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Footnotes From the World’s Greatest Bookstores: 3 Women Writers’ Adventures

Those who write love to read, and those who love to read, love bookstores with a passion. Bob Eckstein, the noted New Yorker cartoonist has created a unique and beautiful book, Footnotes From the World’s Greatest Bookstores: True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and Book Lovers.

The 75 meticulously detailed paintings of fantastic bookstores by Eckstein feature some of the most charming and iconic bookstores around the world. The art is embellished with charming, bittersweet, and often humorous anecdotes by writers, thinkers, and dreamers who have visited them. Some of these bookstores have gone by the wayside, many, thankfully, are still open for business. Here, Bob shares the bookstore adventures of three contemporary women authors.

Pageant Book & Print Shop on 12th Street, Manhattan was in business from 1946 to 1999 until it became an online store. It has since returned as a small print shop on 4th Street.

When Sharon Mesmer first moved to New York City, she went straight here, hoping to find a book that would serve as a gateway to her new life as an acclaimed New York poet. “The way it looked in ‘Hannah and Her Sisters,’ it had to be the first bookstore I set foot in.

In the nether-most corner, a book fell on my head: ‘Ways to Self-Realization,’ by Mouni Sadhu, the spiritual nom de plume, I later discovered, of a Polish author named—wait for it—Mieczyslaw Demetriusz Sudowski. I opened it to a random page, and the first words (in caps) were ‘WE ARE NOT THE MIND.’ I thought, well, it has nothing to do with literature, but I’ll bet anything I’m going to need it later. When I finally opened it again, twenty-three years later, during a nervous breakdown, I was right.” (— Sharon Mesmer)

Alabama Booksmith of Birmingham sells only exclusively signed copies. All books are sold at regular retail prices and are displayed by cover instead of just spines.

“Tracy Chevalier was an incredible trooper. Her flight was delayed coming in from Denver and she had not slept in 24 hours. She came straight to the store and signed 400 books for our Signed First Editions Club and then performed in great fashion at a benefit for the Literacy Council. She quickly visited six U.S. stores then returned to London for Passover to make Matzo Ball soup.” – Jake Reiss, owner

“[BTW,] the matzo balls turned out like cannon balls. I love his bookstore. It’s the only store I’ve ever been in where the jackets are turned out so that you see the front covers. It means he can only display a fraction of what a bookstore normally does, but the shelves are so much more interesting.” (– Tracy Chevalier)

The Antiquarium Bookstore is located in Brownville, Nebraska, one of the three ‘Book Towns’ in the United States. Book Towns are rural towns with a large number of used book or antiquarian book stores where bibliophiles gather and literary festivals take place.

“What I loved was the hospitality there. The bookstore is/was run by a sort of legendary fellow in my mind and life…a little otherworldly, ethereal anachronistically pursuing gentility … changed my impression of what people were like in the middle of the country. So kind and generous and thinky.

“Twice I slept at the bookstore, snuggling in the aisles with my traveling companions, my then boyfriends. I remember the bookshelves looming above us forever and ever, like skyscrapers. I remember feeling like the books were maps to other people and other times and other lives. I’ve slept in other bookstores–I stayed at Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and I napped at Pistil books in Seattle. But only at Antiquarium did I feel a sense of what the library at Alexandria might have been: an accumulation of evidence and suggestions.” (– Amy Halloran)

Bob Eckstein is an award-winning illustrator and writer, New Yorker cartoonist, snowman expert and author of the New York Times bestseller, Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores. Globe Pequot is coming out with a new edition of his holiday classic, The History of the Snowman in 2018. Visit him on the web at BobEckstein.com.

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Beatrix Potter’s Letters to Children: The Path to Her Books

Twenty-something Beatrix Potter (1866 – 1943) was conflicted. She had two consuming interests at the time: art and the study of fungi. With the exception of letter writing and a journal which she started in 1881—in elaborate code, by the way—becoming a woman of letters was nowhere in sight. What happened to set and redirect the course of her life’s work?

Helen Beatrix Potter was born to wealth, so she didn’t need to earn a living. Her ambitions were more personal, bubbling up from some inner pool. Her parents, Rupert and Helen Leech Potter, both hailed from families whose riches were manufactured, if you will, in Manchester’s booming cotton industry. Born in London to a posh South Kensington address, she and her younger brother, Bertram, were raised in the usual way for children of that social class—by a series of minders starting with nurses, then nannies, and finally governesses.

An avid interest in the natural world

Lessons were held in the upstairs nursery. The nursery was also home to an elaborate parade of pets. At various times, the two children had dogs, birds, lizards, mice, squirrels, a bat, and, of course, rabbits. Beatrix and the six-years-younger Bertram showed early interest in natural history and early aptitude in art. They traveled with their parents (and staff) on long holidays.

Each summer, Rupert Potter would take a lease on a country house in Scotland or, starting in 1882, the Lake District. The children sketched and collected wildflowers, insects, fossils, and mushrooms. While the adolescent Bertram was sent off to a traditional English public school and later to Oxford, Beatrix stayed at home. “I’m glad I did not go to school,” she later wrote, “it would have rubbed off some of the originality (if I had not died of shyness or been killed with over pressure).” She had private art lessons and completed a course of study at a South Kensington art school.

The young Beatrix was often in ill health, capped by a serious case of rheumatic fever in 1887. She considered herself plain and was painfully shy. At age seventeen, she wrote in her journal, “I feel like a cow in a drawing room.” So it is hardly surprising that her interests tended to the solitary.

She had a passion for drawing and a rich imagination. There were consolations— her beloved pets and the world outdoors. She once recalled, “I do not remember a time when I did not try to invent pictures and make for myself a fairyland amongst the wild flowers, the animals, fungi, mosses, woods and streams, all the thousand objects of the countryside.” Reading was a joy and a solace.

Her favorite books and authors

A list of her childhood books—sent in response to a query from the Denver Public Library in the 1920s—included Alice in Wonderland, Black Beauty, Uncle Remus, and Little Women (You can find a link to Potter’s list here). She remembered her Nurse Mackenzie reading aloud from Aesop’s Fables, Hans Christian Anderson, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. She also credited this Highland nurse for her lasting belief in fairies. Potter claimed to have learned to read with the weighty tomes of Sir Walter Scott. In her later years she particularly mentioned enjoying the novels of Sarah Orne Jewett and Willa Cather.

