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A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf – Revealing the Surprising, Scandalous Collaborations of Female Writers
Male literary friendships are the stuff of legend; think Byron and Shelley, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. But the world's best-loved female authors are usually mythologized as solitary eccentrics or isolated geniuses. Coauthors and real-life friends Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney prove this wrong, thanks to their discovery of a wealth of surprising collaborations: the friendship between Jane Austen and one of the family servants, playwright Anne Sharp; the daring feminist author Mary Taylor, who shaped the work of Charlotte Bronte; the transatlantic friendship of the seemingly aloof George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe; and Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, most often portrayed as bitter foes, but who, in fact, enjoyed a complex friendship fired by an underlying erotic charge.
Through letters and diaries that have never been published before, A Secret Sisterhood resurrects these forgotten stories of female friendships. They were sometimes scandalous and volatile, sometimes supportive and inspiring, but always--until now--tantalizingly consigned to the shadows.
Through letters and diaries that have never been published before, A Secret Sisterhood resurrects these forgotten stories of female friendships. They were sometimes scandalous and volatile, sometimes supportive and inspiring, but always--until now--tantalizingly consigned to the shadows.
368 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2017
173 people are currently reading
5219 people want to read
About the author
Emily Midorikawa
3 books39 followersEmily Midorikawa is the author Out of the Shadows: Six Visionary Victorian Women in Search of a Public Voice, which tells the stories of six enterprising women of the nineteenth century, whose apparent abilities to contact the dead brought them astonishing levels of fame, fortune and social influence. She is also the coauthor of A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontё, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf, co-written with Emma Claire Sweeney and with a foreword by Margaret Atwood. (The UK title is A Secret Sisterhood: The Hidden Friendships of Austen, Brontё, Eliot and Woolf.)
Emily is a winner of the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. Her journalism has been published in the Paris Review, TIME, The Times (of London), the Washington Post, and others.
https://emilymidorikawa.com/
https://twitter.com/emilymidorikawa?l...
https://www.instagram.com/midorikawae...
Emily is a winner of the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. Her journalism has been published in the Paris Review, TIME, The Times (of London), the Washington Post, and others.
https://emilymidorikawa.com/
https://twitter.com/emilymidorikawa?l...
https://www.instagram.com/midorikawae...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 255 reviews
June 15, 2017
Comprising brief dual-biographies of 8 women, the premise of this book is that female literary friendships have been written out, submerged or forgotten from the lives of four women authors: Austen, Eliot, Charlotte Bronte and Woolf.
Reading the book, I'm not especially convinced by this argument: the relationship between Bronte and Mary Taylor is well covered in the standard biographies, as is the sometimes conflicted relationship between Woolf and Katherine Mansfield and, indeed, other Bloomsbury women. While I didn't know about the connections between Eliot and Harriet Beecher-Stowe, or the friendship between Austen and Anne Sharp, the governess of her niece, Fanny, I'm not sure that knowing that they were friends changes anything. Of course women have friends, whether they're writers or not and, while it's true that there is some continued mythologising about masculine literary friendships (Byron and Shelley, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Fitzgerald and Hemingway), it tends to be because of the literary connections being made in their writing, not just the fact that they are friends. The only possible literary cross-fertilisation here is that between Woolf and Mansfield, already part of literary history via the interconnections of the Bloomsbury Group.
Having said that, this is a lively and well-researched read that offers up compact 'friendship' biographies in just 3 chapters each. I, however, expected something more than the mere fact of these friendships to be the subject of the book: a more probing interrogation of the impact of these friendships and their effect on the writings of these women. To be fair, this isn't claiming to be an academic book or to be making intellectual interventions in the histories of gender and writing. So an interesting read but also a bit of a wasted opportunity that might have done something more radical with the material.
Thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley
Reading the book, I'm not especially convinced by this argument: the relationship between Bronte and Mary Taylor is well covered in the standard biographies, as is the sometimes conflicted relationship between Woolf and Katherine Mansfield and, indeed, other Bloomsbury women. While I didn't know about the connections between Eliot and Harriet Beecher-Stowe, or the friendship between Austen and Anne Sharp, the governess of her niece, Fanny, I'm not sure that knowing that they were friends changes anything. Of course women have friends, whether they're writers or not and, while it's true that there is some continued mythologising about masculine literary friendships (Byron and Shelley, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Fitzgerald and Hemingway), it tends to be because of the literary connections being made in their writing, not just the fact that they are friends. The only possible literary cross-fertilisation here is that between Woolf and Mansfield, already part of literary history via the interconnections of the Bloomsbury Group.
Having said that, this is a lively and well-researched read that offers up compact 'friendship' biographies in just 3 chapters each. I, however, expected something more than the mere fact of these friendships to be the subject of the book: a more probing interrogation of the impact of these friendships and their effect on the writings of these women. To be fair, this isn't claiming to be an academic book or to be making intellectual interventions in the histories of gender and writing. So an interesting read but also a bit of a wasted opportunity that might have done something more radical with the material.
Thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley
September 1, 2022
A really interesting non-fiction book - I'd certainly recommend it.
April 4, 2018
This is an interesting joint literary biography of four famous authors: Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf, which looks at particular, literary friendships they had with other women. I am not that convinced by some of the literary friendships chosen for each of the authors, but then I have read individual biographies of all but George Eliot. Still, even if it is difficult to pick a ‘closest,’ literary confidante, this book certainly does highlight the importance of female friendship; their encouragement, criticism and, in some cases, competition.
It is interesting that two of the pairs featured were both successful authors (Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, as well as George Eliot and Harriet Beecher-Stowe). Indeed, Charlotte Bronte, and her chosen friend, Mary Taylor were also both published – Taylor eventually producing, “Miss Miles,” a book still in print today. However, Jane Austen wrote many letters to Anne Sharp, the governess of her niece. Anne Sharp was, to me, perhaps the most interesting, as she is a silence, female voice. A woman who, due to circumstances, had to take paid work as a governess and a companion; who enjoyed writing theatricals for her charges, but never had the leisure or opportunity to become a published author. As such, it is cheering to see how much pleasure Jane’s publication afforded her.
If you have not read biographies of any of these featured authors, this book does a good job of giving a potted history of their life and work. Their letters, and relationships, with their literary confidantes, help to highlight their various challenges, indecisions, literary jealousy, personal concerns and competitive feelings. Not all of these relationships are easy ones – there are often arguments, misunderstandings and problems. Charlotte Bronte was criticised by former school friend, Mary Taylor, for not tackling political and social issues. Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield were both close confidantes and yet found their relationship difficult at times. For George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe; these two most successful female authors of their time, were able to write openly, as they were on opposite sides of the world and so Harriet could ignore her fellow authors unmarried state, which made her socially so unacceptable in literary London.
These literary connections, these reliance and friendships, literary debts and support, are interesting to read about. Overall, this is a testament to female friendship and to the network of support that women’s friendship, so often disregarded and overlooked, gave to these great, female authors.
It is interesting that two of the pairs featured were both successful authors (Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, as well as George Eliot and Harriet Beecher-Stowe). Indeed, Charlotte Bronte, and her chosen friend, Mary Taylor were also both published – Taylor eventually producing, “Miss Miles,” a book still in print today. However, Jane Austen wrote many letters to Anne Sharp, the governess of her niece. Anne Sharp was, to me, perhaps the most interesting, as she is a silence, female voice. A woman who, due to circumstances, had to take paid work as a governess and a companion; who enjoyed writing theatricals for her charges, but never had the leisure or opportunity to become a published author. As such, it is cheering to see how much pleasure Jane’s publication afforded her.
If you have not read biographies of any of these featured authors, this book does a good job of giving a potted history of their life and work. Their letters, and relationships, with their literary confidantes, help to highlight their various challenges, indecisions, literary jealousy, personal concerns and competitive feelings. Not all of these relationships are easy ones – there are often arguments, misunderstandings and problems. Charlotte Bronte was criticised by former school friend, Mary Taylor, for not tackling political and social issues. Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield were both close confidantes and yet found their relationship difficult at times. For George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe; these two most successful female authors of their time, were able to write openly, as they were on opposite sides of the world and so Harriet could ignore her fellow authors unmarried state, which made her socially so unacceptable in literary London.
These literary connections, these reliance and friendships, literary debts and support, are interesting to read about. Overall, this is a testament to female friendship and to the network of support that women’s friendship, so often disregarded and overlooked, gave to these great, female authors.
April 27, 2025
“The world’s most celebrated female authors are mythologised as solitary eccentrics or isolated geniuses. The Jane Austen of popular imagination is a genteel spinster, modestly covering her manuscript with blotting paper when anyone enters the room. Charlotte Bronte is cast as one of three long-suffering sisters, scribbling away in a draughty parsonage on the edge of the windswept moors. George Eliot is remembered as an aloof intellectual, who shunned conventional Victorian ladies. And Virginia Woolf haunts the collective memory as a depressive, loading her pockets with stones before stepping into then River Ouse.”
This is an account of four female literary friendships. The first is Jane Austen and Anne Sharpe. Anne was a governess for the Austen family and a sort of servant, she also had literary ambitions and there was a friendship and correspondence between her and Austen. Unfortunately much of their correspondence has not survived, so there is a fair amount of speculation in this section.
The second friendship was between Charlotte Bronte and Mary Taylor. They were friends throughout their adult lives. What was interesting was that Taylor felt able to be critical of Bronte’s work, saying she found it too conventional and not feminist enough. That made me want to look out for Taylor’s novel, which is more radical than Bronte’s were (more for the tbr list).
The third is a transatlantic friendship between George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe, a connection I wasn’t aware of. It was entirely by letter, they never met. This was interesting and uncovered some aspects of both women’s careers that I wasn’t aware of.
