Her major work as a translator was the translation of fellow scientist Isaac Newton’s seminal book Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy from its original Latin into French. Published in 1759, her translation is still the standard French translation to this day.

Émilie du Châtelet received a good education in literature, mathematics and science. After marrying the Marquis du Châtelet at the age of nineteen and bearing three children, she resumed her mathematical studies in 1733 at the age of twenty-six.

She became the intellectual collaborator and romantic partner of the French philosopher Voltaire, one of the key figures of the Enlightenment. Later on, while still being friends with her husband and with Voltaire, she began an affair with the French poet Jean Francois de Saint-Lambert but didn’t survive a new pregnancy one year later.

Émilie was the first woman to have an essay published by the French Royal Academy of Sciences in 1739. Her essay dealt with the nature and propagation of fire (“Dissertation sur la nature et la propagation du feu”).

. . . . . . . . . .

Émilie du Châtelet
. . . . . . . . .

Foundations of Physics

Émilie du Châtelet’s main work as a writer was Foundations of Physics (original title: Institutions de Physique), published in Paris by Prault fils in 1740. A second edition was published in 1742, with a revised text under a slightly different title, Institutions Physiques.

Foundations of Physics synthesised and discussed the main ideas expressed by the prominent mathematicians and physicians of her time. The book covered many subjects, including the principles of knowledge, the existence of God, space, time, matter and the forces of nature, as well as Isaac Newton’s theory of motion and universal gravitation, which was attracting a lot of interest among her peers.

Foundations of Physics was translated into German and Italian in 1743. Her ideas were expressed in some chapters of the famed French Encyclopédie, a monumental encyclopedia in twenty-eight volumes (seventeen volumes of texts and eleven volumes of plates) published in France between 1751 and 1772 to incorporate all of the world’s knowledge, with many contributors.

Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

Émilie’s main work as a translator was the translation into French of fellow scientist Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (original title: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica), often referred to as Principia.

Written in Latin and first published in 1687, with two further editions in 1713 and 1726, the three-volume book details Newton’s laws of motion and his law of universal gravitation, and the mathematical methods Newton used in formulating his physical laws. Principia is now considered one of the major works in the history of science.

All the translations were based on the third edition in 1726. An English translation authored by the English mathematician Andrew Motte was published in 1729, with several subsequent editions.

The French translation authored by Émilie du Châtelet included a summary section (a common summary for the three volumes), an extensive commentary section (two thirds of the second volume) and an analytical section in which she applied the new mathematics of calculus to Newton’s most controversial theories.

The first French edition (considered “temporary”) was published in Paris by Desaint & Saillant in 1756, six years after Émilie’s death, under the title Principes mathématiques de la philosophie naturelle [traduits] par feue Madame La Marquise du Chastellet. The second French edition (considered “final”) was published in two volumes by Desaint & Saillant in 1759, and is still the standard French edition to this day.

Her translation was a major step for the dissemination of Newtonian physics in France and in Europe and for the completion of the two-century Scientific Revolution which led to an empirical and evidence-based approach to science.

The Fable of the Bees (1715)

Émilie also translated The Fable of the Bees (1715) by the Anglo-Dutch social philosopher Bernard Mandeville under the title La Fable des Abeilles (1740).

In the preface to her translation, considered less a translation than a free adaptation into French, she strongly argued for the education of women, particularly a secondary education for young women as was available for young men. She explained that, by denying women a good education, society prevented women from becoming eminent contributors in the arts and sciences.

Being a learned woman respected by her peers didn’t prevent misogynistic comments. As stated by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant in his Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (original title: Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen), published in German in 1764:

“A woman who has a head full of Greek, like Mme Dacier [a French scholar and translator], or who conducts disputations about mechanics, like the Marquise du Châtelet, might as well also wear a beard; for that might perhaps better express the mien of depth [the overall appearance] for which they strive.”

But Kant did read their works, which probably influenced his own writings.

Further reading

• History of Scientific Women
• Who was Émilie du Châtelet and Why Does She Matter?
• The Scientific Trailblazer Who Turned Heads in Versailles

Contributed by Marie Lebert. Edited by Nava Atlas, Literary Ladies Guide. See more entries by Marie Lebert, most profiling women translators.

The post Émilie du Châtelet (1706–1749), mathematician, physicist & translator appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Many of her works addressed the dark side of human nature. “The Lottery” (1948)  is her best-known short story; standouts among her novels are The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. 

Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons  pioneered the genre of “momoirs” that inspired such writers as Erma Bombeck and Jean Kerr. In Jackson’s case, her own family life wasn’t quite as fun as the glossy and wry depictions in her pages. 

As a master of the psychological horror genre, Jackson influenced Stephen King and others. Having suffered from various ailments and addictions, she was only forty-eight when she died of heart failure. Even so, Jackson’s literary legacy has proven sturdy and enduring. 

. . . . . . . . . .

The Lottery (1948)

The Lottery and Other Stories 

“The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“They stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her. “It isn’t fair,” she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head.”

. . . . . . . . .

The Road Through the Wall (1948)

The Road Through the Wall

“In ten years I will be a beautiful charming lovely lady writer without any husband or children but lots of lovers and everyone will read the books I write and want to marry me but I will never marry any of them. I will have lots of money and jewels too.”

. . . . . . . . .