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Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life by Marta McDowell

Her last governess and companion, Annie Carter, was only three years her senior. Carter stayed on until Beatrix was eighteen years old. They remained friends. Carter left the Potters’ employ to marry Edwin Moore. The couple settled in Wandsworth, a London borough on the other side of the Thames. Beatrix would often visit, driven there in the family carriage or pony cart. As the Moore family grew—Annie and Edwin eventually had eight children—Beatrix remained close. The Moores’ firstborn was a boy, born on Christmas Eve, 1887. They named him Noel.

Beatrix Potter around the age of 20, at right

Photo courtesy of The Beatrix Potter Society

In 1892 while on a trip to Cornwall with her family, Beatrix Potter sent an unusual letter to Noel Moore. She was twenty-five, he was four. Potter wrote, “I have come a very long way in a puff-puff to a place in Cornwall, where it is very hot, and there are palm trees in the gardens.” The letter continues, 260 words total, in simple language that would have appealed to Noel and his younger brother, Eric, and amused their mother.

Potter described the sights of Falmouth and its working harbor. But in addition to putting her observations into words, she added sketches, vignettes of the train, the Potter family in front of the public gardens, a steamboat on the harbor, tall ships, chickens, dogs, and cats in the neighborhood, and, my personal favorite, a fishing boat at work, with men in the boat above the waves and fish and crabs below. It is the first known picture letter that Beatrix Potter wrote, but it was far from her last.

The next that survives, also written to Noel, came the next year in September 1893. It is arguably one of the most famous letters in the English language, certainly in the history of children’s literature. It opens, “My dear Noel, I don’t know what to write to you, so I shall tell you a story about four little rabbits whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter.” Over eight pages, the letter lays out the entire tale with sixteen illustrations in ink. While Beatrix did own a rabbit named Peter Piper, unlike the letter from Cornwall, this was brand new fiction, custom-made for a real child.

Letter from Beatrix Potter to Noel Moore, 1893

Letters grow into books

She wrote many picture letters to the Moore children over the years and it was their mother — her friend and former governess — who first suggested that Beatrix make them into books. She borrowed the letters back in 1895, copied and amended the stories, and the rest is publication history. More about that here.

About The Tale of Peter Rabbit, she wrote, “I have never quite understood the secret of Peter’s perennial charm. Perhaps it is because he and his friends keep on their way, busily absorbed with their own doings. They were always independent. Like Topsy—they just “grow’d.”

The secret to her success?

Perhaps the secret to Potter’s success was that she also just “grow’d.” Sometimes hurdles were put in her way, other times gates were opened to her. She never seemed to avoid trying out a new path. Potter married William Heelis, a country solicitor, when she was forty-seven. They lived in a small village in the Lake District where she had acquired several farms.

Her interests included antique oak furniture, preservation of the countryside, and raising Herdwick sheep. While Beatrix and William Heelis never had children of their own, she continued to write, to draw, and to send picture letters to children of her friends. The latest that survives is dated less than a year before her death.

For the writers among you, let me close with Beatrix Potter’s description of her writing methods:

“I think I write carefully because I enjoy my writing, and enjoy taking pains over it. I have always disliked writing to order; I write to please myself … My usual way of writing is to scribble, and cut out, and write it again and again. The shorter and plainer the better.”

Well said, Miss Potter.

For more about Beatrix Potter’s interests in fungi, there is a good summary on Brain Pickings.

In addition to the books already listed on Beatrix Potter’s biography page here on Literary Ladies, for this article I also consulted:

Beatrix Potter’s Americans: Selected Letters edited by Jane Crowell Morse
Beatrix Potter’s Letters edited by Judy Taylor
Letters to Children from Beatrix Potter edited by Judy Taylor
The Journal of Beatrix Potter: 1881 to 1897 edited by Leslie Linder

Marta McDowell teaches landscape history and horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden and consults for private clients and public gardens.  Timber Press has published her recent books including The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Frontier Landscapes that Inspired the Little House Books in September 2017. All the Presidents’ Gardens made the New York Times bestseller list in 2015 and won an American Horticultural Society book award.

Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life won a 2014 Gold Award from the Garden Writers Association and is in its sixth printing.  Marta is working on a revision of her first book, Emily Dickinson’s Gardens, due out in a full color edition by Timber Press in 2019.

*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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Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West (1941)

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia by Dame Rebecca West is ostensively a travelogue, published as a two-volume set of more than 1,100 pages and half a million words in 1941. Published both in the United Kingdom and the US., the book presents an exhaustive history of the land and people of the Balkans. Publication coincided with the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia, and West’s intention was to “show the past side by side with the present it created.”

West researched the book during a 6-week 1937 trip she made there with her then-husband, traveling over much of the terrain of the old borders, including Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Serbia, and more. Sadly, by the time she fashioned her research into the tome and had it published, she was compelled to add the dedication: “To my friends in Yugoslavia, who are now all dead or enslaved.”

Though often placed in the travel category, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon transcends its genre and is a deep study of culture, politics, and geography of the region as it was at the time. Of course, Yugoslavia no longer exists. The two-book set has appeared on lists of “Best nonfiction books of the twentieth century” and it has been praised by readers and reviewers alike as an unusual and extraordinary work of nonfiction.

Rebecca West’s intellect and prose were always appreciated by her contemporaries and the era’s critics, though in all, her legacy is considered by many underappreciated. 

“Were I to go down into the market-place, armed with the powers of witchcraft, and take a peasant by the shoulders and whisper to him, ‘In your lifetime, have you known peace?’ wait for his answer, shake his shoulders and transform him into his father, and ask him the same question, and transform him in his turn to his father, I would never hear the word ‘Yes,’ if I carried my questioning of the dead back for a thousand years. I would always hear, ‘No, there was fear, there were our enemies without, our rulers within, there was prison, there was torture, there was violent death.” 

Original covers of the 1941 two-book set

This 1941 review by John Selby (Literary Guideposts) of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is typical of the praise this classic work received:

Rebecca West could have told the story of what was once Yugoslavia in half the 500,000 words she used in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, but I am glad she did not.

As this enormous two-volume work stands now, it contains not only the history and the pertinent fact, but the spirit. Miss West is a writer of prose bordering on genius, and an observer of almost fanatical thoroughness.