The final friendship between Woolf and Katherine Mansfield is the one most is known about, although large parts of their correspondence has also been destroyed. Woolf and Mansfield are often presented as enemies, but the reality is much more complex and they both acknowledged the other’s genius. This account looks more closely at the nuances in their relationship.
This is an interesting account and there is no putting on pedestals, it’s pretty much a warts and all account. There is a good deal that is already known, but it is well-researched and if you are interested in this sort of thing then you may enjoy it.
“And so, misleading myths of isolation have long attached themselves to women who write: a cottage-dwelling spinster; an impassioned roamer of the moors; a fallen woman, shunned; a melancholic genius. Over the years, a conspiracy of silence has obscured the friendships of female authors, past and present. But now it is time to break the silence and celebrate this literary sisterhood—a glimmering web of interwoven threads that still has the power to unsettle, to challenge, to inspire.”
This is an account of four female literary friendships. The first is Jane Austen and Anne Sharpe. Anne was a governess for the Austen family and a sort of servant, she also had literary ambitions and there was a friendship and correspondence between her and Austen. Unfortunately much of their correspondence has not survived, so there is a fair amount of speculation in this section.
The second friendship was between Charlotte Bronte and Mary Taylor. They were friends throughout their adult lives. What was interesting was that Taylor felt able to be critical of Bronte’s work, saying she found it too conventional and not feminist enough. That made me want to look out for Taylor’s novel, which is more radical than Bronte’s were (more for the tbr list).
The third is a transatlantic friendship between George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe, a connection I wasn’t aware of. It was entirely by letter, they never met. This was interesting and uncovered some aspects of both women’s careers that I wasn’t aware of.
The final friendship between Woolf and Katherine Mansfield is the one most is known about, although large parts of their correspondence has also been destroyed. Woolf and Mansfield are often presented as enemies, but the reality is much more complex and they both acknowledged the other’s genius. This account looks more closely at the nuances in their relationship.
This is an interesting account and there is no putting on pedestals, it’s pretty much a warts and all account. There is a good deal that is already known, but it is well-researched and if you are interested in this sort of thing then you may enjoy it.
“And so, misleading myths of isolation have long attached themselves to women who write: a cottage-dwelling spinster; an impassioned roamer of the moors; a fallen woman, shunned; a melancholic genius. Over the years, a conspiracy of silence has obscured the friendships of female authors, past and present. But now it is time to break the silence and celebrate this literary sisterhood—a glimmering web of interwoven threads that still has the power to unsettle, to challenge, to inspire.”
September 13, 2017
I live for books such as these, books discussing how, why, and where excellent writers began and "A Secret Sisterhood" is one of the best I've come across. As you can see from the subtitle Midorikawa and Sweeney focus on Austen, Bronte, Eliot, and, Woolf. Eliot and Woolf have friends who were also well known writers Respectively Harriet Beecher Stowe and Katherine Mansfield. Because of the time periods involved and given that much, or all in Stowe and Eliot's case, these friendships often relied on the mails to encourage one another. Unfortunately a lot of their correspondence was purposely destroyed by the writers or their families.
Midorikawa and Sweeney were able to turn up some snippets of new original documents that shed light on these relationships. You can feel how desperate and also joyful they were to find a like minded person with similar problems of honing out time and place to write as well as someone to help hash out technical problems or to simply share the joys and sorrows of writing. Women are so often inaccurately portrayed as catty and/or competitive that it's nice to read about the devotion of these pairs. It's also difficult to have a sense of how isolated some of their lives were. This book was a joy to read.
Thank you to the publisher for providing an advance reading copy.
Midorikawa and Sweeney were able to turn up some snippets of new original documents that shed light on these relationships. You can feel how desperate and also joyful they were to find a like minded person with similar problems of honing out time and place to write as well as someone to help hash out technical problems or to simply share the joys and sorrows of writing. Women are so often inaccurately portrayed as catty and/or competitive that it's nice to read about the devotion of these pairs. It's also difficult to have a sense of how isolated some of their lives were. This book was a joy to read.
Thank you to the publisher for providing an advance reading copy.
September 28, 2017
Writers Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney were teaching in Japan when they met. They immediately connected and soon were regularly meeting and critiquing each other's writing.
As they collaborated on writing A Secret Sisterhood, they found happiness in spite of the stress. Their unfounded feared was that their 'bond between equals' would be threatened if one achieved success before the other.
When Margaret Atwood offered to write the forward for the book, it was proof that women writers do forge friendships of encouragement and support, in spite of historic stereotypes.
Jane Austen was mythologized into a happy spinster who hid her writing and relied only on her sister for support. Suppressed was her friendship with her rich brother's impoverished governess Anne Sharp, an amateur playwright.
Charlotte Bronte's friendship with boarding school friend Mary Taylor had its ups and downs, but it was Taylor who inspired Charlotte to travel abroad to continue her education. The intrepid Taylor became a feminist writer.
George Eliot, living 'in sin' with a married man, corresponded with clergyman's daughter and literary sensation Harriet Beecher Stowe. Over years, their closeness was stressed by life events, yet their regard for each other as artists prevailed.
Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield are remembered as rivals, their mutual regard and friendship overshadowed.
A Secret Sisterhood was an interesting book about the "rare sense of communion" between literary friends. One does not need to be well informed about the writers discussed for enough biographical information is included to understand the friendships in context of the authors' personal and professional lives.
I enjoyed the book and learned something about writers I am quite familiar with and a great deal about those I knew little.
I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
As they collaborated on writing A Secret Sisterhood, they found happiness in spite of the stress. Their unfounded feared was that their 'bond between equals' would be threatened if one achieved success before the other.
When Margaret Atwood offered to write the forward for the book, it was proof that women writers do forge friendships of encouragement and support, in spite of historic stereotypes.
Jane Austen was mythologized into a happy spinster who hid her writing and relied only on her sister for support. Suppressed was her friendship with her rich brother's impoverished governess Anne Sharp, an amateur playwright.
Charlotte Bronte's friendship with boarding school friend Mary Taylor had its ups and downs, but it was Taylor who inspired Charlotte to travel abroad to continue her education. The intrepid Taylor became a feminist writer.
George Eliot, living 'in sin' with a married man, corresponded with clergyman's daughter and literary sensation Harriet Beecher Stowe. Over years, their closeness was stressed by life events, yet their regard for each other as artists prevailed.
Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield are remembered as rivals, their mutual regard and friendship overshadowed.
A Secret Sisterhood was an interesting book about the "rare sense of communion" between literary friends. One does not need to be well informed about the writers discussed for enough biographical information is included to understand the friendships in context of the authors' personal and professional lives.
I enjoyed the book and learned something about writers I am quite familiar with and a great deal about those I knew little.
I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
May 21, 2018
I will admit that at first the tone of this book struck me as a little twee and overly whimsical. The authors likened their shared dreams of being writers to those of 19th century novelists and thus seemed to be projecting their emotions in a slightly discomforting manner. As I read on, though, I got used to this and unbent towards the book. ‘A Secret Sisterhood’ turned out to be a sensitively written, thoughtful, and moving account of four literary friendships. Each is constructed from surviving letters and journals, illuminating how women dealt with the constraints placed on their lives and artistic endeavours by society over the past two hundred years. The four friendships are presented in chronological order, which also happens to ascending order of available evidence. The letters between Jane Austen and Anne Sharpe haven’t survived, making this the most speculative section. By contrast, plenty of letters and journals survive to show the complexity of the bond between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the four friendships was the support and critique the women gave to each other’s literary ambitions. The authors repeatedly point out that collaborative literary friendships between men are often celebrated, while those between women tend to get forgotten. This book is an attempt to start redressing the balance. Once accustomed to its style, I found it enjoyable and informative.
April 11, 2019
This is a DNF for me, and yet I added the low star rating as a reminder for myself.
For those who have noticed the hypersexualization of our society combined with the tendency to rewrite history to reflect modern ideas (note they are neither ideals nor morals), this book is a good example of that 'intersectionality' of revisionism and over examination of past people for sexual details about their lives.
So when I started reading this, I found a lot of anger. It was as if Jane Austen and the rest had just been patriarchally oppressed last week and social justice warriors were on the march to protect these blossoming young and vulnerable artists. Except where they start conjecturing about their sex lives about seventy pages in. Because 1- personal details of the past must be mined and examined in acute detail so that 2- homosexual proclivities which obviously must exist everywhere must be found and propped up for public consumption. At the very least, we must force research to support any form of hypersexualized perspective that absolutely fails the actual depth of friendships and families. Because yeah, everybody has to be having some sort of sex as long as it is neither monogamous nor heterosexual and most definitely not within the understanding of Christian cultures.
I'm so tired of this.
These women authors of the past had serious problems in their societies they tried to work within. Sure, there was a certain kind of disrespect for women. It was pretty entrenched, and it caused them suffering. But we have newer versions of oppression these days where women and their choices are only as good as their left leaning. The right leaning woman, or the woman who doesn't lean far enough left, obviously deserve neither respect nor support. They face similar disrespect for their experience and insight that women writers of regency and Victorian times (and later) faced in their times. Yes, that includes physically, socially, and economically. As well as unconstitutionally- something the early British authors had far less recourse to for obvious reasons.
Ugh, I'm too high on my soap box. Getting off the main point.
So a foreword by Margaret Atwood first gave me pause for thought. Then the catty, emotionally loaded assumptions that were liberally sprinkled throughout the first section examining Jane Austen's friendships made me painfully aware that modern viewpoints were being harshly applied to the past cultures which have brought us so much. Then I decided to give it another try and started the section on Charlotte Bronte. Hoy! Girls sharing beds in boarding schools are obviously targets for modern assumptions that see homosexual behavior everywhere. Not because the viewer is Puritan, by no means. It is because they are libertines and insist that their viewpoint is the only right one. Sorta like Puritans, only horribly wrong in the opposite direction.
