and Alec spent their last years in quiet seclusion in their country cottage in England where Dodie spent time working on her memoirs (starting with the phrase Look Back) and it’s been said Alec devoted his time to gardening. Charley, Dodie’s loyal Dalmatian companion at the time, become incredibly important to her well-being after Alec’s sudden death in 1987.

Dodie died in 1990 in England. She had named Julian Barnes as her literary executor, a job she thought wouldn’t be much work. Barnes writes of the complicated task in his essay “Literary Executions,” revealing among other things how he secured the return of the movie rights to I Capture the Castle, which had been owned by Disney since 1949.

Dodie’s personal papers are archived in Boston University’s Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, and include manuscripts, photographs, artwork, and her correspondence with esteemed literary friends, such as Christopher Isherwood and John Gielgud.

More about Dodie Smith on this site

Quotes from I Capture the Castle

Major Works

I Capture the Castle (1948)
The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956)
The New Moon with the Old (1963)
The Town in Bloom (1965)
The Starlight Barking (1967)
It Ends in Revelations (1967)

Autobiographies

Look Back with Love: a Manchester Childhood   (1974)
Look Back with Mixed Feelings   (1978)
Look Back with Astonishment   (1979)
Look Back with Gratitude   (1985)

Biography

Dear Dodie by Valerie Grove

Selected Plays

Autumn Crocus (1931)
Service (1932)
Dear Octopus (1938)

More Information

Wikipedia
Reader discussion of Dodie Smith’s books on Goodreads
Dodie Smith page on Amazon

Film adaptations of Dodie Smith’s works

Looking Forward  (1933, adapted from Service)
Autumn Crocus (1934)
Call It a Day  (1937)
Dear Octopus  (1943)
Animated film version of One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)
Live action film version of The 101 Dalmatians (1996)
I Capture the Castle (2003)

Visit and research

Dodie Smith’s Home – Dorset Square, London, U.K.

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Published on September 27, 2018 04:41

September 25, 2018

Giant, the 1956 film based on Edna Ferber’s Epic Novel

Giant, the 1956 film, was based on the epic 1952 novel of the same title by Edna Ferber. The saga of a wealthy Texas ranching family, the film starred Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean, with appearances by Chill Wills, Mercedes McCambridge, Carroll Baker, Jane Withers, Dennis Hopper, Sal Mineo, and Rod Taylor. Giant was notable for being James Dean’s final film performance before his tragic death in a car accident. He was nominated posthumously for an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Jett Rink, a poor but ambitious ranch hand

When Giant was first published, it received some harsh reviews from Southern critics. Like many of Ferber’s dramatic novels, it wove in themes of race and class. Still, it was a blockbuster bestseller, as Ferber’s books inevitably were. The film version of Giant was as big and sprawling as the book, though some of its more controversial aspects were toned down.

This big story is difficult to boil down to a few plot points, but basically, it’s the story of a wealthy Texas rancher, Jordan “Bick” Benedict Jr., who marries beautiful, strong-willed Leslie. The issues of Mexican workers and the subplot of ranch hand Jett Rink, who becomes an oil tycoon, are woven into the narrative.

Giant was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 2005 by the Library of Congress, for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” The film was generally quite well received when it was released. Here’s the official trailer — don’t mind the corny music or narration!

Following are two views of the making of the film, mainly from the perspective of how the director, George Stevens, adapted a novel as big as Texas to the screen.

Mighty “Giant” Comes to the Screen

From the Austin-American, Sunday, November 4, 1956: After more than two years’ of careful preparation and filming, George Stevens is bringing to the screen the film which many feel is his masterpiece. That film is Giant, his mighty movie treatment of Edna Ferber’s controversial but bestselling novel about modern-day Texas.

Filmed on an epic scale worthy of the novel’s Texas locale, producer-director Stevens himself feels that the picture represents one of his best efforts of a career which has included such powerful films as A Place in the Sun and Shane.

But to him, Giant is more than merely a regional story of Texas. He regards it as essentially “a stirring chronicle of three decades of American family life and the profound human emotions generated out of the problems of our changing times.”

To bring such qualities to the screen, Stevens has either softened or done away with completely much of Miss Ferber’s vitriolic approach which made the book such an unpleasant subject among Texans, and, in its place, has added more human elements.