Miss West spent years poking about Yugoslavia, often with a Yugoslavian whose wife was a peculiarly unfortunate German. These and other characters in the long narrative are foils to the facst which Miss West uncovers. As they move through the flashing Yugoslavian background they reflect on the tangled past of this strangely assorted people.

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The Birds Fall Down by Rebecca West

The country may never again be called Yugoslavia, but some of the people will remain essentially the same people the author took such pains to know.

These are an almost incredible people, these Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. They have been shaped by their bare mountains and fertile oases, primarily, but also by those who have tried to subjugate them, and have succeeded only in conquering them.

There was Rome, many centuries ago, and then a period of glory for the Serbs, and then the Byzantine Empire flowing over and from the east. Later Venice and Austria came from the north, and the Turks with fanatical brutality came again from the east.

The Turks remained over the land five centuries, and the Balkan wars which were the prelude to the World war were only the last throes of the struggles against them. Now the Nazis have come from the more distant north, and the strong faces of the people are again set in lines of hard suffering.

Miss West has no illusions about these man and women, but she loves them. It would be hard to read Black Lamb and Grey Falcon without arriving at the same love though the whirl of color the book throws about them.

No writer has produced a stranger combination of history, travel, racial analysis and sympathetic understanding than Rebecca West has in her Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. This huge two-volume work contains all anybody would need to know about what once was Yugoslavia. It probably contains more than the Yugoslavs know themselves. (John Selby, Literary Guideposts syndicated column, 1941)

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West on Amazon

How it begins …

I raised myself on my elbow and called through the open door into the other wagon-lit: — ‘My dear, I know I have inconvenienced you terribly by making you take your holiday now, and I know you did not really want to come to Yugoslavia at all. But when you get there you will see why it was so important that we should make this journey, and that we should make it now, at Easter. It will all be quite clear, once we are in Yugoslavia.’

There was, however, no reply. My husband had gone to sleep. It was perhaps as well. I could not have gone on to justify my certainty that this train was taking us to a land where everything was comprehensible, where the mode of life was so honest that it put an end to perplexity. I lay back in the darkness and marveled that I should be feeling about Yugoslavia as if it were my mother country, for this was 1937, and I had never seen the place till 1936. Indeed, I could remember the first time I ever spoke the name ‘Yugoslavia,’ and that was only two and a half years before, on October 9, 1934. (excerpted from Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West)

More about Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West

Reader discussion on Goodreads
Excerpt of Part One in The Atlantic
1941 review in The New York Times
The Judgement of Rebecca West (a contemporary view)

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The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977 by Adrienne Rich

The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977 (1978) appeared early on in Adrienne Rich’s (1929 – 2012) long career and solidified her position as a leader who articulated the central ideas of the second wave U.S. feminist movement.

These poems, about and for women, envision an alternative to a patriarchal system in which men control the avenues of power and the definitions of female existence. They establish the primary concerns of Rich’s life’s work to promote:

solidarity among women and the power that emerges from their collaboration;
the legitimacy of lesbian existence within a homophobic world;
a re-conceptualization of motherhood as institution
the mind’s relation to the body
and the destructive nature of a dominant culture that renders its marginalized members invisible and silent.

Rich refuses any division between the artistic and political aspects of her poetry as she uses both to explore social relations in a world hostile to female identity and creativity.

“Power”

The first poem, “Power,” describes Marie Curie’s discovery of radiation and her ensuing death, as the poet links the notion of woman’s power with the danger of not knowing how to handle it.

“Power” by Adrienne Rich

Living in the earth-deposits of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth

one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old

cure for fever or melancholy a tonic

for living on this earth in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:

she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness

her body bombarded for years by the element

she had purified

It seems she denied to the end

the source of the cataracts on her eyes

the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends

till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying

her wounds

denying

her wounds came from the same source as her power

“Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev”

The second poem, “Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev,” celebrates the courage and commitment of a group of woman who perished together on a climbing expedition. In the poem “Origins and History of Consciousness,” Rich equates “The drive / to connect” with “the dream of a common language.” Rich’s notion of a common language stresses a desire for the direct communication of care and concern within a community of speakers and the power that ensues from this achievement.

At this point in Rich’s evolving process — separatist, radical feminist — she reserves dialogue for the shared experience of women. Although they may remain only dreams, such creative acts can bring forth new realities in the face of a damaging, male-dominated culture where women are not full participants.

Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich on Amazon

“Twenty-One Love Poems”

The central cycle of twenty-one sonnet-like lyrics, “Twenty-One Love Poems,” originally appeared as a separate volume. These poems incorporate the personal and the public as they invoke the experience of physical and emotional love between women integrated within a broader social reality. As several critics have commented, the intensely erotic “(The Floating Poem, Unnumbered)” resists the dominant male discourse by breaking the formal pattern and omitting a roman numeral. 

Although these works correspond with a period in her life when Rich’s marriage to Harvard Economics professor Alfred Conrad had ended and she was involved in lesbian relationships, (including one with Michelle Cliff that would last until her death), the poems are socially engaged rather than overtly autobiographical or confessional.

Critics’ responses

The critics’ varied response to The Dream of a Common Language sparked debates that increased Rich’s popularity and notoriety in the public sphere. By 1975, Barbara Gelpi and Albert Gelpi had already declared Rich a “pioneer, witness and prophet” of the U.S. women’s movement . (Gelpi and Gelpi 1993, xi). Many celebrated her attention to women’s history, her rhetorical talent, and her outspoken approach to taboo topics.

Others warned against her generalized category of womanhood and condemned what they saw as the continuation of an obsessively anti-male focus on patriarchal power. Sensing this backlash, Rich shifted her lens from the world of men to that of women in both Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976) and Dream of a Common Language. Nevertheless, several critics rejected her incorporation of poetry and politics: some declared her work overtly propagandistic, didactic, and dogmatic.

Legacy

At the time of her death, Rich enjoyed an international following. Dream of a Common Language marks a pivotal moment early in her literary career when she leaves traditional forms behind and exhibits the use of her creative intelligence to re-vision the world with “fresh eyes”.” (Rich 1979, 35).

Rich, who was white, won the 1974 National Book Award for Diving into the Wreck. In a characteristic move, she refused the award as an individual but accepted it with fellow nominees Alice Walker, who is black, and Audre Lorde, who was also black, “in the name of all women whose voices have gone and still go unheard in a patriarchal world.” Rich leaves her mark on today’s popular culture as an innovative, anti-racist feminist who maintained her commitment to dialogue as an instrument for change in the world.