So, I shut the book. There really are far better history writings out there. Jenny Uglow is the author I heartily recommend. Her academic integrity and careful research stand the test of time. She examines all aspects of the lives of her subjects without inflicting them with modern revisionist tunnel vision. She has spoiled me in the same way that those who remain faithful to high standards learn to detect quickly when they are being exposed to strict, harsh, or flawed standards.
Honestly. Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, etc., had some real struggles and challenges in their lives. Their victory over the social parameters of their mortal lives has been the expanding appreciation for their work throughout the world. Celebrate!
And of course I never got to the section on Virginia Wolfe. I might have liked to. But I won't comment on the added layers there, having chosen to not finish the book.
I have lived more than half my life. I am becoming more aware of the limits of mortality. I will not waste my precious time on books I do not like. I will seek out the ones that uplift and feel fabulous. Let others appreciate these other works however they may.
For those who have noticed the hypersexualization of our society combined with the tendency to rewrite history to reflect modern ideas (note they are neither ideals nor morals), this book is a good example of that 'intersectionality' of revisionism and over examination of past people for sexual details about their lives.
So when I started reading this, I found a lot of anger. It was as if Jane Austen and the rest had just been patriarchally oppressed last week and social justice warriors were on the march to protect these blossoming young and vulnerable artists. Except where they start conjecturing about their sex lives about seventy pages in. Because 1- personal details of the past must be mined and examined in acute detail so that 2- homosexual proclivities which obviously must exist everywhere must be found and propped up for public consumption. At the very least, we must force research to support any form of hypersexualized perspective that absolutely fails the actual depth of friendships and families. Because yeah, everybody has to be having some sort of sex as long as it is neither monogamous nor heterosexual and most definitely not within the understanding of Christian cultures.
I'm so tired of this.
These women authors of the past had serious problems in their societies they tried to work within. Sure, there was a certain kind of disrespect for women. It was pretty entrenched, and it caused them suffering. But we have newer versions of oppression these days where women and their choices are only as good as their left leaning. The right leaning woman, or the woman who doesn't lean far enough left, obviously deserve neither respect nor support. They face similar disrespect for their experience and insight that women writers of regency and Victorian times (and later) faced in their times. Yes, that includes physically, socially, and economically. As well as unconstitutionally- something the early British authors had far less recourse to for obvious reasons.
Ugh, I'm too high on my soap box. Getting off the main point.
So a foreword by Margaret Atwood first gave me pause for thought. Then the catty, emotionally loaded assumptions that were liberally sprinkled throughout the first section examining Jane Austen's friendships made me painfully aware that modern viewpoints were being harshly applied to the past cultures which have brought us so much. Then I decided to give it another try and started the section on Charlotte Bronte. Hoy! Girls sharing beds in boarding schools are obviously targets for modern assumptions that see homosexual behavior everywhere. Not because the viewer is Puritan, by no means. It is because they are libertines and insist that their viewpoint is the only right one. Sorta like Puritans, only horribly wrong in the opposite direction.
So, I shut the book. There really are far better history writings out there. Jenny Uglow is the author I heartily recommend. Her academic integrity and careful research stand the test of time. She examines all aspects of the lives of her subjects without inflicting them with modern revisionist tunnel vision. She has spoiled me in the same way that those who remain faithful to high standards learn to detect quickly when they are being exposed to strict, harsh, or flawed standards.
Honestly. Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, etc., had some real struggles and challenges in their lives. Their victory over the social parameters of their mortal lives has been the expanding appreciation for their work throughout the world. Celebrate!
And of course I never got to the section on Virginia Wolfe. I might have liked to. But I won't comment on the added layers there, having chosen to not finish the book.
I have lived more than half my life. I am becoming more aware of the limits of mortality. I will not waste my precious time on books I do not like. I will seek out the ones that uplift and feel fabulous. Let others appreciate these other works however they may.
October 12, 2021
I feel a bit like a heel not loving this book because I love it in theory. It is a fun idea to explore some of the female, literary friendships of the female British lit canon. (In full disclosure, when I first saw the title, I thought it meant that Austen, Bronte, Eliot, and Woolf were all good friends, and that got me really excited until I remembered they didn't all live at the same time, so that kind of set an impossibly high bar. Can you imagine though???)
At any rate, this bio fell short for me for three reasons. First, it presumes a lot of emotions. For example, it describes the letter Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote George Eliot and spends a good chunk describing how she must have agonized over how to begin it. Which maybe Stowe did. Maybe she really stressed over whether to draft it to "Mrs." Lewes or overanalyzed whether to say "my dear friend" or just "dear friend." But do we know this? The confident, narrative style made the book readable, but also left me feeling seriously mistrustful.
Second, as other reviewers quite aptly point out, this book does not actually analyze how friendship benefited the writing of any of these authors, except maybe Woolf. Austen and Bronte and Eliot had female friends. And at least some of those friends also wrote. So, what? Did it encourage, inspire, challenge them? While we get lots of suppositions, it mostly falls flat on analysis, leaving me feeling like I got only half the story.
Which, third, describes my overall feeling about these friends. The book spends only 3 chapters on each friendship and by necessity paints with a broad brush, but overall the story seems to center more on the romantic entanglements and relationships of the authors than their friendships. Maybe there just wasn't enough content here. Maybe I came in with too high an expectation. But I did expect more about the actual friendships and less about the romantic escapades of these authors.
At least the book is overall short and easy to read?
At any rate, this bio fell short for me for three reasons. First, it presumes a lot of emotions. For example, it describes the letter Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote George Eliot and spends a good chunk describing how she must have agonized over how to begin it. Which maybe Stowe did. Maybe she really stressed over whether to draft it to "Mrs." Lewes or overanalyzed whether to say "my dear friend" or just "dear friend." But do we know this? The confident, narrative style made the book readable, but also left me feeling seriously mistrustful.
Second, as other reviewers quite aptly point out, this book does not actually analyze how friendship benefited the writing of any of these authors, except maybe Woolf. Austen and Bronte and Eliot had female friends. And at least some of those friends also wrote. So, what? Did it encourage, inspire, challenge them? While we get lots of suppositions, it mostly falls flat on analysis, leaving me feeling like I got only half the story.
Which, third, describes my overall feeling about these friends. The book spends only 3 chapters on each friendship and by necessity paints with a broad brush, but overall the story seems to center more on the romantic entanglements and relationships of the authors than their friendships. Maybe there just wasn't enough content here. Maybe I came in with too high an expectation. But I did expect more about the actual friendships and less about the romantic escapades of these authors.
At least the book is overall short and easy to read?
September 13, 2022
The book started and ended on the wrong note with me, what with the authors’ somewhat twee introduction talking about themselves in the third person, and the somewhat self-aggrandising epilogue. The “conspiracy of silence” against female literary friendships seems overstated and dramatic in the late 2000s, especially since it feels like there’s been a lot of research going into trying to clear up that silence. I get what they were trying to do in this book, but I felt the case was overstated, especially since the evidence didn’t necessarily point in the direction that they wanted it to.
The chapter on Jane Austen and Anne Sharp (governess to Austen’s niece) stands out as the clearest example of what bothered me. I could be completely wrong and don’t deny that there was probably a connection and that they liked conversing, but it’s hard to draw out a secret sisterhood from the textual evidence included in the book. I’m not sure why Martha Lloyd was left out; the authors seem to think she was just there as a cuddly and cheerful third wheel for Jane and Cassandra, but I recall reading that Jane’s friendship with her was quite significant. A similar less-than-nurturing relationship is revealed between George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe based on evidence. Perhaps the authors are aware of a closer relationship based on the archival material they looked at, but if so, they failed to present it properly in the text. That is probably my biggest problem with the book: I felt the authors were too enamoured of their own breathless prose and allowed that to upstage whatever textual evidence they had that would have required a more thorough style and extensive annotating.
If anything, some of the evidence showed that women in the past, especially striving for excellence in a male-dominated field and during a time when patriarchy was the defining social order, sometimes turned on each other. It's fine to accept that the conditions of life created a situation where women could not always be a nurturing presence for each other, especially with all the work they had to take on in their own lives when shit hit the fan amongst partners/husbands and family members (and it did often), instead of shoehorning past evidence to fit into a faux-optimist, “you go, girl!” 21st-century liberal feminist narrative.
The sections that focused on Charlotte Brontë, Mary Taylor, and Ellen Nussey, and Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield respectively, had more going for them because there were documented resources to draw from. The Woolf and Mansfield section stand out the most to me because it was a complex relationship that the authors dealt with sensitively and largely without judgment. The Brontë section was also illuminating largely because of how Mary Taylor stood out: she forged her own path and broke convention; her radicalism inspiring to this day despite being “of her time” because she somehow found the strength or presence of mind to push back against prevailing norms.
This is a weird book on the whole because I didn’t mind reading it and found that the pages turned easily enough, but that’s more due to the fact that I enjoy reading about writers and their lives and this book had that going for it. It works fine as a starting point if these are authors you’re interested in, but to feel like you’re on solid ground evidence-wise, I’d likely still want to turn to any of the previously-published biographies. All biographies have a narrative imposed upon them, but there’s something to be said about a scrupulously annotated biography; copious endnotes and footnotes provide the reader actual information. Even if the author chooses to present the information in a certain way, the reader has the chance to discern for herself based on the evidence cited whether that seems like a fair or accurate reading. There was very little of that here. Instead, there was quite a bit of “would have felt” and “might have thought” to fill in the blanks and the book appears the weaker for it.