Giant, the 1956 film on Amazon

Both because Miss Ferber’s book was so widely read and because Stevens had given new emphasis to these human qualities, many months were spent in casting the right actors, rather than the obvious one, for each role. The parts were eagerly sought by some important players, but Stevens carefully weighed each part until he had built a cast he felt was ideal.

For the role of Leslie Benedict, the Virginia girl suddenly transported to the barren reaches of an early Texas cattle empire, Stevens selected Elizabeth Taylor, whom he had directed in A Place in the Sun. As Bick Benedict, the strong, confident owner of Reata Ranch, he chose Rock Hudson, a young actor of steadily maturing talent.

The late James Dean, whom Stevens regarded as one of the best young actors of the decade, was chosen to play Jett Rink, the poor ranch hand whose desire to be somebody is partially fulfilled when he strikes oil. Giant marks Dean’s last film appearance after a brief but brilliant career of only three pictures.

Jane Withers, who shattered box office records as a child star, ended an eight-year retirement to play Vashti, and Chill Wills departed from a long series of films to take on the role of Uncle Bawley.

Others starring in top roles include Oscar-winning Mercedes McCambridge as Luz Benedict, Carroll Baker as Luz II, and Dennis Hopper as Jordan Benedict III. Giant was filmed largely on location which brought the film company to Marfa, Texas for some three months of work. The running time of the epic picture is three hours and seventeen minutes.

James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor, two stars in “Giant”

From The Bridgeport Post, Sunday November 25, 1956: George Stevens’ production of Giant, from the novel by Edna Ferber, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean, represents a Warner achievement for which some of the most prodigious talents in both cinematic and literary worlds gave three of the best years of their lives.

Since 1952, Stevens has devoted all of his time to making Giant a picture which would match in scope and importance the Edna Ferber novel.

Miss Ferber made her own contributions to the picture in the course of a number of trips to Hollywood prior to and during the filming of Giant. In Hollywood, Miss Ferber held lengthy consultations with George Stevens and co-producer Henry Ginsberg. And she worked with Fred Guiol and Ivan Moffat, the screenwriters, on the screenplay for the film.

Miss Ferber’s excursion to California on behalf of Giant is hardly the first time the author had seen her books translated to the screen. Some other films based on Ferber’s novels include Show Boat, Saratoga Trunk, So Big, and Come and Get It.

Before and during the preparations, Stevens, over an eighteen-month period, rounded up his cast. Filming Giant carried Stevens & Company to the scenes envisioned by Miss Ferber in her novel – Virginia and Texas. Stevens began his picture where Miss Ferber began her book – in the lovely Virginia countryside near Charlottesville. Following two weeks of shooting here, the company moved to the vast open spaces near Marfa, Texas for the better part of three months. Interior scenes went before the cameras at Warner Bros. studios in Burbank, California.

Many unusual incidents marked the making of Giant, but two symbolize the magnitude of the entire operation. These involved transporting to Texas a prefabricated three-story Victorian mansion, which required five railroad flat cars, and a dozen imitation oil wells.

Yes, incredible as it may seem, Warners carried oil wells to Texas; for the fact is, there are none in the area around Marfa. One of Warners’ prop wells was even made to pump 2,200 gallons of ersatz oil a minute.

More about Giant, the 1956 film

Wikipedia
Rotten Tomatoes
Review in The Hollywood Reporter
Elizabeth Taylor’s Feisty, Feminist Turn in Giant

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Published on September 25, 2018 19:16

September 24, 2018

9 Facts about Colette, Prolific and Passionate French Author

Colette (1873 – 1954), the French author (born Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette) was as known for her writing as for her scandalous love life in the course of her prolific career. Rejecting society’s rules for female expression and sexuality, she overcame notoriety to be regarded as one of the most treasured authors in the canon of French literature.

Colette was no angel and certainly had her flaws in a full life of great accomplishment as well as of scandal. But from mid-career on, and beyond her lifetime she’s consistently been recognized as one of France’s most notable literary figures. Even today, her rebellion against societal norms for women and owning of her sexuality would be admired as progressive. In her time, she was nothing short of radical!