“The weather falls more gently on some places than on others, the world looks down more paternally on some people. Some spots are proverbially warm, and keep, through falling snow, their untarnished reputations as summer resorts; some people are automatically above suspicion.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“Outside were the eucalyptus trees, like lace against the sky. If it were only possible to lie against them, light and bodiless, sink into their softness, deeper and deeper, lost in them, buried, never come back again …”

. . . . . . . . . .

“We must expect to set a standard. Actually, however much we may want to find new friends whom we may value, people who are exciting to us because of new ideas, or because they are different, we have to do what is expected of us.”

. . . . . . . . . .

Hangsaman (1951)

Hangsaman

“Natalie Waite, who was seventeen years old but who felt that she had been truly conscious only since she was about fifteen, lived in an odd corner of the world of sound and sight past the daily voices of her father and mother and their incomprehensible actions. 

. . . . . . . . . . .

“The gap between the poetry she wrote and the poetry she contained was, for Natalie, something unsolvable.”

. . . . . . . . . . .

“Someday I will be sixty years old, sixty-seven, eighty, and, remembering, will perhaps recall that something of this sort happened once (where? when? who?) and will perhaps smile nostalgically thinking, What a sad silly girl I was, to be sure.’”

. . . . . . . . . . . .

“Imagine, always pretending to run a world. Always imitating the sort of people they think they might be if the world were the sort of world it isn’t. Pretending to be words like ‘normal’ and ‘wholesome’ and ‘honest’ and ‘decent’ and ‘self-respecting’ and all the rest, when even the words aren’t real. Imagine, being people.”

. . . . . . . . . . . .

  “‘Do you plan to be a writer?’
       A what? Natalie thought; a writer, a plumber, a doctor, a merchant, a chief; the best-laid plans of; a writer the way I might plan to be a corpse? ‘A writer?’ she repeated, as though she had never heard the word before.”

. . . . . . . . . . .

The Sundial (1958)

The Sundial

“The sight of one’s own heart is degrading; people are not meant to look inward–that’s why they’ve been give bodies, to hide their souls.”

. . . . . . . . . . . .

“The question of belief is a curious one, partaking of the wonders of childhood and the blind hopefulness of the very old; in all the world there is not someone who does not believe something. It might be suggested, and not easily disproven that anything, no matter how exotic, can be believed by someone. 

. . . . . . . . . . . .

“When shall we live if not now?”

. . . . . . . . . . . .

“Now, she thought; I may go mad, but at least I look like a lady.”

. . . . . . . . . . . .

“The experiment with humanity is at an end,” Aunt Fanny said.
        “Splendid,” Mrs. Halloran said, “I“was getting very tired of all of them.”

. . . . . . . . . .

The Haunting of Hill House (1959)

The Haunting of Hill House

“Hill House has an impressive list of tragedies connected with it, but then, most old houses have. People have to live and die somewhere, after all, and a house can hardly stand for eighty years without seeing some of its inhabitants die within its walls.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“When they were silent for a moment the quiet weight of the house pressed down from all around them.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“Materializations are often best produced in rooms where there are books. I cannot think of any time when materialization was in any way hampered by the presence of books.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“Certainly there are spots which inevitably attach to themselves an atmosphere of holiness and goodness; it might not then be too fanciful to say that some houses are born bad.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“My dear, how can I make you perceive that there is no danger where there is nothing but love and understanding?”

. . . . . . . . . .

“Nothing is ever really wasted, she believed sensibly, even one’s childhood, and then each year, one summer morning, the warm wind would come down the city street where she walked and she would be touched with the little cold thought: I have let more time go by.”

. . . . . . . . . .

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)

We Have Always Lived in the Castle
. . . . . . . . . .

“What are you reading, my dear? A pretty sight, a lady with a book.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“I remember that I stood on the library steps holding my books and looking for a minute at the soft hinted green in the branches against the sky and wishing, as I always did, that I could walk home across the sky instead of through the village.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“On the moon we wore feathers in our hair, and rubies on our hands. On the moon we had gold spoons.” 

. . . . . . . . . .

“I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“I can’t help it when people are frightened … I always want to frighten them more.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“There had not been this many words sounded in our house for a long time, and it was going to take a while to clean them out.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“On the moon we have everything. Lettuce, and pumpkin pie and Amanita phalloides. We have cat-furred plants and horses dancing with their wings. All the locks are solid and tight, and there are no ghosts.”

. . . . . . . . . .

Shirley Jackson’s novels on Bookshop.org*

. . . . . . . . . . .

Further reading about Shirley Jackson

• Shirley Jackson on Motherhood, Experience, and Fiction Writing
• Shirley Jackson: Mother of the Fictional and Real-Life Teen
• Six Novels by Shirley Jackson: Psychological Thrillers by a Master

*This is a Bookshop.org affiliate link. If a product is purchased after linking through, Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps us continue to grow.

The post Quotes from Shirley Jackson’s Psychological Thrillers appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

The usurping game is now the best-selling modern board game, by far, with approximately 285 million copies sold. Its digital equivalent, Monopoly Go!, has amassed 150 million downloads, with millions of daily active users.

Some history of Lizzie Magie and her invention is explored in the following piece by Evan Atlas, who recently reimagined Magie’s creation as an online game called Prosperity.

. . . . . . . . .