The chapter on Jane Austen and Anne Sharp (governess to Austen’s niece) stands out as the clearest example of what bothered me. I could be completely wrong and don’t deny that there was probably a connection and that they liked conversing, but it’s hard to draw out a secret sisterhood from the textual evidence included in the book. I’m not sure why Martha Lloyd was left out; the authors seem to think she was just there as a cuddly and cheerful third wheel for Jane and Cassandra, but I recall reading that Jane’s friendship with her was quite significant. A similar less-than-nurturing relationship is revealed between George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe based on evidence. Perhaps the authors are aware of a closer relationship based on the archival material they looked at, but if so, they failed to present it properly in the text. That is probably my biggest problem with the book: I felt the authors were too enamoured of their own breathless prose and allowed that to upstage whatever textual evidence they had that would have required a more thorough style and extensive annotating.
If anything, some of the evidence showed that women in the past, especially striving for excellence in a male-dominated field and during a time when patriarchy was the defining social order, sometimes turned on each other. It's fine to accept that the conditions of life created a situation where women could not always be a nurturing presence for each other, especially with all the work they had to take on in their own lives when shit hit the fan amongst partners/husbands and family members (and it did often), instead of shoehorning past evidence to fit into a faux-optimist, “you go, girl!” 21st-century liberal feminist narrative.
The sections that focused on Charlotte Brontë, Mary Taylor, and Ellen Nussey, and Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield respectively, had more going for them because there were documented resources to draw from. The Woolf and Mansfield section stand out the most to me because it was a complex relationship that the authors dealt with sensitively and largely without judgment. The Brontë section was also illuminating largely because of how Mary Taylor stood out: she forged her own path and broke convention; her radicalism inspiring to this day despite being “of her time” because she somehow found the strength or presence of mind to push back against prevailing norms.
This is a weird book on the whole because I didn’t mind reading it and found that the pages turned easily enough, but that’s more due to the fact that I enjoy reading about writers and their lives and this book had that going for it. It works fine as a starting point if these are authors you’re interested in, but to feel like you’re on solid ground evidence-wise, I’d likely still want to turn to any of the previously-published biographies. All biographies have a narrative imposed upon them, but there’s something to be said about a scrupulously annotated biography; copious endnotes and footnotes provide the reader actual information. Even if the author chooses to present the information in a certain way, the reader has the chance to discern for herself based on the evidence cited whether that seems like a fair or accurate reading. There was very little of that here. Instead, there was quite a bit of “would have felt” and “might have thought” to fill in the blanks and the book appears the weaker for it.
August 17, 2018
I discovered this book while searching for a good biography of George Eliot, and because it also included Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, it became an instant "must read." The subtitle seems to imply that the four featured authoresses were friends, but as any fan can tell you, Jane Austen lived some fifty years before Bronte and Eliot, and Virginia Woolf lived some fifty years after them. Rather, the book traces a close friendship each of the authoresses had with another woman writer. Woolf is the only one of the four whose work I haven't read, but I had read the work of her literary friend, Katherine Mansfield, so I felt I was almost as informed for that section as I was for the others.
Jane Austen’s friend was her brother’s daughter’s governess, Anne Sharp. She had less wealth and status than Jane, so she lacked the freedom to pursue her literary ambitions the way Jane did. Because she was of a lower social class (and really, not that much lower, as Jane was living at her brother’s largess), her family essentially hid the friendship from her biographers, even destroying some of their correspondence.
Charlotte Bronte’s friendship with the more radically feminist Mary Taylor was not hidden so much as it was discounted by biographers more interested in her relationships with her sisters. But it was because of Mary Taylor that Charlotte ventured to Belgium to study French. Thanks to her, we have the setting and romantic lead of Villette, and the book also gives the origin of the confession scene. Because of this, the Charlotte Bronte section was my favorite, even though learning more about George Eliot was my initial reason for starting the book.
George Eliot’s literary friend was Harriet Beecher Stowe, so theirs was the first friendship covered in which both friends were more or less equally famous. Unlike any of the others, though, this pair never met in person; their entire friendship was by letter. Though I did like the Charlotte Bronte section better, this one was my second-favorite. It included a few tidbits that are right up my alley: that Stowe called her husband “rabbi” because of his long white beard and that Marian (as George Eliot was called in her personal life) saw Daniel Deronda as her attempt to stand up against anti-Semitism much like Stowe’s book was a statement against slavery. From what I gather, Jews view Eliot’s book more favorably. I don’t think Uncle Tom is well-thought of now.
Because of my lack of familiarity with the work of Virginia Woolf, this section didn’t quite send me into raptures, but it was still interesting because Woolf and Mansfield’s relationship was the most fraught with professional rivalry. As an aspiring writer myself, I know how inevitable jealousy is when befriending another writer. The two stuck it out anyway, and this book accentuates the positive, stating that previous biographers have overfocused on the negative.
The main purpose of the book is to celebrate female friendships, and since it was about some of the smartest and most talented women who ever graced this earth, it was both an intellectual journey and an absolutely delicious treat.
Jane Austen’s friend was her brother’s daughter’s governess, Anne Sharp. She had less wealth and status than Jane, so she lacked the freedom to pursue her literary ambitions the way Jane did. Because she was of a lower social class (and really, not that much lower, as Jane was living at her brother’s largess), her family essentially hid the friendship from her biographers, even destroying some of their correspondence.
Charlotte Bronte’s friendship with the more radically feminist Mary Taylor was not hidden so much as it was discounted by biographers more interested in her relationships with her sisters. But it was because of Mary Taylor that Charlotte ventured to Belgium to study French. Thanks to her, we have the setting and romantic lead of Villette, and the book also gives the origin of the confession scene. Because of this, the Charlotte Bronte section was my favorite, even though learning more about George Eliot was my initial reason for starting the book.
George Eliot’s literary friend was Harriet Beecher Stowe, so theirs was the first friendship covered in which both friends were more or less equally famous. Unlike any of the others, though, this pair never met in person; their entire friendship was by letter. Though I did like the Charlotte Bronte section better, this one was my second-favorite. It included a few tidbits that are right up my alley: that Stowe called her husband “rabbi” because of his long white beard and that Marian (as George Eliot was called in her personal life) saw Daniel Deronda as her attempt to stand up against anti-Semitism much like Stowe’s book was a statement against slavery. From what I gather, Jews view Eliot’s book more favorably. I don’t think Uncle Tom is well-thought of now.
Because of my lack of familiarity with the work of Virginia Woolf, this section didn’t quite send me into raptures, but it was still interesting because Woolf and Mansfield’s relationship was the most fraught with professional rivalry. As an aspiring writer myself, I know how inevitable jealousy is when befriending another writer. The two stuck it out anyway, and this book accentuates the positive, stating that previous biographers have overfocused on the negative.
The main purpose of the book is to celebrate female friendships, and since it was about some of the smartest and most talented women who ever graced this earth, it was both an intellectual journey and an absolutely delicious treat.
June 2, 2019
As part of my ongoing research for my thesis I primarily focused on the section that dealt with Jane Austen’s friendship with Anne Sharp.
I was excited to read this book and had high hopes to find little pieces of information that could be truly beneficial for my thesis.
I ended up being disappointed. It did discuss the friendship that had not really been mentioned by anyone else, but the research and evidence provided is lacking. Barely any quotes are used and the ones that are included seem superficial.
It all seemed to only scratch the surface and it ended too abruptly.
Overall, it is still very interesting, but my demanding academic expectations have caused me to view everything with a magnifying glass these days. I would still recommend it to anyone, who is interested in little known facts on female literary friendships.
ElliotScribbles
I was excited to read this book and had high hopes to find little pieces of information that could be truly beneficial for my thesis.
I ended up being disappointed. It did discuss the friendship that had not really been mentioned by anyone else, but the research and evidence provided is lacking. Barely any quotes are used and the ones that are included seem superficial.
It all seemed to only scratch the surface and it ended too abruptly.
Overall, it is still very interesting, but my demanding academic expectations have caused me to view everything with a magnifying glass these days. I would still recommend it to anyone, who is interested in little known facts on female literary friendships.
ElliotScribbles
October 30, 2019
(5) It must be difficult to research for a book such as this when so much relies on interpretation of a few lines, odd paragraphs, third party interpretations and the like. In order to fill out the blanks, assumptions and educated guesses have to be made. But you can’t state them as facts. I find it difficult when so much of this book describes emotions that the authors, with the very best intentions can not know . And then the conclusion is doomed. Unable to recommend to the normal crew.
March 5, 2020
Being a huge fan, as so many others, of the writers featured in this book there was perhaps little chance I wouldn’t enjoy it. Having recently read biographies of Elizabeth Gaskell and Virginia Woolf I had some inkling of the relationships between Charlotte Bronte and her female friends, and Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield but as the authors point out, these are barely discussed in the early biographies of these authors. It is described as a ‘conspiracy of silence’ with the friendships sometimes twisted to appear more antagonistic than they apparently were, particularly in the case of Virginia and Katherine.
The chapter on Jane Austen and Anne Sharpe has to be the vaguest as we have such scant correspondence between the two and as a governess Anne was not apparently deemed worthy of making her way into family accounts or Jane’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh’s biography. As such there is a lot of supposition by the authors as to the course of the relationship, something that can be bothersome on occasion, however, the writing is so engaging in building up a picture of the pair that is equally heartwarming and sad that I could look beyond the guesswork and acknowledge that it is often grounded in copious research.
As Margaret Atwood writes in the foreword, ‘Once people become famous their images tend to congeal. They become engravings of themselves, and we think of them as always having been grown-up and respectable.’ This book doesn’t show these women as childlike or unaware of social mores but it does show them as human, as craving interaction between other women who wrote and who could empathize and understand the agonies and delights that this could lead to. Midorikawa and Sweeney have painted a picture of how these friendships provided support and comradery that pushed and enabled these authors to achieve the levels they did whether society was aware of it or not. With extracts from their letters and diaries, we get a real sense of what it meant for a woman to have this passion for writing and struggle to publish in the nineteenth century and to find insecurities and isolation even in the twentieth century when Virginia Woolf was writing. An enjoyable and eye opening read.