Contributed by Sarah Wyman, Associate Professor of English, SUNY-New Paltz

Further Reading

Cooper, Jane Roberta, ed. 1984. Reading Adrienne Rich: Reviews and Re-Visions, 1951-81. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Gelpi, Barbara Charlesworth and Albert Gelpi, eds. 1993. Adrienne Rich’s Poetry and Prose: Poems, Prose, Reviews and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton.

Keyes, Claire. 1986. The Aesthetics of Power: The Poetry of Adrienne Rich. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.

Langdell, Cheri Colby. 2004. Adrienne Rich: The Moment of Change. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Martin, Wendy. 1984. An American Triptych: Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Nelson, Cary. 1981. “Meditative Aggressions: Adrienne Rich’s Recent Transactions with History.” In Our Last First Poets: Vision and History in Contemporary American Poetry. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Rich, Adrienne. 1979. “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision 1971.” On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978. New York: Norton.

Vendler, Helen. 1980. Part of Nature, Part of Us: Modern American Poets. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.

Werner, Craig. 1988. Adrienne Rich: The Poet and Her Critics. Chicago: American Library Association.

A shorter version of this essay appears in Women’s Rights: Reflections in Popular Culture. Ed. Ann Savage. Greenwood, 2017, 116 – 117.

 *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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Frances Hodgson Burnett

Frances Hodgson Burnett (November 24, 1849 – October 29, 1924) was born in Cheetham, England. She emigrated to the U.S. with her mother and siblings when she was in her teens, and started publishing stories in magazines to help support her family.

Victorian literature often had a rags-to-riches theme, or vice versa. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s own life reflected that theme. When she was born in England in 1840, she was one of five children in a household headed by a prosperous tradesman. He died when she was three, and the family’s fortunes plummeted.

See also: Quotes from The Secret Garden

Rags-to-riches in life and literature

Frances’s mother took her and her siblings and emigrated to the U.S., settling in rural Tennessee. Frances always showed an independent streak, was very clever, and had a knack for storytelling. Her girlhood, according to the biography of her life by Ann Thwaite, Waiting for the Party, had its ups and downs. There were parties and picnics, but also great struggles to earn enough money to keep the family afloat.

That’s when Frances started to write. Much like Louisa May Alcott before her, she did so more from a desire to support her family than out of any grand literary ambitions. She sent her first story to a woman’s magazine, stating bluntly: “My object is remuneration.”

She succeeded so well at selling stories to magazines that a steady income was hers to enjoy. Her earnings were enough not only to help her family, but to pay for a trip back to her native England at age 22, the first of many such trips.

Incredibly productive

During her writing career that spanned some fifty years, Burnett produced over fifty books and thirteen stage plays. Most have been forgotten, swept into the literary dustbin that contains the legions of over-sentimental stories that were produced in that era. But she produced three works that endured — Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Secret Garden, and A Little Princess. They each had strong, offbeat characters and rose above the sugary sweetness and morality of children’s tales of the era.

Writing in her garden helped her keep up her spirits in her own life, and contributed to one of her most popular works, The Secret Garden. It’s hard to say which is the more beloved of her works, the latter or A Little Princess. Burnett also helped write the theatrical versions of her books during her lifetime.

Sara Crewe: or, What Happened at Miss Minchin‘s was serialized in 1887 and published as a novella in 1888. This novella was the predecessor of what developed into A Little Princess. The Lost Prince (1915) also rose above the pack of the usual pablum, though it’s not as well known as the trio of aforementioned books.

Little Lord Fauntleroy

Though she had enjoyed great success in selling stories from the very start of her writing career as a teen, Little Lord Fauntleroy is the story that put Burnett on the literary map. It was serialized in St. Nicholas magazine in 1885 and 1886, and published as a book shortly thereafter.

The novel tells of young Cedric, who lives in poverty with his widowed mother in New York. It’s revealed that he is Lord Fauntleroy, heir to the Earl of Dorincourt. Alison Lurie, in Don’t Tell the Grown-Ups: Subversive Children’s Literature, wrote that it’s a “version of the almost universal childhood fantasy that one doesn’t really belong in this dreary little house or flat with these boring, ordinary people — that one’s real parents are important and exciting and live in a great mansion, if not a castle.”

Burnett based the character of Cedric on her younger son, Vivian. Writes Lurie, “Cedric himself is by no means the prig and sissy he is assumed to be by people who haven’t read the book. Part of the prejudice against him is probably due to the Little Lord Fauntleroy costume, which so many unhappy English and American boys were forced into at the end of the last century …”

 

A rich woman with spendthrift ways

Even before Little Lord Fauntleroy, Burnett’s stories and now-forgotten novels had made her wealthy. In the eearly 1880s, she and her then-husband and sons lived in Washington, D.C., very near their friend President James Garfield. By the 1890s, she had also bought a home in England.

She was a spendthrift, but also quite generous, using the royalties from her books to buy and rent houses for relatives, and showering gifts on all that she knew. She also indulged in expensive art and clothing, earning the nickname “Fluffy” for her frivolous ways.

Like L.M. Montgomery, who came a generation after her and also grappled with depression and legal troubles, Burnett wished above all to spread joy to readers as well as the people in her life. “There ought to be a tremendous lot of natural splendid happiness in the life of every human being,” she wrote.

Loss of a son and other troubles

Both of Burnett’s marriages ended bitterly, even scandalously, and since she was a famous author, the bad publicity that resulted caused inordinate stress.  But she was a devoted mother, and quite enjoyed her sons, Lionel and Vivian.

When Lionel, the older of the two boys, contracted tuberculosis, she bought him costly toys, and did everything possible to keep his spirits up — including hiding from him the fact that he was seriously ill, and taking him from one European sanitorium to another. His death in 1890 at age 16 plunged her into depression, something she had experienced before and would grapple with for the rest of her life.

Death and legacy

Lionel’s death, her marital woes, and depression created a gap in what had been quite a prolific career. By the early 1900s, Burnett’s work had fallen out of favor, as the florid writing style of the 19th century was no longer in vogue. Fortunately, Burnett recovered her spirits to create her most enduring works, A Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1911) later in her life and career.

Frances Hodgson Burnett died at the age of 74 in Nassau County, Long Island, NY, in 1924, and is buried in Roslyn Cemetery.