A 2018 feature film, simply titled Colette, celebrates the author’s life and literature. Before you see this critically acclaimed film, which focuses on her early years as a writer, explore these fascinating facts about Colette to get to know her. Better yet, read her books, many of which have been translated into English. The most widely read include the Claudine series, as well as Gigi, The Vagabond, and Chéri.

Dominic West stars as Willy and Keira Knightley as Colette in Colette, a Bleecker Street release.

Credit: Robert Viglasky / Bleecker Street

Colette stars Keira Knightly as the author and features Dominic West as her nefarious first husband, Willy. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2018 and was released in the U.S. in September 2018. It will be in wide release in the U.S. on October 12, and in the U.K. in January 2019.

The BBC said of this film: “She might have been born in the late 19th Century, but Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette is a heroine for our times: a fearless, creative woman who challenged the patriarchy in stuffy Parisian society, in supposedly liberal artistic circles, and in her own bedroom.” Watch the trailer here.

Her husband took credit for her early fiction

In 1900, Colette began publishing the semi-autobiographical series of Claudine stories that defined the era’s teenage girl, exploring her sexuality and unconventional ways. The problem: her first husband, the nefarious Willy (Henry Gauthier-Villars), took the credit as well as the earnings for these popular stories.

Claudine at School (1900) was the first of the efforts to be published and was an immediate success. More Claudine books followed. When Colette resisted Willy’s control, he locked her in a room and compelled her to write until she had produced enough pages for his liking.

Colette in her music hall years

She worked as a music hall performer

When Colette finally broke free of Willy in 1906, she had no access to the substantial earnings of the Claudine books, because her debauched husband held the copyrights. She struggled to make a living as music hall performer, all the while continuing to write fiction.

This was also the period in which she conducted a series of affairs with women. In 1907 she shared an onstage kiss with Mathilde de Morny (known as Missy), with whom she was in a relationship. The scene caused a near-riot, and though they continued their relationship for several years longer, they had to conduct it on the quiet.

She was a neglectful mother

Colette had her first and only child, a daughter, at age forty. The girl was named Colette but acquired the odd nickname Bel-Gazou (“beautiful babbling/chirping”). It has been widely acknowledged that Colette was an abominable, neglectful mother. She married her daughter’s father, Henry de Jouvenel, a journalist and politician, a union that faltered quickly.

She seduced her teenage stepson

At age forty-seven, Colette seduced her 16-year-old stepson Bertrand de Juvenel, which led to the 1924 divorce from his father. Though it has been conjectured that the affair was the basis of the novel Chéri, this wasn’t the case; rather, it inspired the novel Le Blé en Herbe (Green Wheat)

Interestingly, some years later Bertrand de Jouvenel had an affair with American war correspondent Martha Gellhorn from 1930 to 1934. It is believed that they would have married, but de Jouvenel’s wife refused to grant him a divorce.

Colette page on Amazon

Her work inspired two Hollywood films

The 1944 novel Gigi is a story of a French girl training to be a courtesan who falls in love with a wealthy gentleman. The stage play starred newcomer Audrey Hepburn and was adapted by Colette’s American friend and colleague Anita Loos. It was also made into a popular 1958 film with Leslie Caron in the title role. Chéri, the story of the love affair between a young gigolo and an older woman, inspired the 2009 film starring Michelle Pfeiffer.

You might also enjoy:

Classic Women Authors in Men’s Clothing

She was inspired by fellow French woman of letters George Sand

In many ways, Colette followed the footsteps of her fellow Frenchwoman, George Sand, whom she admired. Like Sand, Colette’s work addressed the vagaries of love, with its joys, complications, heartaches, and sensual pleasures. Colette was incredibly prolific, yet reflected on her countrywoman with envy and awe:

“How the devil did George Sand manage? That sturdy woman of letters found it possible to finish one novel and start another in the same hour. And she did not thereby lose either a lover or a puff of the narghile [hookah], not to mention a Story of My Life in twenty volumes…”

Like George Sand, Colette was adept at self-criticism: “Writing is often wasteful. If I counted the pages I’ve torn up, of how many volumes am I the author?” And like her literary predecessor, Colette enjoyed posing in men’s clothing.

Short and Sweet Quotes by Colette

She found true love at age fifty-two

At fifty-two, Colette embarked on a torrid affair with Maurice Goudeket, sixteen years her junior. Against all odds, their love blossomed into an enduring and affectionate relationship, the likes of which she had always longed for. Goudeket became Colette’s third husband.