The chapter on Jane Austen and Anne Sharpe has to be the vaguest as we have such scant correspondence between the two and as a governess Anne was not apparently deemed worthy of making her way into family accounts or Jane’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh’s biography. As such there is a lot of supposition by the authors as to the course of the relationship, something that can be bothersome on occasion, however, the writing is so engaging in building up a picture of the pair that is equally heartwarming and sad that I could look beyond the guesswork and acknowledge that it is often grounded in copious research.
As Margaret Atwood writes in the foreword, ‘Once people become famous their images tend to congeal. They become engravings of themselves, and we think of them as always having been grown-up and respectable.’ This book doesn’t show these women as childlike or unaware of social mores but it does show them as human, as craving interaction between other women who wrote and who could empathize and understand the agonies and delights that this could lead to. Midorikawa and Sweeney have painted a picture of how these friendships provided support and comradery that pushed and enabled these authors to achieve the levels they did whether society was aware of it or not. With extracts from their letters and diaries, we get a real sense of what it meant for a woman to have this passion for writing and struggle to publish in the nineteenth century and to find insecurities and isolation even in the twentieth century when Virginia Woolf was writing. An enjoyable and eye opening read.
March 13, 2020
Disappointing and not based on a lot of facts. A lot of assumptions were made
July 11, 2018
LOVED THIS!!! I usually don't read nonfiction, but I am so glad I picked this up. The inclusion of diary entries and quotes was seamless, and I really enjoyed seeing how the literary friendships of famous women writers informed the two authors' friendship.
November 28, 2017
This book delivered exactly what it promised and I couldn't have been happier with it! I'm somewhat shocked and saddened that it took so long for this idea to not only occur to someone, but to also be written about and shared with the world at large.
No, this isn't going to bring about World Peace, but it is one step closer to bringing women on par in society's eyes, with men. Not to knock men, they are great and all, but they always seem to get top billing and most of the attention, whatever the subject being discussed.
I don't want to re-hash the synopsis or give away any of the interesting details that haven't been brought to light until now. I don't want to ruin it for anyone.
I just want to say that I really appreciate the research these authors put into this book. They read letters and diaries archived and never published for the general public. They really dug deep to bring this book to the world. I appreciate that. It's not easy to do research on people who had their correspondence and journals burned after they died. Or to find out about people who were non-entities, so not much is known or maintained about them. My favorite author, Jane Austen, was the first entry in this book and I was happy with all that they found, but I still wanted more because #iwantitall.
But about 40 pages in my eARC seemed to be notes and bibliography, so five stars, just for the amount of research they did. The fact that they were able to craft that all into a readable, entertaining book that also is incredibly pertinent to what is going on in the world today re: yes, women ARE people too, is nothing short of astounding to me.
5 stars, all the way. Highly recommended!
My thanks to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.
No, this isn't going to bring about World Peace, but it is one step closer to bringing women on par in society's eyes, with men. Not to knock men, they are great and all, but they always seem to get top billing and most of the attention, whatever the subject being discussed.
I don't want to re-hash the synopsis or give away any of the interesting details that haven't been brought to light until now. I don't want to ruin it for anyone.
I just want to say that I really appreciate the research these authors put into this book. They read letters and diaries archived and never published for the general public. They really dug deep to bring this book to the world. I appreciate that. It's not easy to do research on people who had their correspondence and journals burned after they died. Or to find out about people who were non-entities, so not much is known or maintained about them. My favorite author, Jane Austen, was the first entry in this book and I was happy with all that they found, but I still wanted more because #iwantitall.
But about 40 pages in my eARC seemed to be notes and bibliography, so five stars, just for the amount of research they did. The fact that they were able to craft that all into a readable, entertaining book that also is incredibly pertinent to what is going on in the world today re: yes, women ARE people too, is nothing short of astounding to me.
5 stars, all the way. Highly recommended!
My thanks to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.
June 27, 2017
I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley. Full review to come closer to the publication date.
A delightful look at female literary friendships that have been too-long overlooked. Featuring Jane Austen and governess playwright Anne Sharp; the pioneering feminist author Mary Taylor and her influence on the work of Charlotte Brontë; the transatlantic correspondence of George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe; and the oft misunderstood relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield.
A delightful look at female literary friendships that have been too-long overlooked. Featuring Jane Austen and governess playwright Anne Sharp; the pioneering feminist author Mary Taylor and her influence on the work of Charlotte Brontë; the transatlantic correspondence of George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe; and the oft misunderstood relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield.
January 9, 2021
This book of literary research by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney explores the friendships between a famous female author and her friend, where their relationship has been overlooked by history, or misinterpreted as rivalry rather than friendship. Just to be clear, the four female authors in the title are each given a section with their own unknown, or overlooked friend; this book is not about the relationships between these four authors, whose lives span different time periods.
1. Jane Austen and Mary Sharpe
Mary Sharpe was the governess of Fanny Knight, Austen’s favourite niece, who is the mutual acquaintance through whom Austen meets Sharpe, the governess. But even after Sharpe’s term of employment, Austen invites her to stay within her circle of unattached women endeavoring to support themselves. The authors have to do the most guesswork for this friendship because the sources are simply not there in written record. Cassandra Austen burnt most of her sister’s letters, and biographers post Jane Austen’s death did not feel Mary Sharpe’s lower station was worth her entry into a biography of Austen’s life. Sharpe was included in Austen’s circle of friends, since the governess penned plays for Austen’s nieces and nephews to put on for the family. The authors argue that unlike Austen, who was fortunate to have Cassandra to help with the housework which permitted Jane to write, Mary Sharpe never had the time and luxury to write more than amusing plays for the children. Both women were dependent on their economic circumstances and were forced to be moved about accordingly: Mary to multiple governess and teaching positions and Austen following her family’s changes in income.
2. A Trio of Friends: Charlotte Bronte and her two schoolmates Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor
The authors want to counter the image of Charlotte sequestered with her sisters and explore her lifelong relationships with these two other women, Ellen and Mary, who are often left in the shadow of the sisterly relationships of the Brontes. Ellen Nussey was Charlotte’s bed fellow at boarding school and they were each other’s confidant, sharing secrets and comfort. Mary Taylor makes a first impression on Charlotte as a classmate competitor, but the two quickly overcome their rivalry to find common ambition and intellectual interest. Mary is more radical in her ideas and ambitions than Ellen, and just like everyone who needs different types of friends, Charlotte needed them both. Mary immigrated to New Zealand and wrote the feminist Victorian novel Miss Miles – she sounds like a spunk, I would love to read more about her!
3. Marian Ann Evans (pen name George Eliot) and Harriet Beecher Stowe
These two friends were pen pals and never met in person. I would love to read their letters! I love the descriptions they used to sign off, like a hand meeting yours. Both women had common experiences of notoriety. By the time of their correspondence, both Stowe and Eliot were famous, known for their literary bestsellers, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Adam Bede respectively, and both were under criticism. Eliot was shunned by London society for living with a married man (who was long estranged from his wife), and Stowe faced criticism for advocating for the abolition of slavery in antebellum America. Both women also suffered grief from loss or injury of their (step) sons. Despite these commonalties, their epistolary friendship is strained by miscommunication and the unreliable timing of the post due to the physical distance that separated them. Eliot lived in Britain and Stowe in New England, United States. They disagreed over Stowe’s spiritualism (Eliot the rationalist did not want to hear any more of it) and Stowe resorts to silence after Eliot decides not to endorse her defense of Lady Byron (the notorious Romantic poet Lord Byron’s wife, who was treated very ill by the rake), which Stowe took as a personal rebuff. George Eliot’s early death marks the end of their friendship and Stowe’s Catholicism influenced her decision not to commemorate her pen-pal friend, who lived unmarried with her partner. The friendship between Eliot and Stowe spanned the distance across the Atlantic, but closeness of politics, religious and social conventions often damaged their bound which ultimately staggered to an end.
4. Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield
Long portrayed as literary rivals, Woolf and Mansfield were writing similar experimental fiction in overlapping artistic social circles. The authors of this book explore the nuances of their relationship, by bringing out the friendship between these two contempories, rather than dismissing them as rivals. The two writers both struggled with illness, and although the authors of this book point out their differences in economic and social situation, they conclude that Woolf and Mansfield relied on each other for support and inspired each other creatively. Mansfield did not have the same economic means as Woolf, who had a husband who supported her writing and together founded a publishing press, giving her means to battle depression with time for writing, editing and typesetting. Mansfield, on the other hand, lived on a limited allowance and income from her stories, a bohemian life that Woolf was sometimes jealous of, but in turn did not afford the same luxuries for writing and publishing. Mansfield was still extremely successful, with several short story and poetry collections published with rave reviews by her contemporaries. Sadly like Woolf, Mansfield also died young.
Overall, I was a bit disappointed with this book, since I felt the cover promised me more than what I discovered inside. The research was not as thorough as other literary biographies that I’ve read for me to rate it as a top contributor to the knowledge of these nineteenth and early twentieth-century authors, who are favourites of mine. I would recommend this book as a starting point, since it does introduce readers to women in these four female authors’ lives who I would like to research further.
