Keynotes

by George Egerton, Aubrey Beardsley

Keynotes (1893) is a collection of short stories by George Egerton, the pseudonym of Mary Chavelita Dunne (1859–1945), born in Melbourne. She spent her childhood in Ireland, where she settled for a time, and considered herself to be "intensely Irish". The stories explore relationships between women across class barriers, and include open discussions of women’s sexuality – controversial subjects at this time.

A cross line --
Now spring has come --
The spell of the white elf --
A little gray glove --
An empty frame --
Under northern sky:
I. How Marie Larsen exorcised a demon --
II. A shadow's slant --
III. An ebb tide.

Genres: Classics, Ebooks, Short Stories, Womens

194 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1893

About the author

Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright (born Mary Elizabeth Annie Dunne; 14 December 1859 — 12 August 1945), better known by her pen name George Egerton, (pronounced Edg'er-ton) was a "New Woman" writer and feminist. Widely considered to be one of the most important of the "New Woman" writers of the nineteenth century fin de siecle, she was a friend of George Bernard Shaw, Ellen Terry and J.M. Barrie.

Egerton's stylistic innovations, often termed "proto-modernist" by literary scholars, and her often radical and feminist subject matter[4] have ensured that her fiction continues to generate academic interest in America and Britain. Egerton's experimentation with form and content anticipated the high modernism of writers like James Joyce and D H Lawrence, and Egerton's The Wheel of God often reads as a sort of rudimentary template for Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Thomas Hardy acknowledged the influence of Egerton's work on his own, in particular on the construction of his "New Woman" character, Sue Bridehead, in Jude the Obscure. Perhaps most notably, Holbrook Jackson credits Egerton with the first mention of Friedrich Nietzsche in English literature (she refers to Nietzsche in Keynotes in 1893, three years before the first of Nietzsche's works was translated into English).

Reviews

[Riccardo Mazzocchio]

George Egerton così come George Eliot era una donna - Chavelita Dunne Bright. Entrambe furono investite dallo scandalo di aver avuto una relazione con un uomo sposato. Entrambe scrissero nell'epoca vittoriana sfidandone i modelli e il ruolo assegnato alle donne. Ho trovato i primi racconti superbi - una scrittura fresca e moderna che mi ha ricordato la Woolf al suo esordio - al di là della novità per quel tempo di esplorare aspetti della sessualità e della psicologia delle donne. Il resto della raccolta - a mio parere - non allo stesso livello. Sembra esista una traduzione italiana (Irene Bulla) pubblicata da Adelphi.