Lizzie Magie and The Landlord’s Game

Contributed by Evan Atlas

Who Was Lizzie Magie? She was a champion of prosperity. That’s the short version. But this incredibly multifaceted woman defies brief classification. Her path was one of iconoclasm and entrepreneurial creativity. 

Elizabeth Jones Magie (1866 – 1948), born in Macomb, Illinois, was the daughter of James Kingsley Magie and Mary Jane Ritchie. Her father sparked her lifelong interest in economic justice by introducing her to Progress and Poverty, the groundbreaking book by Henry George. It not only inspired The Landlord’s Game, but stayed with her throughout her life. 

. . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . .

In her early twenties, Magie became a proficient typist and stenographer, even starting her own business centered on these skills. But she was anything but mechanical. At just twenty-six years of age, she secured her first patent for innovating the typewriters she had mastered.

Notably, it was a time when less than 1% of patents were issued to women. This was the engineering side of Magie. She both understood systems and had the inclination to change them:

“We are not machines. Girls have minds, desires, hopes and ambition.”

Artistically, she dabbled in writing, live comedy, and theatre. A collection of her poetry, titled My Betrothed, and Other Poems, reveals other varied interests such as psychology, philosophy, and squandered opportunity:

Society, thou ill-constructed thing,
Reform thyself!
Dethrone the worthless idlers!
Make room for worthy Genius!
O ye men of wealth and power,
Should this be so?
Should Genius, out of place,
Toil on till death, impoverished, unknown?
This poet soul, imprisoned, dreams away.
A thousand brilliant thoughts
Come rushing to his brain,
And, like some caged wild bird,
Flap their wings and cry for liberty,
But find it not,
And fade and die imprisoned.

Elsewhere, she displayed her literary talents as an investigative journalist, covering the grueling working conditions of women. She was a vocal feminist throughout her life, and gained notoriety for placing a satirical ad for “herself” in a newspaper:

“Young woman American slave to the highest bidder: Intelligent, well-educated, refined, true, honest, just, poetical, philosophical, and womanly above all things. Brunette, large gray-green eyes, full passionate lips, splendid teeth, not beautiful but very attractive, features full of character and strength, yet truly feminine; height 5 feet 3 inches; well proportioned, graceful.”

But near the end of her life, she listed her occupation as maker of games.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Magie was awarded a patent for the Landlord’s Game in 1904

. . . . . . . . . . .

The Landlord’s Game

Many games have a philosophical aspect to them. It just so happens that Monopoly is more covert than its forgotten predecessor. Its style of play fits neatly within the prevailing economic orthodoxy, so it isn’t recognized as having a distinct philosophical stance. Yet it does. It subscribes to the practice of bundling together land rents and structure rents.

We can see this at work in both the game — and in daily life beyond the board. If I own a property (in Monopoly or in my home state of New York) that consists of land and a house that I built, I’ll be charged a property tax. This tax is based on the combined value of the land and the house.

Magie considered this an economic injustice. Why? Because my efforts and resources produced the value that results from constructing a house, but not the value that is inherent to the land. From this logic, the land value tax was born.

The value of land is a public good that is privately captured. So the remedy is to tax land at a rate that recaptures that value and effectively restores its status as a public good. This is the philosophy that inspired Lizzie Magie, and is the economic foundation of The Landlord’s Game. 

She achieved this with a brilliant game rule that was later left out of Monopoly—the prosperity rule. It follows from the same logic explored above: It should be expensive, not profitable, to hoard undeveloped land. Monopoly, lacking this rule, was born as an ode to injustice. It was in 1935 that the Parker Brothers company bought the rights to her game for just $500.

This has been characterized as a swindle, understandably. But make no mistake: Magie was not duped into thinking that’s all the game was worth. What convinced her was not the $500—it was that they offered to sell and promote The Landlord’s Game along with Monopoly.

She truly believed this was how her Georgist board game would finally reach the wider world. Parker Brothers, however, did little to promote her game, and discontinued it shortly after it went into production. Since then, it has been mostly lost to time, with few having ever heard of it.

In her poem title “Self,” she wrote:

The great are those who make the world
The better by their deeds.

Her dream was buried. But she was true to herself to the very end. I think that Magie, as a maker of games, did a little wordplay here. Of course it is our actions (our deeds) that shape reality. It couldn’t have been far from her mind that the same could be said of our property deeds.

. . . . . . . . . . .

For the expanded version of this post,
see Prosperity: A Georgist Game

. . . . . . . . . . .

See (and Play) for Yourself

Lizzie Magie once said, “I am thankful that I have been taught how to think and not what to think.” That’s why sometimes we need games, not textbooks.

If you’re as inspired by Magie’s story and her lost board game as I am, you may be wondering where you can play The Landlord’s Game. That’s why I’ve re-imagined it as a modern online game called Prosperity. Play the game and see Lizzie Magie’s ideas clearly for yourself. With her help, we can change the world.

. . . . . . . . .

Contributed by Evan Atlas. Evan is a writer and political philosopher from New York’s Hudson Valley. His work confronts our most significant challenges, and develops a theory of change for the 21st century that is unlike anything you’ve heard before. He believes that the future of humanity can be more loving, more free, and more beautiful, but that this future is in danger. Join him at evanatlas.com and on his Substack and help create a more beautiful planet.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Lizzie Magie in 1906
Learn more in “The Woman Inventor Behind Monopoly“

Further reading

• Chokshi, Niraj. “A New Monopoly Game Celebrates Women, but What About the One Behind the Original?” International New York Times / International Herald Tribune. September 2019.
• Dodson, Edward J. “How Henry George’s Principles Were Corrupted Into the Game Called Monopoly.” December 2011.
• Edwards, Gavin. “Overlooked No More: Lizzie Magie, the Unknown Inventor Behind Monopoly.” 
  The New York Times. April 2024.
• Terrell, Ellen. “The Very Fascinating Elizabeth J. Magie.” Library of Congress. September 2022.