1. Jane Austen and Mary Sharpe
Mary Sharpe was the governess of Fanny Knight, Austen’s favourite niece, who is the mutual acquaintance through whom Austen meets Sharpe, the governess. But even after Sharpe’s term of employment, Austen invites her to stay within her circle of unattached women endeavoring to support themselves. The authors have to do the most guesswork for this friendship because the sources are simply not there in written record. Cassandra Austen burnt most of her sister’s letters, and biographers post Jane Austen’s death did not feel Mary Sharpe’s lower station was worth her entry into a biography of Austen’s life. Sharpe was included in Austen’s circle of friends, since the governess penned plays for Austen’s nieces and nephews to put on for the family. The authors argue that unlike Austen, who was fortunate to have Cassandra to help with the housework which permitted Jane to write, Mary Sharpe never had the time and luxury to write more than amusing plays for the children. Both women were dependent on their economic circumstances and were forced to be moved about accordingly: Mary to multiple governess and teaching positions and Austen following her family’s changes in income.
2. A Trio of Friends: Charlotte Bronte and her two schoolmates Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor
The authors want to counter the image of Charlotte sequestered with her sisters and explore her lifelong relationships with these two other women, Ellen and Mary, who are often left in the shadow of the sisterly relationships of the Brontes. Ellen Nussey was Charlotte’s bed fellow at boarding school and they were each other’s confidant, sharing secrets and comfort. Mary Taylor makes a first impression on Charlotte as a classmate competitor, but the two quickly overcome their rivalry to find common ambition and intellectual interest. Mary is more radical in her ideas and ambitions than Ellen, and just like everyone who needs different types of friends, Charlotte needed them both. Mary immigrated to New Zealand and wrote the feminist Victorian novel Miss Miles – she sounds like a spunk, I would love to read more about her!
3. Marian Ann Evans (pen name George Eliot) and Harriet Beecher Stowe
These two friends were pen pals and never met in person. I would love to read their letters! I love the descriptions they used to sign off, like a hand meeting yours. Both women had common experiences of notoriety. By the time of their correspondence, both Stowe and Eliot were famous, known for their literary bestsellers, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Adam Bede respectively, and both were under criticism. Eliot was shunned by London society for living with a married man (who was long estranged from his wife), and Stowe faced criticism for advocating for the abolition of slavery in antebellum America. Both women also suffered grief from loss or injury of their (step) sons. Despite these commonalties, their epistolary friendship is strained by miscommunication and the unreliable timing of the post due to the physical distance that separated them. Eliot lived in Britain and Stowe in New England, United States. They disagreed over Stowe’s spiritualism (Eliot the rationalist did not want to hear any more of it) and Stowe resorts to silence after Eliot decides not to endorse her defense of Lady Byron (the notorious Romantic poet Lord Byron’s wife, who was treated very ill by the rake), which Stowe took as a personal rebuff. George Eliot’s early death marks the end of their friendship and Stowe’s Catholicism influenced her decision not to commemorate her pen-pal friend, who lived unmarried with her partner. The friendship between Eliot and Stowe spanned the distance across the Atlantic, but closeness of politics, religious and social conventions often damaged their bound which ultimately staggered to an end.
4. Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield
Long portrayed as literary rivals, Woolf and Mansfield were writing similar experimental fiction in overlapping artistic social circles. The authors of this book explore the nuances of their relationship, by bringing out the friendship between these two contempories, rather than dismissing them as rivals. The two writers both struggled with illness, and although the authors of this book point out their differences in economic and social situation, they conclude that Woolf and Mansfield relied on each other for support and inspired each other creatively. Mansfield did not have the same economic means as Woolf, who had a husband who supported her writing and together founded a publishing press, giving her means to battle depression with time for writing, editing and typesetting. Mansfield, on the other hand, lived on a limited allowance and income from her stories, a bohemian life that Woolf was sometimes jealous of, but in turn did not afford the same luxuries for writing and publishing. Mansfield was still extremely successful, with several short story and poetry collections published with rave reviews by her contemporaries. Sadly like Woolf, Mansfield also died young.
Overall, I was a bit disappointed with this book, since I felt the cover promised me more than what I discovered inside. The research was not as thorough as other literary biographies that I’ve read for me to rate it as a top contributor to the knowledge of these nineteenth and early twentieth-century authors, who are favourites of mine. I would recommend this book as a starting point, since it does introduce readers to women in these four female authors’ lives who I would like to research further.
August 13, 2018
For my full review: https://girlwithherheadinabook.co.uk/...
As a final read for Brooding about the Brontës, this felt like a perfect pick. Midorikawa and Sweeney are a pair of female writers and friends who chose to investigate the supportive connections between various well-known writers, including Charlotte Brontë. This is a fascinating angle to the Brontës since they are typically regarded as such an insular family since the point to Secret Sisterhood is to look into the lives of writers who found commonality outside of their family setting. Midorikawa and Sweeney examine not only how these women helped each other to find creative impetus but also how they weathered professional rivalry. With even the most modern pair of friends within the book (Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield) dating from around a century ago, it was also fascinating to see how attitudes towards women writers have shifted and changed over time.
Margaret Atwood's foreword describes how female writers traditionally held the role of helpmeets to their male colleagues and even when they were successful, their word was dismissed as that of 'scribbling women'. Both Atwood and Sisterhood's two author lament that while male literary friendships have been championed and celebrated (Wordsworth and Coleridge, Dickens and Collins, Byron and Shelley), those between women have been swept to the sidelines. Jane Austen's relations appear to have suppressed evidence of Austen's friendship with governess Anne Sharp, Charlotte's bond with her sisters eclipsed her friendship with Mary Taylor for most biographers and the fact that George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe corresponded only via letter meant that the importance of their rapport was marginalised over time. Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield's friendship was misinterpreted as rivalry by commentators even while male writers could tear strips from each other and still be classed allies. Midorikawa and Sweeney's book was described as an 'act of literary espionage' by Financial Times and over the course of the book it becomes clear that this is true - only exceptional research could have revealed these threads of connection in such detailp.
The opening section focuses on Jane Austen and Anne Sharp and is probably the trickiest since there is so little material upon which to draw. While the two were certainly close and Anne Sharp has even been posited convincingly as the inspiration for Anne Elliot in Persuasion, Anne Sharp herself remains a shadowy figure. She was governess to Austen's niece Fanny Knight and seems to have inspired some jealousy in Austen's sister Cassandra although the two did remain friends for years after Jane's death. As the proud Austens tried to expunge any of the more homespun aspects of their famous relative's life, being friends with a governess was something that did not make the cut. They also liked to pretend that Jane and her sister never had anything to do in the kitchen either. This lack of primary evidence means that we only see Anne Sharp through the eyes of subjective third parties rather than hearing her true voice. This is regrettable because her passion for play-writing and putting on theatricals must have influenced Austen's writing.
Still, if this is one friendship which feels muffled over time, the other three pairings have far more life. Mary Taylor has always been one of my favourite figures within the Brontë mythology and her blunt commentary on Charlotte's life and works is always a welcome contrast to the sycophancy and histrionics of the more well-known Ellen Nussey. Despite Mary Taylor's emigration to New Zealand, she and Charlotte kept up their correspondence with Taylor providing an early opinion on Jane Eyre - pretty, but no political purpose. It seems to have been her who encouraged Charlotte to try the far more political Shirley and indeed there are crossover echoes between it and Taylor's own novel Miss Miles. Mary Taylor was that precious friend who loves you but also tells you what you need to hear rather than what you want her to say. For someone so morbid and prone to indecision as Charlotte, Taylor seems to have been precised the type of companion that she needed. My favourite quote from Taylor came from her letter to Ellen Nussey though when Nussey was having a meltdown about Charlotte getting married. Describing Nussey's protests as 'wonderful nonsense', Taylor says stoutly that if it is so unusual a thing for Charlotte to make a decision with her own happiness in view, she ought therefore to make more of a habit of it. Taylor always seems to have been a woman on a mission and it is unsurprising therefore that she never had a great deal of interest in hitching herself to the Brontë bandwagon and preferred instead to find her own path. Charlotte Brontë may have had friends with more high profile literary careers (Harriet Martineau and Elizabeth Gaskell are two such examples) but none of them ever pushed her in the way that Mary Taylor did.
George Eliot (or Marian Evans Lewes) never actually met Harriet Beecher Stowe but reached out to her via letter through mutual friends. There were regular long gaps in their correspondence and Stowe took nearly a year to respond to the first letter but it was clearly of importance to them both. George Eliot was a 'fallen woman' who was 'living in sin' with G.H. Lewes meaning that the other female writers of the day were reluctant to have anything to do with her. There is a sense of Eliot crying out for a creative connection; it is stunning to read of a writer as talented as Eliot confessing her despondency over her own work. Yet the relationship between them never quite became what the two of them clearly so wanted. Eliot was hurt when Stowe failed to pass on a message of condolence following the death of Eliot's stepson, taking nearly two years to write back. Stowe was similarly offended when Eliot declined to endorse Stowe's essay about Lord Byron's incestuous relationship with his sister; clearly the unmarried Eliot felt ill-equipped to comment on other people's unorthodox personal lives. Calling the friendship between these two a 'sisterhood' feels like a stretch given their physical distance but it nonetheless underlines the need for collaboration and community among writers. For two women who never met, they were still highly significant in each other's lives.
Woolf and Mansfield shared a friendship which was more complex still. Try as I might, I really cannot take to Virginia Woolf and the chapters describing her relationship with Katherine Mansfield did little to alter my opinion. The bitchiness of the Bloomsbury set means that the two writers often founds themselves picking up unpleasant comments that the one had said about the other and they were both very ready to criticise the other's output which further complicated the dynamic. Then there was the incident where Woolf wrote a story which was published to acclaim but which seemed to have pilfered an idea which had originated with Mansfield. I found myself thinking that I would not particularly want Virginia Woolf to be my friend. Yet when Mansfield died, Woolf was devastated, even if this was less from true affection as it was from the loss of a creative sounding-board. Or source of inspiration. Despite the spikiness of their bond, Woolf had enjoyed the competition and its abrupt end was painful.