When France fell to Nazi Germany during World War II, Goudeket, who was Jewish, was arrested in 1941 by the Gestapo. Through Colette’s intervention, he was released after a few months, but the prospect of another arrest (which incredibly, didn’t come to pass) caused her a great deal of anguish.

She was given a state funeral upon her death

In her later years, Colette suffered from arthritis and rarely left her Paris apartment. She was cared for by her husband, Maurice Goudeket. Upon her death in 1954, Colette was one of the world’s most renowned women of letters and was given a state funeral, the first for a woman in France.

Maison de Colette, Jardin. Photo: Nicolas Castets

Colette’s childhood home is now a museum

Colette moved residences at least 14 times in her lifetime, but the one for which she seemed to have the fondest memories for was her childhood home. There she was born to Sido, the strong and possessive mother who so inspired her. The house remained a vivid and much longed-for symbol of a lost paradise. Maison de Colette, located in the village of St.-Sauveur-en-Puisaye in northwest Burgundy, has been open to the public since May 2016.

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Published on September 24, 2018 13:33

September 20, 2018

Quotes from Emma by Jane Austen

Emma by Jane Austen (1775 – 1817) was first published in December 1815. Before she began the novel, Austen wrote, “I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.” In the first sentence she introduces the main character as “Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich.” Emma is privileged and headstrong, greatly overestimating her matchmaking abilities, her imagination often leading her astray.

Emma was the last novel to be completed and published during Jane Austen’s life, as Persuasion, the last novel Austen wrote, was published posthumously. Emma has been adapted for several films, many television series, multiple stage plays, and has been the inspiration for several novels. Following are a collection of quotes from Emma, a novel that has been said to have “changed the face of fiction”:

“Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.”

“I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control. ”

“Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.”

“Why not seize the pleasure at once? — How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!”

“I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.”

“Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.”

“Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste it’s fragrance on the desert air.”

“Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.”

You may also enjoy: The Biggest Myth About Jane Austen’s Writing Life

“The most incomprehensible thing in the world to a man, is a woman who rejects his offer of marriage!”

“Evil to some is always good to others.”

“Time will generally lessen the interest of every attachment not within the daily circle.”

“I would much rather have been merry than wise.”

“If things are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next.”

“It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble.”

“Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I have never been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall. And, without love, I am sure I should be a fool to change such a situation as mine.”

“Where the waters do agree, it is quite wonderful the relief they give.”

“I don’t approve of surprises. The pleasure is never enhanced and the inconvenience is considerable.”

“A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her.”

“A very narrow income has a tendency to contract the mind, and sour the temper. Those who can barely live, and who live perforce in a very small, and generally very inferior, society, may well be illiberal and cross.”

Emma by Jane Austen on Amazon

“Where the wound had been given, there must the cure be found, if any where.”

“The youth and cheerfulness of morning are in happy analogy, and of powerful operation; and if the distress be not poignant enough to keep the eyes unclosed, they will be sure to open to sensations of softened pain and brighter hope.”

“I do not know whether it ought to be so, but certainly silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly.”

“Do not deceive yourself; do not be run away with by gratitude and compassion.”

“Every thing was to take its natural course, however, neither impelled nor assisted.”

“What is passable in youth is detestable in later age.”

“I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment.”

“Letters are no matter of indifference; they are generally a very positive curse.”

“Fine dancing, I believe, like virtue, must be its own reward.”

“Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.”

“Time, you may be sure, will make one or the other of us think differently; and, in the meanwhile, we need not talk much on the subject.”

“Men never know when things are dirty or not.”

“The removal of one solicitude generally makes way for another.”

You may also enjoy: Memorable Jane Austen Quotes

“There are people who, the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.”

“You have another long walk before you.”

“It was impossible to quarrel with words, whose tremulous inequality showed indisposition so plainly.”

“The I examined my own heart. And there you were. Never, I fear, to be removed.”

“She had been a friend and companion such as few possessed: intelligent, well-informed, useful, gentle, knowing all the ways of the family, interested in all its concerns, and peculiarly interested in herself, in every pleasure, every scheme of hers–one to whom she could speak every thought as it arose, and who had such an affection for her as could never find fault.”