The post Lizzie Magie: Forgotten Inventor of The Landlord’s Game appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Her writing spanned thirty years and nearly thirty books, covering subjects such as marginalization, oppression, and inequality, as well as racial, political, and sexual identity.

She was also passionate about the use of Black English in writing and in education, and had a thriving teaching career in several universities.

Early life in New York

June Millicent Jordan was born in the Harlem section of New York City in 1936 and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Her parents, Mildred and Granville Jordan were immigrants from Panama and Jamaica, respectively. An only child, she had a difficult relationship with her father, who never hid his disappointment that she was not a boy.

Later, she would write, “For a long while during childhood I was relatively small, short, and, in some other ways, a target for bully abuse. In fact, my father was the first regular bully in my life.” However, she credited him with passing along his love of literature, and by age seven, she began writing her own poetry. Her mother later took her own life. Fifteen years later, in a 1981 essay called “Many Rivers To Cross,” Jordan wrote:

“I thought about the idea of my mother as a good woman and I rejected that, because I don’t see why it’s a good thing when you give up, or when you cooperate with those who hate you…I came too late to help my mother to her feet. By way of everlasting thanks to all the women who have helped me to stay alive I am working never to be late again.”

She attended Midwood High School in Brooklyn for a year, followed by the elite Northfield School in Massachusetts. The student bodies of both schools were predominantly white. In 1953, she attended Barnard College in New York (the women’s college affiliated with Columbia University), but also felt alienated as a Black student, and by the white-centered curriculum. In her 1981 book of essays, Civil Wars, she wrote of the experience:

“No one ever presented me with a single Black author, poet, historian, personage, or idea for that matter. Nor was I ever assigned a single woman to study as a thinker, or writer, or poet, or life force.” Because of this disconnect, Jordan left Barnard without graduating.

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

Marriage, divorce, and sexual identity

In 1955, Jordan met and married Michael Meyer, a white student at Columbia University. She followed him to the University of Chicago, where she also enrolled, but ultimately returned to Barnard and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1957.

In 1958, she gave birth to the couple’s only child, Christopher, and raised him alone after she and Meyer divorced in 1965.

Jordan always identified openly as bisexual, saying, “Bisexuality means I am free and I am as likely to want to love a woman as I am likely to love a man, and what about that? Isn’t that what freedom implies?” After her death in 2019, she was one of the first fifty American “pioneers, trailblazers and heroes” inducted into the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City.

A life dedicated to activism

Jordan was active in the civil rights, feminist, anti-war, and gay rights movements. She attended rallies, marches, events and conferences throughout her life. She wrote in Civil Wars: Selected Essays (Boston: Beacon Press, 1981).

“It seems unreasonable that more than 400 million people, right now, struggle against hunger and starvation, even while there is an arable earth aplenty to feed and nourish every one of us. It does not seem reasonable that the color of your skin should curse and condemn all your days and the days of your children. It seems preposterous that gender, that being a woman, anywhere in the world, should elicit contempt, or fear, or ridicule, and serious deprivation of rights to be, to become, to embrace whatever you choose…”  

After the Harlem Riots of 1964 (in which James Powell, a Black teen, was shot dead by an NYPD officer – a shooting which sparked six nights of rioting and clashes between protestors and the police), Jordan was “filled with hatred for everything and everyone White.”

It was a conversation with civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer that led her to eventually believe that “this condition, if it lasted, would mean that I had lost the point: not to resemble my enemies, not to dwarf my world, not to lose my willingness and ability to love.”

After the riots, she collaborated with architect Buckminster Fuller on an architectural redesign of Harlem to improve living conditions for residents. However, the plan was never developed.

Jordan was also a passionate supporter of Palestinian rights, and said that the Palestinian struggle was the “moral litmus test” of her life. After traveling to Lebanon in 1982 and visiting the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, and seeing the devastation of the Israeli massacres there firsthand (and then returning in 1996), she wrote in the poem “Apologies to All the People in Lebanon”:

“Yes I did know it was the money I earned as a poet that / paid / for the bombs and the planes and the tanks / that they used to massacre your family… I’m sorry. I really am sorry.”

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

Teaching career

Jordan’s teaching career began in 1967 when, after running poetry workshops for children in Harlem, she began teaching at the City College of New York. Later, she taught at Yale University and Sarah Lawrence College, and became Professor of English at Stony Brook, where she directed the Poetry Center.

In 1988, she became Professor of African American Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, where, in 1991, she co-founded Poetry for the People with Janice Mirikitani – a program to train undergraduates to bring poetry into community groups as a form of political and social empowerment. 

She was known for using Black English both in her own writing and in her teaching. She saw it as a vital way of keeping the community and culture alive, and she encouraged her students to respect it as its own language and to use it in their own work.

Her essay, “Nobody Means More to Me Than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan,” criticizes the use of “White English” as standard English, saying that “compulsory education in American compels accommodation to exclusively White forms of ‘English.’”