Across the chapters though there were further threads of connection between the women. Charlotte Brontë mused on Jane Austen, spiritualist Harriet Beecher Stowe believed that she had contacted Charlotte Brontë's spirit during a seance (George Eliot disagreed), Virginia Woolf wrote an essay on George Eliot. I think of the significance that so many of these writers have had for me personally. Even outside the bonds of conventional friendship, female writers are naturally drawn together. Yet for each of the subjects of this book, maintaining friendships was difficult whether due to ill health, jealousy, geography or personal circumstance. Midorikawa and Sweeney muse on this in the context of their own friendship as two writers, trying to learn from the travails of those who have gone before them to overcome better potential obstacles. A Secret Sisterhood takes a bird's eye view on the bonds between women and creative partnerships in particular, making the book far more than biography but also a meditation on female writing, but it catches fire in how it grants a glimpse of these glittering literary giantesses. We catch sight of them in the intimate moments of friendship which brings them to life again not as the opaque cult figures which they have become but the human women they truly were, filled with a desire to express themselves to the world.
As a final read for Brooding about the Brontës, this felt like a perfect pick. Midorikawa and Sweeney are a pair of female writers and friends who chose to investigate the supportive connections between various well-known writers, including Charlotte Brontë. This is a fascinating angle to the Brontës since they are typically regarded as such an insular family since the point to Secret Sisterhood is to look into the lives of writers who found commonality outside of their family setting. Midorikawa and Sweeney examine not only how these women helped each other to find creative impetus but also how they weathered professional rivalry. With even the most modern pair of friends within the book (Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield) dating from around a century ago, it was also fascinating to see how attitudes towards women writers have shifted and changed over time.
Margaret Atwood's foreword describes how female writers traditionally held the role of helpmeets to their male colleagues and even when they were successful, their word was dismissed as that of 'scribbling women'. Both Atwood and Sisterhood's two author lament that while male literary friendships have been championed and celebrated (Wordsworth and Coleridge, Dickens and Collins, Byron and Shelley), those between women have been swept to the sidelines. Jane Austen's relations appear to have suppressed evidence of Austen's friendship with governess Anne Sharp, Charlotte's bond with her sisters eclipsed her friendship with Mary Taylor for most biographers and the fact that George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe corresponded only via letter meant that the importance of their rapport was marginalised over time. Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield's friendship was misinterpreted as rivalry by commentators even while male writers could tear strips from each other and still be classed allies. Midorikawa and Sweeney's book was described as an 'act of literary espionage' by Financial Times and over the course of the book it becomes clear that this is true - only exceptional research could have revealed these threads of connection in such detailp.
The opening section focuses on Jane Austen and Anne Sharp and is probably the trickiest since there is so little material upon which to draw. While the two were certainly close and Anne Sharp has even been posited convincingly as the inspiration for Anne Elliot in Persuasion, Anne Sharp herself remains a shadowy figure. She was governess to Austen's niece Fanny Knight and seems to have inspired some jealousy in Austen's sister Cassandra although the two did remain friends for years after Jane's death. As the proud Austens tried to expunge any of the more homespun aspects of their famous relative's life, being friends with a governess was something that did not make the cut. They also liked to pretend that Jane and her sister never had anything to do in the kitchen either. This lack of primary evidence means that we only see Anne Sharp through the eyes of subjective third parties rather than hearing her true voice. This is regrettable because her passion for play-writing and putting on theatricals must have influenced Austen's writing.
Still, if this is one friendship which feels muffled over time, the other three pairings have far more life. Mary Taylor has always been one of my favourite figures within the Brontë mythology and her blunt commentary on Charlotte's life and works is always a welcome contrast to the sycophancy and histrionics of the more well-known Ellen Nussey. Despite Mary Taylor's emigration to New Zealand, she and Charlotte kept up their correspondence with Taylor providing an early opinion on Jane Eyre - pretty, but no political purpose. It seems to have been her who encouraged Charlotte to try the far more political Shirley and indeed there are crossover echoes between it and Taylor's own novel Miss Miles. Mary Taylor was that precious friend who loves you but also tells you what you need to hear rather than what you want her to say. For someone so morbid and prone to indecision as Charlotte, Taylor seems to have been precised the type of companion that she needed. My favourite quote from Taylor came from her letter to Ellen Nussey though when Nussey was having a meltdown about Charlotte getting married. Describing Nussey's protests as 'wonderful nonsense', Taylor says stoutly that if it is so unusual a thing for Charlotte to make a decision with her own happiness in view, she ought therefore to make more of a habit of it. Taylor always seems to have been a woman on a mission and it is unsurprising therefore that she never had a great deal of interest in hitching herself to the Brontë bandwagon and preferred instead to find her own path. Charlotte Brontë may have had friends with more high profile literary careers (Harriet Martineau and Elizabeth Gaskell are two such examples) but none of them ever pushed her in the way that Mary Taylor did.
George Eliot (or Marian Evans Lewes) never actually met Harriet Beecher Stowe but reached out to her via letter through mutual friends. There were regular long gaps in their correspondence and Stowe took nearly a year to respond to the first letter but it was clearly of importance to them both. George Eliot was a 'fallen woman' who was 'living in sin' with G.H. Lewes meaning that the other female writers of the day were reluctant to have anything to do with her. There is a sense of Eliot crying out for a creative connection; it is stunning to read of a writer as talented as Eliot confessing her despondency over her own work. Yet the relationship between them never quite became what the two of them clearly so wanted. Eliot was hurt when Stowe failed to pass on a message of condolence following the death of Eliot's stepson, taking nearly two years to write back. Stowe was similarly offended when Eliot declined to endorse Stowe's essay about Lord Byron's incestuous relationship with his sister; clearly the unmarried Eliot felt ill-equipped to comment on other people's unorthodox personal lives. Calling the friendship between these two a 'sisterhood' feels like a stretch given their physical distance but it nonetheless underlines the need for collaboration and community among writers. For two women who never met, they were still highly significant in each other's lives.
Woolf and Mansfield shared a friendship which was more complex still. Try as I might, I really cannot take to Virginia Woolf and the chapters describing her relationship with Katherine Mansfield did little to alter my opinion. The bitchiness of the Bloomsbury set means that the two writers often founds themselves picking up unpleasant comments that the one had said about the other and they were both very ready to criticise the other's output which further complicated the dynamic. Then there was the incident where Woolf wrote a story which was published to acclaim but which seemed to have pilfered an idea which had originated with Mansfield. I found myself thinking that I would not particularly want Virginia Woolf to be my friend. Yet when Mansfield died, Woolf was devastated, even if this was less from true affection as it was from the loss of a creative sounding-board. Or source of inspiration. Despite the spikiness of their bond, Woolf had enjoyed the competition and its abrupt end was painful.
Across the chapters though there were further threads of connection between the women. Charlotte Brontë mused on Jane Austen, spiritualist Harriet Beecher Stowe believed that she had contacted Charlotte Brontë's spirit during a seance (George Eliot disagreed), Virginia Woolf wrote an essay on George Eliot. I think of the significance that so many of these writers have had for me personally. Even outside the bonds of conventional friendship, female writers are naturally drawn together. Yet for each of the subjects of this book, maintaining friendships was difficult whether due to ill health, jealousy, geography or personal circumstance. Midorikawa and Sweeney muse on this in the context of their own friendship as two writers, trying to learn from the travails of those who have gone before them to overcome better potential obstacles. A Secret Sisterhood takes a bird's eye view on the bonds between women and creative partnerships in particular, making the book far more than biography but also a meditation on female writing, but it catches fire in how it grants a glimpse of these glittering literary giantesses. We catch sight of them in the intimate moments of friendship which brings them to life again not as the opaque cult figures which they have become but the human women they truly were, filled with a desire to express themselves to the world.
September 21, 2017
“A Secret Sisterhood” examines the relationships that early female writers had with friends. Most that is written about Austen and Charlotte Bronte shows them working in isolation (aside from the Bronte siblings); in fact they both had active friendships with other women both through correspondence and face to face, where they talked about their work. Eliot and Woolf have less of a reputation for loneliness, but still aren’t considered to be extroverts. But they, too, had their special friends with whom they could talk shop.
Jane Austen was friends with her brother’s nanny (which was not looked upon well), who was a playwright when not wrangling kids; author Mary Taylor helped Charlotte Bronte; the outcast George Eliot (outcast for cohabiting with a married man for years) had a long correspondence with Harriet Beecher Stowe; and Virginia Woolf had a relationship both friendly and very competitive with author Katherine Mansfield. These friendships helped sustain the writers in their solitary work (even with people around them, a writer works alone) and provided sounding boards for their new writings.
The authors, themselves friends since the beginnings of their writing careers and who first found success at almost the same time as each other, have done meticulous research and found previously unread documents on or by their subjects. It’s an interesting read, so see how these friendships affected their writing. Much has been made of the friendships of certain male authors- Byron and Shelley, Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins- and now at last we have the feminine side of that coin – and a foreword by Margaret Atwood. Four and a half stars.
Jane Austen was friends with her brother’s nanny (which was not looked upon well), who was a playwright when not wrangling kids; author Mary Taylor helped Charlotte Bronte; the outcast George Eliot (outcast for cohabiting with a married man for years) had a long correspondence with Harriet Beecher Stowe; and Virginia Woolf had a relationship both friendly and very competitive with author Katherine Mansfield. These friendships helped sustain the writers in their solitary work (even with people around them, a writer works alone) and provided sounding boards for their new writings.