You might also like: Quotes from A Little Princess

More about Frances Hodgson Burnett on this site

Illustrations from Sara Crewe (1888)
Quotes from A Secret Garden
Quotes from A Little Princess

Major Works

Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote more than 50 novels, but these are the ones that have endured:

Little Lord Fauntleroy   (1886)
Sara Crewe, or What Happened at Miss Minchin’s (1888)
A Little Princess  (1905)
The Secret Garden  (1911)
The Lost Prince  (1915)

Biographies about Frances Hodgson Burnett

Waiting for the Party: The Life of Frances Hodgson Burnett by Ann Thwaite
Frances Hodgson Burnett: Beyond the Secret Garden

by Angelica Shirley Carpenter & Jean Shirley  

More Information

Wikipedia
Reader discussion of her books on Goodreads
 
Carson-Newman College – Letters of Frances Hodgson Burnett
Frances Hodgson Burnett, Legend of Children’s Literature

Film adaptations of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s works

The Secret Garden (1949)
The Secret Garden (1975)
The Secret Garden  (1993)
A Little Princess  (1939)
A Little Princess  (1997)
Little Lord Fauntleroy  (1936)
Little Lord Fauntleroy (1995)

Read and listen online

Project Gutenberg
Audio versions on Librivox

Visit

The Official Website of Central Park – Burnett Fountain – New York, NY 

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My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin (1901)

My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin (1901) was this author’s first novel. Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin went on to become one of the most prominent of Australian authors of her era. She wrote this novel when she was a teenager, and it was published in her twenty-first year.

It’s the story of tomboyish Sybylla Melvyn, a high-strung, imaginative girl from the Australian countryside. When her parents fall on hard times, they send her to live with her grandmother in another part of the country. There she meets Harold Beecham. Convinced that she’s ugly and useless, Sybilla is surprised when the wealthy young man proposes marriage. Sybilla is then farmed out to be a domestic servant for a family to whom her father owes money. Despondent, she has a breakdown and returns to her parents’ home.

Beacham tracks her down and reiterates his proposal. Sybilla, determined to become a writer, once again refuses him and vows never to marry. Will she ever achieve the “brilliant career” that she aspires to? Readers are left to ponder the possibility for themselves, for the story is open-ended.

This description is from the St. Martin’s Press edition of My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin: Originally published in 1901, My Brilliant Career was written when Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin was only sixteen years old. But Miles Franklin was decades ahead of her time, and this book was written for an audience not yet born.

For the character of Sybilla Melvyn, Miles Franklin created someone who voices with incredible charm but deadly accuracy the fears, conflicts, and torments of every young woman coming of age in a man’s world. Red-haired, impetuous, sharp-tongued, Sybilla has ambitions that reach far beyond here small-town life in the Australian outback.

My Brilliant Career (1979 Film) based on the novel

Passionate in her attachments to a world of music and books — a world previously known only in imagination — Sybilla suddenly finds herself in her grandmother’s genteel home, Caddagat. And there, amid often dreamed-of pleasures, she’s meets Harold Beecham, the only man who could ever tempt her with marriage.

Sybilla is a young woman who “being so very plain” knows that she is “not a valuable article in the marriage market,” but “despises the slavery which respectable marriage will bring.” She will never “perpetrate matrimony,” will never be a “participant in that “degradation” — this is astounding stuff from a sixteen-year-old in the outback in 1895.

My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin on Amazon

And yet Sybilla knows the value of love between a man and a woman: “our greatest treasure is a knowledge that there is in creation an individual to whom our existence is necessary — someone who is part of our life as we are part of theirs, someone in whose life we feel assured our death would leave a gap for a day or two. And who can this be but a husband or wife?”

Miles Franklin absorbed and shared the intense nationalism and socialism of her male contemporary mentors, but she revolted then and forever against the role of women in their scheme of things, agains the “dullness and tame hennishness” of their lives. My Brilliant Career presents one of the most encouraging heroines in fiction, because Sybilla knows what her problems are. One can hardly restrain oneself from leaping back in time to tell Miles Franklin, “Sybilla is me.”

More about My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin

Wikipedia
Reader discussion on Goodreads
1979 film version of My Brilliant Career
Review in The Guardian

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Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter (July 28, 1866 – December 22, 1943) was a British author and illustrator of beloved children’s books. Her inspiration came from the nature and animals that surrounded her as a child and sprouted an imagination that would delight the world forever.

Beatrix was the daughter of a stuffy, wealthy, conservative couple who cared only about appearance and social status. They cared little for their daughter, and yet, constricted her activities as much as possible so that she had little contact with the world outside their South Kensington mansion and grounds. She wasn’t even allowed to school, nor have any friends her own age. For much of her childhood, her only friend and companion was her brother, Bertram, who was six years younger than she. 

An early fascination with the natural world

And so, even though this childhood of isolation and being raised by strict nurses and governesses couldn’t have been easy, Beatrix’s loneliness fueled her fascination with the natural world and animals.

Family holidays in Scotland and the English Lake District allowed Beatrix and her brother plenty of outdoor discovery time, which they did with gusto. As Alison Lurie described it in Don’t Tell the Grownups: Subversive Children’s Literature:

“The children could explore the surrounding gardens and woods and fields and streams, the village lanes and farmyards, without interference … Everything about the countryside fascinated the Potter children. They collected plants, birds’ eggs, and insects; they made pets of mice, rabbits, an owl, and a hedgehog. Both Beatrix and Bertram were naturally  gifted artists, and they filled sketchbooks with drawings of whatever they saw.

Beatrix’s watercolors of caterpillars and flowers, made at age eight and nine … show the same charm, delicacy, and accuracy of observation that were to characterize her published books. She also had a gift for fantasy and soon began making up stories set in the local landscape.”

Bertram grew up and unlike his sister, went to school, leaving her ever more isolated. To her parents’ disappointment, she grew in to a plain, shy, and awkward young woman. She sat alone in corners when compelled to go to high society parties, preferring to attend the Natural History Museum to spend time drawing what she saw there — fossils, bugs, and taxidermied animals.

“I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor the result,” she wrote in her journal, “and when I have a bad time come over me, it is a stronger desire than ever.”

At loose ends at age 30

All the self-training and evident skill Beatrix exhibited didn’t help her one she entered adulthood. Her botanical drawings; her discovery of unfamiliar species of fungi; and even a scientific paper she researched and wrote were spurned by the all-male bastion of the botanical community.