“To rally the spirit of your folks”:
an extensive writing career

In 1969, Jordan published her first volume of poetry, Who Look at Me. This was followed by several books for children and young adults, including His Own Where (1971), Dry Victories (1972), New Life, New Room (1975), and Kimako’s Story (1981).

Later, she explored her own childhood in the memoir Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood (2000), and in a NewsHour interview with Elizabeth Farnsworth, she said of the book,

“I wanted to honor my father, first of all, and secondly, I wanted people to pay attention to a little girl who is gifted intellectually and creative, and to see that there’s a complexity here that we may otherwise not be prepared to acknowledge or even search for…” In a separate interview, she said, “My father was very intense, passionate, and over-the-top. He was my hero and my tyrant.”

She also wrote poetry and fiction, and librettos for the operas Bang Bang Uber Alles, and I was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky. Her journalism was published widely, and she was a regular columnist for The Progressive. Her essays were largely political, and in collections such as Civil Wars (1981), On Call (1985), and Technical Difficulties (1992), her topics ranged from conflicts in South Africa, Nicaragua, and Lebanon, to issues of race and class in the U.S.

Jordan often wrote about her personal experiences in her work, including the experience of being raped. In ‘Poem About My Rights’, she wrote, “I have been raped / be- / cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age / the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the / wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic / […] / but let this be unmistakeable this poem / is not consent I do not consent / […] / I am not wrong: wrong is not my name”

When she was asked about the role of a poet in society, she replied, “The role of a poet, beginning with my own childhood experience, is to deserve the trust of people who know that what you do is work with words … Then the task of a poet of color, a Black poet, as a people hated and despised, is to rally the spirit of your folks …”

She was awarded a number of prestigious grants, including Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Council on the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as the National Association of Black Journalists Award and a Rockefeller Foundation Grant. She was also a finalist for the National Book Award in 1972 for His Own Where.

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

Later years

Jordan was diagnosed with breast cancer in the 1990s, but continued to teach, write, and protest. She died in June 2002 at her home in Berkeley, California.

In an obituary, Lynell George wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “[Jordan] spent her life stitching together the personal and political so the seams didn’t show,” while Jordan’s contemporary, Toni Morrison, said of her career, “I am talking about a span of forty years of tireless activism coupled with and fueled by flawless art.”

. . . . . . . . . .

Contributed by Elodie Barnes. Elodie is a writer and editor with a serious case of wanderlust. Her short fiction has been widely published online and is included in the Best Small Fictions 2022 Anthology published by Sonder Press. She is Books & Creative Writing Editor at Lucy Writers Platform, she is also co-facilitating What the Water Gave Us, an Arts Council England-funded anthology of emerging women writers from migrant backgrounds. She is currently working on a collection of short stories, and when not writing can usually be found planning the next trip abroad, or daydreaming her way back to 1920s Paris. Find more of her writings here and on Literary Ladies Guide.

More about June Jordan 

• June Jordan’s complete bibliography

Further reading

• • This Unruly Witness: June Jordan’s Legacy, ed. by Lauren Muller, Becky Thompson,
    Dominique C. Hill. Haymarket Books, 2025
  • The Essential June Jordan, ed. Jan Heller Levi and Christoph Keller, Penguin Classics, 2021
  • Passion (Poems), by June Jordan, Penguin Classics, 2025
  • Haruko/Love Poems, by June Jordan, Serpent’s Tail Classics, 2023
  • June Jordan on America’s Black Holocaust Museum
  • Poetry Foundation

The post “I Do Not Consent” The Life of Writer and Activist June Jordan appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

This thoughtful, often cynical, and surprising examination of marriage in the early twentieth century still speaks to the contemporary institution in many ways.

In 1906, Goldman founded the Mother Earth Journal, serving as both an editor and frequent contributor. The essay that follows  was originally published by Mother Earth Publishing Association in 1911. It is in the public domain.

. . . . . . . . . . 

Marriage and Love by Emma Goldman

The popular notion about marriage and love is that they are synonymous, that they spring from the same motives, and cover the same human needs. Like most popular notions this also rests not on actual facts, but on superstition.

Marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as far apart as the poles; are, in fact, antagonistic to each other. No doubt some marriages have been the result of love. Not, however, because love could assert itself only in marriage; much rather is it because few people can completely outgrow a convention.

There are today large numbers of men and women to whom marriage is naught but a farce, but who submit to it for the sake of public opinion. At any rate, while it is true that some marriages are based on love, and while it is equally true that in some cases love continues in married life, I maintain that it does so regardless of marriage, and not because of it.

On the other hand, it is utterly false that love results from marriage. On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable. Certainly the growing-used to each other is far away from the spontaneity, the intensity, and beauty of love, without which the intimacy of marriage must prove degrading to both the woman and the man.

Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact. It differs from the ordinary life insurance agreement only in that it is more binding, more exacting. Its returns are insignificantly small compared with the investments. In taking out an insurance policy one pays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue payments.

If, however, woman’s premium is a husband, she pays for it with her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life, “until death doth part.” Moreover, the marriage insurance condemns her to life-long dependency, to parasitism, to complete uselessness, individual as well as social. Man, too, pays his toll, but as his sphere is wider, marriage does not limit him as much as woman. He feels his chains more in an economic sense.