“Whenever you are transplanted, like me, you will understand how very delightful it is to meet with anything at all like what one has left behind.”

“Seldom, very seldom does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken; but where, as in this case, though the conduct is mistaken, the feelings are not, it may not be very material.”

“That is the case with us all, papa. One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”

“I have observed…in the course of my life, that if things are going outwardly one month, they are sure to mend the next.”

“It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind.”

“Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.”

“I always deserve the best treatment, because I never put up with any other.”

“It is very unfair to judge of any body’s conduct, without an intimate knowledge of their situation.”

“Where there is a wish to please, one ought to overlook, and one does overlook a great deal.”

“I always take the part of my own sex. I do indeed. I give you notice—You will find me a formidable antagonist on that point. I always stand up for women.”

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Published on September 20, 2018 06:33

September 19, 2018

It’s Alive! Frankenstein at 200 at The Morgan Library & Museum

It’s with great excitement that Literary Ladies Guide is helping to spread the news of a forthcoming exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum (NYC): It’s Alive! Frankenstein at 200, on display from October 12, 2018 to January 27, 2019. It’s hard to overstate the impact of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein on literature as well as popular culture. This exhibit celebrates the 200th anniversary of the 1818 classic, published when its author was barely twenty-one.

If you’re planning a trip to New York City this fall or early winter, we urge you to take the opportunity to see this exhibit as well as get to know The Morgan Library & Museum, a beautiful oasis in the heart of the city, located at 225 Madison Avenue. Learn more about the exhibit here, and note some of the programs and events, including films and gallery talks.

Image at upper right: Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus, New York: Grosset and Dunlap, [1931]. Courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum and Universal Studios Licensing LLC, © 1931 Universal Pictures Company, Inc. Photograph by Janny Chiu.

The following information was provided by The Morgan Library and is reprinted with permission:

It’s Alive! Frankenstein at 200

A classic of world literature, a masterpiece of horror, and a forerunner of science fiction, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is the subject of a new exhibition at the Morgan. Organized in collaboration with the New York Public Library, It’s Alive! Frankenstein at 200 traces the origins and impact of the novel whose monster has become both a meme and a metaphor for forbidden science, unintended consequences, and ghastly combinations of the human and the inhuman.

Portions of the original manuscript will be on display along with historic scientific instruments and iconic artwork such as Henry Fuseli’s Nightmare and the definitive portrait of Mary Shelley. The story’s astonishingly versatile role in art and culture over the course of two hundred years helps explain why the monster permeates the popular imagination to this day.

Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus. London:

Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1831 edition.

Courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum. Photograph by Janny Chiu.

Co-curated by John Bidwell, the Astor Curator and Department Head of the Morgan’s Printed Books and Bindings Department, and Elizabeth Denlinger, Curator of the Carl H. Pforzheimer Press, this exhibition presents a diverse array of books, manuscripts, posters, prints, and paintings illustrating the long cultural tradition that shaped and was shaped by Mary Shelley’s myth. A large number of these works come from both the Morgan and the New York Public Library’s collections.

Only eighteen years old when she embarked on the novel, Shelley invented the archetype of the mad scientist who dares to flout the laws of nature. She created an iconic monster who spoke out against injustice and begged for sympathy while performing acts of shocking violence. The monster’s fame can be attributed to the novel’s theatrical and film adaptations. Comic books, film posters, publicity stills, and movie memorabilia reveal a different side to the story of Frankenstein, as reinterpreted in spinoffs, sequels, mashups, and parodies.

Benoît Pecheux, plate no. 4 in Giovanni Aldini, Essai théorique et expérimental sur le galvanisme,

Paris: De l’imprimerie de Fournier Fils, 1804.

Courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum. Photograph by Janny Chiu.

“The Morgan is in an excellent position to tell the rich story of Mary Shelley’s life and of Frankenstein’s evolution in popular culture,” said director of the museum, Colin B. Bailey. “Pierpont Morgan was fascinated by the creative process, and one of the artifacts he acquired was a first edition Frankenstein annotated by the author. The collection of works by the Shelleys, both at the Morgan and the New York Public Library, has only grown since then. We are very pleased to collaborate with the NYPL in presenting the full version of this extraordinary tale and how it lives on in the most resilient and timely of ways.”