And so, Beatrix found herself, at age 30, still unmarried, still under her parents’ stifling rules, plain, dowdy, and with few prospects. “It is not surprising,” writes Lurie, “that during this period of her life she was often ill, suffering from faintness, rheumatic pains, and recurring depression and fatigue.”

To console herself, she continued to do animal drawings, especially of mice and rabbits, and incorporated them into letters she sent to children of her acquaintances.

The birth of Peter Rabbit

The young recipients of her letters were so delighted with her drawings that she began thinking of getting a book published. She returned to a tale she had created in 1893 for the son of her former governess, The Tale of Peter Rabbit. The simple story tells of a mischievous rabbit who becomes the bane of Mr. McGregor and his garden. In 1900, she sent it out to six publishers, all of whom rejected it.

The following year, Beatrix published  it herself, ordering 250 copies, which sold out quickly. Finally, in 1902, Frederick Warne & Company published it, and the rest truly publishing history: Peter Rabbit was an instant success, reprinted endlessly, translated into 36 languages, with tens of million copies sold ever since. It’s still one of the best-selling books ever.

A savvy businesswoman

There were a few touches the author insisted on that made her little book rather revolutionary for its time: She insisted that it be a small book, sized perfectly for tiny hands. Many of that era’s books for children were enormous, heavy, ponderous affairs. Next, she wanted to keep the price low, just a shilling, so it would be affordable.

Beatrix was savvy enough to be one of the first authors to merchandise a character. It the year or so after the book was commercially published she patented a Peter Rabbit doll in 1903 and created a Peter Rabbit board game. Following in years to come were toys, dishes, and clothing. Once technology advanced, after the author’s death, there were film and television adaptations as well.

Influenced by fairy tales, fantasy, and religious imagery, Beatrix also illustrated other writers’ work, and as illustrations for Christmas cards. Her illustrations and stories of whimsical animal characters are still a favorite today and can be found in the children’s section of any bookstore or library.

A little bit subversive

The  Tale of Peter Rabbit, like the Potter books that came after, were exquisitely illustrated. Yes, the animals wore clothes and were slightly anthopomorphized, but they were filled with delicately rendered backgrounds of the natural world. Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter lived in the roots of a tree with their mother, who warned them not to go to Mr. McGregor’s garden, because “Your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.” Yikes, how’s that for a dose of reality for young children?

But of course, Peter doesn’t listen. He ventures into the garden and feasts on lettuces, French beans, and radishes. Mr. McGregor makes him a target. Even though Peter’s good siblings get bread and blackberries and milk for supper, he has learned that a little naughtiness (through exploration of the world) can be good for the spirit. That seems to be the underlying message in many of the Beatrix Potter books.

Including Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter produced 24 books for young children. All exhibit the lovingly detailed illustrations, slightly naughty characters, and attention to the natural world that made Peter Rabbit such a phenomenon. Tom Kitten, Squirrel Nutkin, Benjamin Bunny, and Little Pig Robinson and many other beloved characters have starred in the little books that have been beloved by children for generations.

An independent (married) woman

Having become famous and wealthy already after her first few books, her editor fell in love with her. Norman Warne, a parter in the Frederick Warne company, proposed to her and she accepted. Her ever-aggravating parents objected, because the  gentle Mr. Warne wasn’t “gentleman” enough for them, because he was in “the trades.” She was learning to ignore them.Tragically, Norman Warne died of leukemia before the two were married.

Beatrix was devastated, but the experience helped her to finally stand up to her parents and their irrational whims. She bought her own farm in England’s Lake District with her royalties. She spent an increasing amount at Hill Top farm, and continued to buy land.

In 1913, she married William Heelis, a local lawyer. Her parents once again objected, of course, but she was finally free of them, and moved to the farm full-time.

Beatrix Potter’s books on Amazon

A shift to farming and preservation

The last 30 years of her life were mainly devoted to her farm life. She gardened, raised sheep, and became an avid preservationist. To preserve the beautiful lands of England’s Lake Country, she sought to bring as much of it as possible to the care and ownership of the National Trust. And she left her own property to the National Trust as well. It was transferred after the death of her husband in 1945; Beatrix died in 1943 at the age of 77.

Today, Hill Top is open to visitors who can experience the magic of Beatrix Potter’s farm, gardens, and the surrounding countryside much as this beloved author left them.

Hill Top is one of several

women author’s homes you can visit in England

Major Works

Beatrix Potter wrote and illustrated 24 books for children. Here are just a few of the best known.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit
The Tale of Benjamin Bunny
The Tale of Little Pig Robinson
The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies
The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin
The Tale of Tom Kitten

Autobiographies and Biographies about Beatrix Potter  

Beatrix Potter: A Journal 
Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature by Linda Lear
At Home with Beatrix Potter: The Creator of Peter Rabbit by Susan Denyer
Beatrix Potter: Artist, Storyteller and Countrywoman by Judy Taylor

More Information

Wikipedia
The Tales of Peter Rabbit
Beatrix Potter Society
About Beatrix Potter on Peterrabit.com
Beatrix Potter page on Amazon

Articles & News

The Rabbit That Inspired Beatrix Potter
Between the Rows: A Gardening Life
How Beatrix Potter Self-Published Peter Rabbit
Beatrix Potter’s Tales Get a Modern Twist
Lessons Beatrix Potter Taught Me
Your Handwriting Fascinates Me and Your Praise Charms Me
Lit Loves: The Truly Fascinating Beatrix Potter
15 Things You May Not Know About Beatrix Potter
The Bittersweet Announcement of a New Beatrix Potter Book (2016)
Trailer of Peter Rabbit film (2018)

Visit

The Hill Top  – Sawrey, Ambleside, UK
The World of Beatrix Potter Attraction – Bowness-on-Windermere, UK

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Without the Veil Between — Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit by DM Denton

An introduction to and excerpt from Without the Veil Between: Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit — a novel by DM Denton

When I set out, well over two years ago, to write a fiction about Anne Brontë, youngest sister of Charlotte and Emily, I doubted I would find enough material to produce something longer than a novella. Before the first part was finished, I was convinced there was more than enough for a novel.