Thus Dante’s motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage. “Ye who enter here leave all hope behind.”

That marriage is a failure none but the very stupid will deny. One has but to glance over the statistics of divorce to realize how bitter a failure marriage really is. Nor will the stereotyped Philistine argument that the laxity of divorce laws and the growing looseness of woman account for the fact that: first, every twelfth marriage ends in divorce; second, that since 1870 divorces have increased from 28 to 73 for every hundred thousand population; third, that adultery, since 1867, as ground for divorce, has increased 270.8 per cent.; fourth, that desertion increased 369.8 per cent.

Added to these startling figures is a vast amount of material, dramatic and literary, further elucidating this subject. Robert Herrick, in Together; Pinero, in Mid-Channel; Eugene Walter, in Paid in Full, and scores of other writers are discussing the barrenness, the monotony, the sordidness, the inadequacy of marriage as a factor for harmony and understanding.

The thoughtful social student will not content himself with the popular superficial excuse for this phenomenon. He will have to dig down deeper into the very life of the sexes to know why marriage proves so disastrous.

Edward Carpenter says that behind every marriage stands the life-long environment of the two sexes; an environment so different from each other that man and woman must remain strangers. Separated by an insurmountable wall of superstition, custom, and habit, marriage has not the potentiality of developing knowledge of, and respect for, each other, without which every union is doomed to failure.

Henrik Ibsen, the hater of all social shams, was probably the first to realize this great truth. Nora leaves her husband, not—as the stupid critic would have it—because she is tired of her responsibilities or feels the need of woman’s rights, but because she has come to know that for eight years she had lived with a stranger and borne him children. Can there be anything more humiliating, more degrading than a life-long proximity between two strangers?

No need for the woman to know anything of the man, save his income. As to the knowledge of the woman—what is there to know except that she has a pleasing appearance? We have not yet outgrown the theologic myth that woman has no soul, that she is a mere appendix to man, made out of his rib just for the convenience of the gentleman who was so strong that he was afraid of his own shadow.

Perchance the poor quality of the material whence woman comes is responsible for her inferiority. At any rate, woman has no soul—what is there to know about her? Besides, the less soul a woman has the greater her asset as a wife, the more readily will she absorb herself in her husband.

It is this slavish acquiescence to man’s superiority that has kept the marriage institution seemingly intact for so long a period. Now that woman is coming into her own, now that she is actually growing aware of herself as a being outside of the master’s grace, the sacred institution of marriage is gradually being undermined, and no amount of sentimental lamentation can stay it.

From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that marriage is her ultimate goal; therefore her training and education must be directed towards that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she is prepared for that. Yet, strange to say, she is allowed to know much less about her function as wife and mother than the ordinary artisan of his trade.

. . . . . . . . . .

Emma Goldman in 1911
. . . . . . . . . .

It is indecent and filthy for a respectable girl to know anything of the marital relation. Oh, for the inconsistency of respectability, that needs the marriage vow to turn something which is filthy into the purest and most sacred arrangement that none dare question or criticize. Yet that is exactly the attitude of the average upholder of marriage. The prospective wife and mother is kept in complete ignorance of her only asset in the competitive field—sex.

Thus she enters into life-long relations with a man only to find herself shocked, repelled, outraged beyond measure by the most natural and healthy instinct, sex. It is safe to say that a large percentage of the unhappiness, misery, distress, and physical suffering of matrimony is due to the criminal ignorance in sex matters that is being extolled as a great virtue. Nor is it at all an exaggeration when I say that more than one home has been broken up because of this deplorable fact.

If, however, woman is free and big enough to learn the mystery of sex without the sanction of State or Church, she will stand condemned as utterly unfit to become the wife of a “good” man, his goodness consisting of an empty brain and plenty of money.

Can there be anything more outrageous than the idea that a healthy, grown woman, full of life and passion, must deny nature’s demand, must subdue her most intense craving, undermine her health and break her spirit, must stunt her vision, abstain from the depth and glory of sex experience until a “good” man comes along to take her unto himself as a wife? That is precisely what marriage means. How can such an arrangement end except in failure? This is one, though not the least important, factor of marriage, which differentiates it from love.

Ours is a practical age. The time when Romeo and Juliet risked the wrath of their fathers for love, when Gretchen exposed herself to the gossip of her neighbors for love, is no more. If, on rare occasions, young people allow themselves the luxury of romance, they are taken in care by the elders, drilled and pounded until they become “sensible.”

The moral lesson instilled in the girl is not whether the man has aroused her love, but rather is it, “How much?” The important and only God of practical American life: Can the man make a living? can he support a wife? That is the only thing that justifies marriage. Gradually this saturates every thought of the girl; her dreams are not of moonlight and kisses, of laughter and tears; she dreams of shopping tours and bargain counters.

This soul poverty and sordidness are the elements inherent in the marriage institution. The State and the Church approve of no other ideal, simply because it is the one that necessitates the State and Church control of men and women.

Doubtless there are people who continue to consider love above dollars and cents. Particularly is this true of that class whom economic necessity has forced to become self-supporting. The tremendous change in woman’s position, wrought by that mighty factor, is indeed phenomenal when we reflect that it is but a short time since she has entered the industrial arena. Six million women wage workers; six million women, who have the equal right with men to be exploited, to be robbed, to go on strike; aye, to starve even.