The exhibition occupies two galleries: one documenting the life of Mary Shelley and the composition of her book, the other showing how the story evolved in the theater, cinema, and popular culture.

Carl Laemmle Presents Frankenstein: the Man who Made a Monster, lithograph poster, 1931.

Collection of Stephen Fishler, comicconnect.com, Courtesy of Universal Studios Licensing LLC, © 1931

Universal Pictures Company, Inc.

The Influence of the Gothic Style and Enlightenment Science

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus sprang from both a passion for Gothic style that pervaded British culture long before the author’s birth in 1797 and the influence of the discoveries of European Enlightenment science. Audiences loved the supernatural in all its formulations—ghosts, graveyards, mysterious strangers, secret warnings, lost wills, hidden pictures, and more.

While novels were the primary vehicle for the Gothic, it was also popular with artists of paintings and prints, which were sometimes satirical —the Gothic was parodied as soon as it was taken seriously. The exhibition opens with the greatest horror painting of the eighteenth century, The Nightmare, painted in 1781 by the Swiss immigrant artist Henry Fuseli. Mary Shelley knew about this iconic image and may have used it in writing the climactic scene in Frankenstein.

Shelley was also influenced by the scientific endeavors of the time. She had been born into an age of scientific and technological discovery in Britain, when institutions like the Royal Society began fostering exploration and experimentation. Across Britain spread a thriving circuit of lectures and science demonstrations for the public.

A few of these experiments have become part of the Frankenstein legend. While writing the novel, Shelley had been reading Humphry Davy’s Elements of Chemical Philosophy, and she knew about anatomical dissections, contemporary debates about the origins of life, and electrical experiments on corpses. She lends this fascination to Victor Frankenstein, who makes a monster from corpses in his “workshop of filthy creation.”

Benoît Pecheux, plate no. 4 in Giovanni Aldini, Essai théorique et expérimental sur le galvanisme,

Paris: De l’imprimerie de Fournier Fils, 1804. Courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum.

Photography by Janny Chiu.

Publication

A copiously illustrated companion volume, It’s Alive! A Visual History of Frankenstein, provides a vivid account of the artistic and literary legacy of the novel along with detailed descriptions of the highlights in the exhibition, while a new online curriculum offers high school teachers resources for the classroom.

It’s Alive! A Visual History of Frankenstein delves into the artistic and literary legacy of the novel and provides detailed descriptions of the highlights in the exhibition. It introduces readers to portrayals of the creature — from his early days dancing across a stage, to Boris Karloff’s lurching pathos, to the wide variety of modern-day comic book versions — and of Victor Frankenstein, from brainy college kid to bad scientist, and grounds them in historical context. In addition, it provides full introductions to Mary Shelley’s life before and after the novel and to the pioneering scientific work of her day.

A full chapter displays the Gothic paintings and graphic art that inspired Shelley’s work. The contextual chapters will make it useful to the student and the general reader. Author: Elizabeth Campbell Denlinger Publisher: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York; D Giles Limited, London. 333 pages.

Read the rest of the exhibition notes, including a listing of events and public programs, here.

Jean-François Vilain,Théâtre de la Porte St. Martin, Le monstre, acte premier, scène dernière, ca. 1826,

color lithograph. Département des Arts du spectacle—Bibliothèque nationale de France.

More information on Mary Shelley and Frankenstein

Brief biography of Mary Shelley
A 19th-Century view and synopsis of Frankenstein
How Mary Shelley Came to Write Frankenstein (1818)

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Published on September 19, 2018 12:11

September 15, 2018

Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield (October 14, 1888 – January 9, 1923), best known for her mastery of the short story form, was born in Wellington, New Zealand as Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp. She’s recognized for revolutionizing the modern English short story.

She enjoyed a comfortable childhood as part of a well-to-do family. A serious student of the cello, she first expected that music would be her career. Still, she found the colonial Edwardian atmosphere stifling and was inspired by rebels like Oscar Wilde. According to her biography, Katherine Mansfield: A Life by Antony Alpers, “she gave early evidence of the impulsiveness, the intensity, the impatience with convention which she would pour into her later life.”