My objective didn’t change as pages filled and multiplied. I wanted to present Anne as a vital person and writer in her own right, as crucial to the Brontë story and literary legacy as her more famous and — in her brother Branwell’s case — infamous siblings were. As anyone who ventures off the Brontë beaten path might, I soon realized Anne had a very independent, intelligent, inspiring story to explore, take to my heart and soul, and tell.

Without the Veil Between follows Anne through the last seven years of her life. It begins in 1842 while she is still governess for the Robinson family of Thorpe Green, away from Haworth and her family most of the time, with opportunities to travel to York and Scarborough, places she develops deep affection for. Although, as with her siblings, circumstances eventually bring her back home, she is not deterred in her quest for individual purpose and integrity. She stands as firm in her ambitions as Charlotte does and is a powerful conciliator in light of Emily’s resistance to the publication of their poetry and novels.

Illustration by DM Denton from Without the Veil Between

Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit — available on Amazon

Excerpt from Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit Published by All Things That Matter Press Copyright 2017 by DM Denton

Haworth, April 1848

“I have to tell you,” Charlotte interrupted her reading and Anne’s. “I don’t like this one as much as Agnes Grey.”

Anne waited for Emily to differ, but her sister didn’t react as she squatted in front of the hearth to poke at its failing fire.

“Not only has it been such trouble for you to write, when published it will bring you more. It will lay you bare.”

“Then what difference could Smith and Elder make to it?”

“They might—I know you don’t want to hear it—suggest how to smooth it over … tone it down … make it more palatable … more—”

“Entertaining?” Anne wasn’t asking for a reply.

“At least recognize Newby is a shuffling scamp.”

“She does,” Emily admitted listening, “but not without giving him a chance of redemption.”

After months of being upset by Newby’s negligence, Anne could finally smile a little at all  the red marks in her personal copy of Agnes Grey. She told herself the best remedy was to move on with a polite yet unyielding expectation of a better result next time. Charlotte continued to argue that Newby had proved himself unreliable and without conscience, and since the success of Jane Eyre had stimulated Smith and Elder’s interest in future writings of its author’s “brothers,” the choice Anne should make was obvious.

Why didn’t Anne agree? The long delay in the release of her and Emily’s novels had been exasperating. Then Newby rushed them into print and, although Anne carefully labored over final corrections, overdue Agnes was born with defects that couldn’t be hidden. The results of Emily’s expectancy weren’t much better. Messrs. Smith and Elder had managed Jane Eyre’s entrance into the world as promised, with little inconvenience to Charlotte, no noticeable pain, and as near-perfect an offspring of her literary efforts as could be expected.

The case for Smith and Elders was persuasively made. Yet Anne knew all along she would persist with Newby to obviously resist Charlotte’s influence. She anticipated her oldest sister harassing her up to and beyond the day she sent The Tenant of Wildfell Hall off to 72 Mortimer Street, London.

The Brontë sisters painted by their brother, Branwell

Emily, Anne, and Charlotte

“I worry about both of you. Em, you haven’t said a word about the response to Wuthering Heights and hardly more about your next one, which doesn’t seem to be progressing at all.”

“I never wanted to publish and will not again.”

“You knew Wuthering was a strange book, but ‘not without evidence of considerable power,’ as one reviewer put it. And another,” Charlotte continued from memory, “‘Impossible to begin and not finish; quite impossible to lay aside afterwards and say nothing about it.’”

“Unlike Agnes Grey.”

“So, Anne, is the coarseness of Tenant your response to the lack of attention gentle Agnes received?”

“It was conceived before I knew Agnes would be received or how.”

“I don’t criticize your effort. But your subject choice is a mistake. You’re too driven by this need to torture yourself, like some kind of penance.”

“I’ve witnessed the degradation human behavior can fall to.”

“Oh, Annie.” Emily was barely audible. “If only you had stayed safely here.”

Anne didn’t need Emily’s prompting to wonder. What if she hadn’t lost her innocence to the torments of Blake Hall and deceptions of Thorpe Green? What if Gondal fantasies and a little of her girlhood at school were the extent of her worldly adventures? What if her conscience had confined itself to home and church responsibilities, visits to the poor and sick with practical and prayerful offerings the extent of her reaching out beyond the protection of family? Why would she write novels if only age, love, and death changed her? Poetry would be enough, a more natural and satisfying means of expression. It suited her pensiveness and piety, could be composed in isolated moments and reflect without analyzing. Poetry was a solitary art; even when read by others, its author could go unnoticed. It was perfect for disappearing into.

Novels wouldn’t leave their authors alone. They needed much attention and were complicated things, requiring names and places, themes and tensions, plotting and resolving and so much in between it was difficult to keep track of where they were going. They were crowded with words and at the mercy of grammar, hard to give up on when months, even years, had been lost to them. Long works of fiction were hard to persevere with, no guarantee anyone would ever read them, or, if they did, with interest and forgiveness.

However, Anne had found a stronger part of herself through their invention. If nothing else, she had achieved independence—cautiously in the first, and, according to Charlotte, irresponsibly in the second—from the Anne Brontë created by circumstance, inhibition, and expectation.

Contributed by DM (Diane) Denton, a native of Western New York, a writer and artist inspired by music, nature, and the contradictions of the human and creative spirit. Her historical fiction A House Near Luccoli, which is set in 17th century Genoa and imagines an intimacy with the charismatic composer Alessandro Stradella, and its sequel To A Strange Somewhere Fled, which takes place in late Restoration England, were published by All Things That Matter Press, as were her Kindle short stories, The Snow White Gift and The Library Next Door. Diane has done the artwork for both her novels’ book covers, and published an illustrated poetry flower journal, A Friendship with Flowers. Visit her on the web at at DM Denton Author & Artist and  BardessMDenton.

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Jane Eyre — 1943 film based on the novel by Charlotte Brontë

How can Charlotte Brontë’s masterwork, be crammed into a time frame of just over an hour and a half? This feat of compression was accomplished by Hollywood for the 1943 film version of Jane Eyre. To clear up any confusion, the film was released at the end of 1943 in Britain, and had its American release of February, 1944.

Nearly a quarter of the film covers young Jane’s torturous experience at the Lowood School, based on the actual place that Charlotte and her sisters attended in Yorkshire. The experience proved fatal for one of the Brontë sisters, Maria, who became gravely ill and died. That was likely the inspiration, if one can call it that, for the character of Helen Burns, one of Jane’s fellow students who becomes a dear friend. Helen is played by a young and lovely Elizabeth Taylor. She’s uncredited in the cast, but her breakthrough role would come soon after as the star of National Velvet (1944).