Anything more, my lord? Yes, six million wage workers in every walk of life, from the highest brain work to the mines and railroad tracks; yes, even detectives and policemen. Surely the emancipation is complete.

Yet with all that, but a very small number of the vast army of women wage workers look upon work as a permanent issue, in the same light as does man. No matter how decrepit the latter, he has been taught to be independent, self-supporting. Oh, I know that no one is really independent in our economic treadmill; still, the poorest specimen of a man hates to be a parasite; to be known as such, at any rate.

The woman considers her position as worker transitory, to be thrown aside for the first bidder. That is why it is infinitely harder to organize women than men. “Why should I join a union? I am going to get married, to have a home.”

Has she not been taught from infancy to look upon that as her ultimate calling? She learns soon enough that the home, though not so large a prison as the factory, has more solid doors and bars. It has a keeper so faithful that naught can escape him. The most tragic part, however, is that the home no longer frees her from wage slavery; it only increases her task.

According to the latest statistics submitted before a Committee “on labor and wages, and congestion of population,” ten per cent. of the wage workers in New York City alone are married, yet they must continue to work at the most poorly paid labor in the world. Add to this horrible aspect the drudgery of housework, and what remains of the protection and glory of the home?

As a matter of fact, even the middle-class girl in marriage can not speak of her home, since it is the man who creates her sphere. It is not important whether the husband is a brute or a darling. What I wish to prove is that marriage guarantees woman a home only by the grace of her husband. There she moves about in his home, year after year, until her aspect of life and human affairs becomes as flat, narrow, and drab as her surroundings. Small wonder if she becomes a nag, petty, quarrelsome, gossipy, unbearable, thus driving the man from the house.

She could not go, if she wanted to; there is no place to go. Besides, a short period of married life, of complete surrender of all faculties, absolutely incapacitates the average woman for the outside world. She becomes reckless in appearance, clumsy in her movements, dependent in her decisions, cowardly in her judgment, a weight and a bore, which most men grow to hate and despise. Wonderfully inspiring atmosphere for the bearing of life, is it not?

But the child, how is it to be protected, if not for marriage? After all, is not that the most important consideration? The sham, the hypocrisy of it! Marriage protecting the child, yet thousands of children destitute and homeless. Marriage protecting the child, yet orphan asylums and reformatories overcrowded, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children keeping busy in rescuing the little victims from “loving” parents, to place them under more loving care, the Gerry Society. Oh, the mockery of it!

Marriage may have the power to bring the horse to water, but has it ever made him drink? The law will place the father under arrest, and put him in convict’s clothes; but has that ever stilled the hunger of the child? If the parent has no work, or if he hides his identity, what does marriage do then? It invokes the law to bring the man to “justice,” to put him safely behind closed doors; his labor, however, goes not to the child, but to the State. The child receives but a blighted memory of its father’s stripes.

As to the protection of the woman,—therein lies the curse of marriage. Not that it really protects her, but the very idea is so revolting, such an outrage and insult on life, so degrading to human dignity, as to forever condemn this parasitic institution.

It is like that other paternal arrangement—capitalism. It robs man of his birthright, stunts his growth, poisons his body, keeps him in ignorance, in poverty, and dependence, and then institutes charities that thrive on the last vestige of man’s self-respect.

The institution of marriage makes a parasite of woman, an absolute dependent. It incapacitates her for life’s struggle, annihilates her social consciousness, paralyzes her imagination, and then imposes its gracious protection, which is in reality a snare, a travesty on human character.

If motherhood is the highest fulfillment of woman’s nature, what other protection does it need, save love and freedom? Marriage but defiles, outrages, and corrupts her fulfillment. Does it not say to woman, Only when you follow me shall you bring forth life? Does it not condemn her to the block, does it not degrade and shame her if she refuses to buy her right to motherhood by selling herself?

Does not marriage only sanction motherhood, even though conceived in hatred, in compulsion? Yet, if motherhood be of free choice, of love, of ecstasy, of defiant passion, does it not place a crown of thorns upon an innocent head and carve in letters of blood the hideous epithet, Bastard? Were marriage to contain all the virtues claimed for it, its crimes against motherhood would exclude it forever from the realm of love.

Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?

Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color.

Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root. If, however, the soil is sterile, how can marriage make it bear fruit? It is like the last desperate struggle of fleeting life against death.

. . . . . . . . . .

You may also enjoy
Anarchism: What it Really Stands For, also published in 1911.
. . . . . . . . . .

Love needs no protection; it is its own protection. So long as love begets life no child is deserted, or hungry, or famished for the want of affection. I know this to be true. I know women who became mothers in freedom by the men they loved. Few children in wedlock enjoy the care, the protection, the devotion free motherhood is capable of bestowing.

The defenders of authority dread the advent of a free motherhood, lest it will rob them of their prey. Who would fight wars? Who would create wealth? Who would make the policeman, the jailer, if woman were to refuse the indiscriminate breeding of children? The race, the race! shouts the king, the president, the capitalist, the priest. The race must be preserved, though woman be degraded to a mere machine,—and the marriage institution is our only safety valve against the pernicious sex awakening of woman.

But in vain these frantic efforts to maintain a state of bondage. In vain, too, the edicts of the Church, the mad attacks of rulers, in vain even the arm of the law. Woman no longer wants to be a party to the production of a race of sickly, feeble, decrepit, wretched human beings, who have neither the strength nor moral courage to throw off the yoke of poverty and slavery. Instead she desires fewer and better children, begotten and reared in love and through free choice; not by compulsion, as marriage imposes.