The authors, themselves friends since the beginnings of their writing careers and who first found success at almost the same time as each other, have done meticulous research and found previously unread documents on or by their subjects. It’s an interesting read, so see how these friendships affected their writing. Much has been made of the friendships of certain male authors- Byron and Shelley, Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins- and now at last we have the feminine side of that coin – and a foreword by Margaret Atwood. Four and a half stars.
Read
August 27, 2018I really respect the premise of this book--reclaiming important (female) literary relationships. BUT I'm just not convinced that the evidence suggests what they claim. I'm certainly sympathetic that much of the evidence has been destroyed but, unfortunately, that means that this type of book just can't be written. OR needs to be written differently. I just grew tired of the extreme speculation of what each woman was thinking when they recieved the letters and/or wrote their books. There just is not enough support. Maybe it's because I'm chin deep in my own research about friendships but I wasn't learning much about history or friendship. So, I have to put it aside for awhile.
November 29, 2020
I picked up this book a whole year ago and I read about 100 pages before slowly neglecting it. Having just read a large biography about Jane Austen; I felt like I had been Austen-ed out. I had also read a lot of non-fiction around that time, and as I started this book I was starting to crave some fiction again - so it's safe to say that I picked this up at the wrong time last year.
I recently decided to pick it up again, hoping to finish any unfinished books on my TBR by the end of 2020, and I'm so glad I did! It's been a while since I've read some non-fiction, and so I was gripped and excited throughout. The writing of Midorikawa and Sweeney was easy to read and lovely. The subject matter was fascinating to me. I have read a decent amount about Jane Austen and studied the life of Charlotte Bronte in my school days and even completed a dissertation about Virginia Woolf, but I still learned about parts of their life that have been buried in history. I am now craving to learn more about George Eliot!
I loved the structure and my reading experience with this book, I also love the emphasis on the importance of female friendships running throughout.
I recently decided to pick it up again, hoping to finish any unfinished books on my TBR by the end of 2020, and I'm so glad I did! It's been a while since I've read some non-fiction, and so I was gripped and excited throughout. The writing of Midorikawa and Sweeney was easy to read and lovely. The subject matter was fascinating to me. I have read a decent amount about Jane Austen and studied the life of Charlotte Bronte in my school days and even completed a dissertation about Virginia Woolf, but I still learned about parts of their life that have been buried in history. I am now craving to learn more about George Eliot!
I loved the structure and my reading experience with this book, I also love the emphasis on the importance of female friendships running throughout.
May 19, 2019
It took me some time to get into this book and I confess, I was tempted to give up early on. I am so thankful I stuck with it! I really enjoyed this book about four different literary female friendships as I learned more about some writers I didn’t really know! Well-written and researched. The epilogue is surprisingly moving.
November 15, 2017
Interesting,albeit difficult friendships between famous literary women. I’m so glad that my 3 daughters and I live in the modern age!
October 1, 2021
By looking at four writers, the authors explore female friendships in the literary world. There are some interesting points made and I feel I learned one or two new things.
November 2, 2017
I received an ARC of this book from Goodreads.
I primarily requested this title due to having a fascination with all things Jane Austen, but was pleasantly surprised to find all of the stories to be very interesting in their own rights. Very well-written with a cohesive theme of friendships between female author, readers will gain insight into how such friendships contributed to these authors' works. I was expecting the writing to be somewhat dry, but it was not at all. Highly recommend, especially for readers who are looking for a new perspective on these beloved authors.
I primarily requested this title due to having a fascination with all things Jane Austen, but was pleasantly surprised to find all of the stories to be very interesting in their own rights. Very well-written with a cohesive theme of friendships between female author, readers will gain insight into how such friendships contributed to these authors' works. I was expecting the writing to be somewhat dry, but it was not at all. Highly recommend, especially for readers who are looking for a new perspective on these beloved authors.
June 17, 2017
A Secret Sisterhood was an absolute treat to read. I must just mention the stunning cover, which for me, sums up the beauty of this book. A Secret Sisterhood eloquently and succinctly describes in much detail, four female literary collaborations: those of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. I was absolutely staggered at the sheer amount of research that was undertaken in order to write this book. It is packed with so much information, hidden gems and beautiful descriptions of female solidarity from long, long ago.
This book is a treasure trove of hidden secrets. Very little is known about the friendships that these women had with other women writers, as during their lifetimes their achievements and literary accomplishments were very much downplayed, with male writers receiving much of the recognition. Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney have created a book that highlights these achievements, the strength of women, and how women seek and give strength to other women in the writing profession. This is very much in evidence today, so it is so very refreshing to find that our female literally heroines were doing the very same.
We learn about these much loved writers' private lives and their close friendships, that were often seen as scandalous, from the information that has been painstakingly gathered from lost letters and diaries. In doing so, what happened in the past is made incredibly relevant for today's audience. These women writers had such a close support system. We learn that feminism is not such a new concept, as these women were feminists well before the term was even used.
This is such an uplifting book and one that I enjoyed immensely. If you love to read novels by these four literary heroines, and are interested in literary history, then this book will really appeal to you. In fact, for anyone interested in literature, or for those who just fancy an absorbing non-fiction read, then you really will enjoy this wonderful treat of a book.
With thanks to the publisher who sent me a hardback copy for review purposes.
This book is a treasure trove of hidden secrets. Very little is known about the friendships that these women had with other women writers, as during their lifetimes their achievements and literary accomplishments were very much downplayed, with male writers receiving much of the recognition. Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney have created a book that highlights these achievements, the strength of women, and how women seek and give strength to other women in the writing profession. This is very much in evidence today, so it is so very refreshing to find that our female literally heroines were doing the very same.
We learn about these much loved writers' private lives and their close friendships, that were often seen as scandalous, from the information that has been painstakingly gathered from lost letters and diaries. In doing so, what happened in the past is made incredibly relevant for today's audience. These women writers had such a close support system. We learn that feminism is not such a new concept, as these women were feminists well before the term was even used.
This is such an uplifting book and one that I enjoyed immensely. If you love to read novels by these four literary heroines, and are interested in literary history, then this book will really appeal to you. In fact, for anyone interested in literature, or for those who just fancy an absorbing non-fiction read, then you really will enjoy this wonderful treat of a book.
With thanks to the publisher who sent me a hardback copy for review purposes.
July 2, 2025
6.5 / 10
Reseña en español | Review in English below
(…) 𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘪𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦: 𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘢𝘨𝘦-𝘥𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳; 𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘳𝘰𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘰𝘳𝘴; 𝘢 𝘧𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯, 𝘴𝘩𝘶𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘥; 𝘢 𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘤 𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘶𝘴. 𝘖𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴, 𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘰𝘣𝘴𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘧𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘴, 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵.
Este ensayo se basa en biografías, cartas (algunas inéditas) y diarios varios para desmentir el mito de la escritora aislada y mostrar las redes de amistad y literatura que tejieron Jane Austen y Anne Sharp, Charlotte Brontë y Mary Taylor, George Eliot y Harriet Beecher Stowe, y Virginia Woolf y Katherine Mansfield. Cada pareja de mujeres da cuerpo a un capítulo y, aunque es un libro accesible y fácil de leer, no profundiza demasiado en las implicaciones literarias que tuvieron unas mujeres sobre otras.
Me ha gustado porque trata sobre las amistades femeninas y me ha dado ganas de seguir leyendo a estas autoras y también sobre ellas. Se mencionan además obras muy interesantes en la bibliografía seleccionada y notas, como Mrs. Woolf and the Servants.
———
This essay draws on biographies, letters (including some unpublished), and diaries to challenge the myth of the isolated female writer. It highlights the networks of friendship and literary collaboration among notable figures such as Jane Austen and Anne Sharp, Charlotte Brontë and Mary Taylor, George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield. Each pair of women is explored in a separate chapter. While the writing is accessible and easy to read, it does not delve deeply into the literary influences these women had on one another.
I enjoyed the essay because it focuses on female friendships, which inspired me to explore more works by these authors and about them. The selected bibliography and notes also mention some interesting novels, such as "Mrs. Woolf and the Servants."
Reseña en español | Review in English below
(…) 𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘪𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦: 𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘢𝘨𝘦-𝘥𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳; 𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘳𝘰𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘰𝘳𝘴; 𝘢 𝘧𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯, 𝘴𝘩𝘶𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘥; 𝘢 𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘤 𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘶𝘴. 𝘖𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴, 𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘰𝘣𝘴𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘧𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘴, 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵.
Este ensayo se basa en biografías, cartas (algunas inéditas) y diarios varios para desmentir el mito de la escritora aislada y mostrar las redes de amistad y literatura que tejieron Jane Austen y Anne Sharp, Charlotte Brontë y Mary Taylor, George Eliot y Harriet Beecher Stowe, y Virginia Woolf y Katherine Mansfield. Cada pareja de mujeres da cuerpo a un capítulo y, aunque es un libro accesible y fácil de leer, no profundiza demasiado en las implicaciones literarias que tuvieron unas mujeres sobre otras.
Me ha gustado porque trata sobre las amistades femeninas y me ha dado ganas de seguir leyendo a estas autoras y también sobre ellas. Se mencionan además obras muy interesantes en la bibliografía seleccionada y notas, como Mrs. Woolf and the Servants.
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This essay draws on biographies, letters (including some unpublished), and diaries to challenge the myth of the isolated female writer. It highlights the networks of friendship and literary collaboration among notable figures such as Jane Austen and Anne Sharp, Charlotte Brontë and Mary Taylor, George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield. Each pair of women is explored in a separate chapter. While the writing is accessible and easy to read, it does not delve deeply into the literary influences these women had on one another.
I enjoyed the essay because it focuses on female friendships, which inspired me to explore more works by these authors and about them. The selected bibliography and notes also mention some interesting novels, such as "Mrs. Woolf and the Servants."
February 10, 2019
Interesting.
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