Her pretention of grandeur are reflected in this odd quote: “I like to appear in any society – entirely at my ease – conscious of my own importance, which in my estimation is unlimited, affable and very receptive. I like to appear slightly condescending, very much of le grand monde.“

A new life in Europe

Rejecting her bourgeois background, she moved to London in 1903 to attend Queens College. There, influenced by the heady literary scenes of the emerging Bloomsbury circle and others, she began writing in earnest, determined to make a name for herself.

New Zealand felt alienating to her upon returning from her studies. Reflecting on that time she later wrote to a friend in a 1922 letter:

“I am a ‘Colonial.’ I was born in New Zealand, I came to Europe to ‘complete my education’ and when my parents thought that tremendous task was over I went back to New Zealand. I hated it. It seemed to me a small petty world; I longed for ‘my’ kind of people and larger interests and so on. And after a struggle I did get out of the nest finally and came to London, at eighteen, never to return, said my disgusted heart.”

Exploring the short story form

In 1908, firmly ensconced in the bohemian life in London, she began writing short stories. Her first collection was published in 1911 and reflected a certain disillusionment with her native country. Titled In a German Pension, it received favorable reviews and was praised for “acute insight” and “unquenchable humour.”

She went on to contribute stories to Rhythm, an avant-garde literary publication. with her partner and husband-to-be, literary critic John Middleton Murray.

Mansfield’s younger brother Leslie, a World War I soldier, was killed in 1915. This devastated her. She found some solace in redirecting her grief into a kind of emotional debt to his memory, and to the shared experiences in their native land of New Zealand. The short stories in Prelude (1918) that evoked these memories tenderly.

The 1920 collection Bliss and Other Stories (1920) followed by The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922) sealed her reputation as a master of the short story form. The Dove’s Nest and Other Stories (1923) and Something Childish (1924) were published after Mansfield’s untimely death.

Some of her most highly regarded stories include “At the Bay,” “The Voyage,” “The Stranger,” and “Daughters of the Late Colonel.”

Many lovers and tortured relationships

In her brief life, Mansfield had a great many lovers, both male and female; her bisexuality was known to her from adolescence. Her relationship with a childhood friend, Garnet Trowell, when both were twenty, resulted in a pregnancy that she miscarried.

Mansfield had a somewhat tormented friendship with fellow author D.H. Lawrence, who used her as the model for Gudrun in Women in Love. Famously, she had a disastrous one-day marriage to George Bowden.

Her most tumultuous relationship was with the man with whom she had a long love affair and then married, John Middleton Murry, whom she met in his capacity as an editor of a magazine to which she submitted work. Though their relationship began in 1912, she was unable to marry him until 1918, when she finally obtained a divorce from her first husband.

Friend and rival of Virginia Woolf

An odd rivalry percolated between her and Virginia Woolf, who said of Mansfield, “I was jealous of her writing. The only writing I have ever been jealous of.” On the other hand Woolf wrote, “The more she is praised, the more I am convinced she is bad.” However, though Mansfield and Woolf have long been painted as bitter rivals, they were actually quite close as friends and as writing colleagues.

You might also like Bliss by Katherine Mansfield (1918) – full text

An untimely death

Katherine Mansfield was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1917 but continued to write on a daily basis until she could no longer do so by 1922. Fighting mightily to combat her illness, she entered the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in France.

Sadly she died there three months later, in 1923, at the age of 34. Before her tragic death from tuberculosis in 1923. Toward the end of her life, she searched for truth in the “spiritual discipline” teachings of the Russian mystic G. I. Gurdjieff.

Legacy

Even though her career was cut short at a young age, it’s widely accepted that Mansfield revolutionized the English short story. According to The Penguin Companion to English Literature:

“The quiet clarity of detail, the symbolic use of objects and incidents presented with extraordinary physical accuracy, the cunning distillation of atmosphere, are the outstanding features of her stories, which have something in common with those of Chekhov.”

Her legacy is summed up on the official Katherine Mansfield site: “She was a writer of short stories, poetry, letters, journals, and reviews, and changed the way the short story was written in the English language. She was a rebel and a modernist who lived her short life of 34 years to the full. Her life spanned a time when gender roles for women underwent a radical change. Katherine Mansfield was among an emerging female professional class and saw herself as a writer first, a woman second.”

In the late 1920s, her husband John Middleton Murry edited collections from her journals and letters.