Peggy Ann Garner as young Jane Eyre

and Elizabeth Taylor as Helen Burns

A gothic mood

The film is dark and moody, even gloomy, with black clouds always swirling, in keeping with the gothic mood of the story. Even interiors are dark and dreary. There are the attendant bursts of overly dramatic background music typical of that era’s films. The casting is great, with Joan Fontaine as Jane Eyre — a character likely very much based on Charlotte Brontë herself — and Orson Welles as the peculiar, brooding, yet ultimately redeemable Mr. Rochester.

The best part of the film is seeing actual passages from the book appear on the screen, such as this one:

“What sort of man was this master of Thornfield — so proud, sardonic, and harsh? Instinctively I felt that his malignant mood had its source in some cruel cross of fate. I was to learn that this was indeed true, and that beneath the harsh mask he assumed lay a tortured soul, fine, gentle, and kindly.”

Yes, gentle and kindly — this she writes before finding out that the man she has fallen in love with has stashed his mentally ill wife in the attic — Bertha Antoinetta Mason is the proverbial madwoman in the attic.

Rushed pacing

There’s Bertha’s first attempt to set the castle ablaze, Edward Rochester’s declaration of love to Jane after spurning a glamorous, gold-digger, and his confession the alter that he already has a wife, after a last-minute “I object!” His plea to Jane to live with him as his wife, her refusal, her departure.

The rest of the movie speeds through the original plot, all but eliminating Jane’s quest to become her own person in the world before considering a return to Thornfield. After all, there are but twenty minutes or so left of the film. For those who don’t know the story, we’ll stop short of giving away spoilers.

Not the best version, but you can watch for free

There are those who love this film, as evidenced by the comments on YouTube, where you can watch this film version of Jane Eyre in its entirety for free. It’s not terrible, but as an adaptation, it doesn’t live up to 1940’s Rebecca nor 1939’s Wuthering Heights, in this genre of moody gothics. It also didn’t receive the kind of accolades or award nominations of these related films.

There are later film adaptations of Jane Eyre that are an improvement over this one , but better yet, read the book or listen to an unabridged version on audio.

More about Jane Eyre — 1943 film

Wikipedia
Jane Eyre on IMDB
Review on Classic Film Freak
Jane Eyre Spotlights Orson Welles’ Perfect Romantic Antihero

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Rebecca — 1940 Movie Based on the Novel by Daphne du Maurier

The 1940 movie version of Rebecca, based on Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel of the same name, was a psychological thriller with nod to the gothic tradition. The black-and-white film, which captured the moody, mysterious feel of the book, was the first American film by director Alfred Hitchcock. Joan Fontaine starred in the role of the naïve young woman who marries a brooding widower Maxim de Winter, portrayed by Laurence Olivier.

Rebecca, the departed first wife of de Winter, is never seen in the film, but casts a powerful shadow over the inhabitants of Manderlay castle. The suspense builds until we learn just why that is. The film was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, and won two, for Best Picture and for Cinematography.

Though it didn’t make an enormous amount of money at the box office, it was exceedingly well-received by critics. Hundreds of reviewers named it the best film of 1940. Even among more contemporary critics, Rebecca has a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Here’s a 1940 review from The Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

From the March, 1940 review of the film version of Rebecca by Herb Cohn in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle: The vengeful ghost of the first Mrs. de Winter has found an ally in Alfred Hitchcock. Rebecca never emulates the ghosts of Marley or Hamlet’s father by becoming visible — she warps the lives of her widowed husband and his innocent young bride with a devilish delight that is as compelling as make-believe can be.

She is an unseen demon who owes her unholy power more to a wizard of the camera than to the vivid imagination of a talented author. The ghost of Rebecca might well be a revelation to Daphne du Maurier herself. She will stand as one of the haunting creations of Hitchcock. For Rebecca is unquestionably the most remarkable film that the British directer has turn out thus far.

But if the conception of the ghost of Manderley Castle is to the credit of Miss du Maurier’s 1938 novel, and the dramatic evaluation of her influence is to the credit of Hitchcock, the expression of that invisible phantom is the triumph of the superb cast that David O. Selznick has assembled. The film tells the grim and yet tender story of Maxim de Winter and the childish bride he brought from Monte Carlo to the sea-battered coast of Cornwall. There, tragedy had blighted his life as the master of Manderley.

Based on the book: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

For it is through Maxim and the nameless girl he made the second Mrs. de Winter, through Ben, the half-witted handyman, and Mrs. Danvers, the sinister housekeeper who cherished Rebecca in death as in life, that the eerie tone of the du Maurier story is set. Through them Rebecca exerts her mastery of the house.

Joan Fontaine brings a stunning modulation of emotions to the second Mrs. de Winter, a naive but sincere young woman who comes to her husband’s Cornish estate to find that her predecessor, drowned a year before when her skiff was lost off-shore. She is still the castle’s mistress by remote control, every object in its somber halls bearing memories of her stewardship, every servant in the household cleaving to the routine she established.

Rebecca – 1940 movie DVD on Amazon

The shadow of the departed Rebecca comes between her and her husband the moment they lea their Continental honeymoon behind then and drive up the winding road to the steps of Manderley.

Laurence Olivier, fortified by his playing of Heathcliff in 1939’s Wuthering Heights, excels in the role of Maxim de Winter, the stoic man of the world who is struggling under some secret burden. Olivier plays him with determined restraint, preserving the Hitchcock air of mystery throughout, yet making him a pleasant figure with a gracious charm.

Judith Anderson portrays Mrs. Danvers, the mystifying housekeeper who constantly taunts her new mistress with abnormally fond memories of the beauty, the breeding, and the brilliance of Rebecca de Winter.

Rebecca is an example of the quality that comes from carefully polished production, with script writers, director, and actors working in unity. It is an overwhelming human drama, psychologically complex, marvelously exhausting, and cinematically unorthodox. Above all, it’s a brilliant display of storytelling, one that does justice to Daphne du Maurier’s original vision.

More about Rebecca — 1940 film

Wikipedia
Rebecca on Filmsite.org
Rebecca full movie on YouTube
Rebecca on Rotten Tomatoes
An Analysis of Alfred Hitchcock’s Thriller, Rebecca

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