Our pseudo-moralists have yet to learn the deep sense of responsibility toward the child, that love in freedom has awakened in the breast of woman. Rather would she forego forever the glory of motherhood than bring forth life in an atmosphere that breathes only destruction and death. And if she does become a mother, it is to give to the child the deepest and best her being can yield. To grow with the child is her motto; she knows that in that manner alone can she help build true manhood and womanhood.

Ibsen must have had a vision of a free mother, when, with a master stroke, he portrayed Mrs. Alving [in the play Ghosts]. She was the ideal mother because she had outgrown marriage and all its horrors, because she had broken her chains, and set her spirit free to soar until it returned a personality, regenerated and strong. Alas, it was too late to rescue her life’s joy, her Oswald; but not too late to realize that love in freedom is the only condition of a beautiful life.

Those who, like Mrs. Alving, have paid with blood and tears for their spiritual awakening, repudiate marriage as an imposition, a shallow, empty mockery. They know, whether love last but one brief span of time or for eternity, it is the only creative, inspiring, elevating basis for a new race, a new world.

In our present pygmy state love is indeed a stranger to most people. Misunderstood and shunned, it rarely takes root; or if it does, it soon withers and dies. Its delicate fiber can not endure the stress and strain of the daily grind. Its soul is too complex to adjust itself to the slimy woof of our social fabric. It weeps and moans and suffers with those who have need of it, yet lack the capacity to rise to love’s summit.

Some day, some day men and women will rise, they will reach the mountain peak, they will meet big and strong and free, ready to receive, to partake, and to bask in the golden rays of love. What fancy, what imagination, what poetic genius can foresee even approximately the potentialities of such a force in the life of men and women. If the world is ever to give birth to true companionship and oneness, not marriage, but love will be the parent.

The post “Marriage and Love” by Emma Goldman, a 1911 essay appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Because of the hoopla surrounding the centenary of The Great Gatsby in  2025, I did a similar roundup of books and stories by women writers from 1925. 

All of these books and stories following are in the public domain, so you might find free versions of them online on sites like Project Gutenberg. Many are still circulating in print form in public or university libraries; and audio versions of most are available as well.

. . . . . . . . . . . 

The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery

Canadian author L.M. Montgomery (1874 – 1942) is best known for her Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon series. The Blue Castle (1926) was two novels she intended for adults (though all her books can be enjoyed by readers of all ages; the other is A Tangled Web, 1931). While this book may not be as famous as Montgomery’s Anne and Emily series, it’s beloved by those who have discovered it, and is one of her few standalone novels.

The story’s heroine, Valancy Stirling, is considered a hopeless old maid at age twenty-nine. Infantilized and controlled by her prim and eccentric family, she takes refuge in daydreams of her “Blue Castle” and reading nature books by an author known as John Foster.

When Valancy is diagnosed with a heart ailment that she’s told will kill her within a year, she suddenly feels liberated from her family, their judgements, and low expectations. She sets out to do just as she pleases, and so, the real story of Valancy’s life begins.

It’s best to read the book without knowing too much about the story in advance so that it can delight and surprise as it unfolds without spoilers. More about The Blue Castle.

. . . . . . . . . . . 

Enough Rope:
A Book of Light Verse by Dorothy Parker

It’s almost a cliché to say that Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) was known for her acid wit, but that’s an accurate way to describe her acerbic style. Enough Rope: Poems by Dorothy Parker (1926) was her first published collection of verse. This collection includes the much-anthologized verses “Résumé” and “One Perfect Rose.”

In addition to verse, Parker wrote short stories, essays, and reviews. She was one of the founding members of the Algonquin Roundtable, an exclusive group of eminent New York City writers in the early twentieth century.

Parker was self-aware enough to know that she wasn’t a great poet. Her verses — in turn witty, funny, reflective, and wise — were often tinged with sadness and disappointment. In the introduction to The Portable Dorothy Parker, an omnibus of both short stories and poems, W. Somerset Maugham observed: 

“Admirable as are Dorothy Parker’s stories, I think it is in her poems that she displays the quintessence of her talent … she has made little songs out of her great sorrows … And how fresh and various they are! Though beautifully polished, they have an air of spontaneity and none can know better than a writer what patient industry is needed to acquire that quality …”

Read Enough Rape in full here.

. . . . . . . . . . . 

Show Boat by Edna Ferber

Show Boat by Edna Ferber, another 1926 classic, tells the story of three generations of performers on a floating theater, the Cotton Blossom. As the titled show boat travels down the Mississippi River from the 1880s to the 1920s, readers get a glimpse of a forgotten form of American entertainment.

In that era, floating theaters stopped in river towns that normally didn’t have access to high quality performances because of their distance and isolation from major urban centers. Edna Ferber captured the spirit of this way of life with her skillful storytelling and captivating characters.

Through the character of Julie, she also sensitively touched on racial topics that were quite controversial at the time — mixed marriage (then called “miscegenation, and in most states, illegal) and the concept of “passing.”

When the novel came out, it was praised more for its storytelling than as a masterpiece of literature, which was typical of how Ferber’s sprawling tales were receive.d And like many of Ferber’s works, it has a cinematic and theatrical quality. Read more about Show Boat about how Show Boat went from page to stage to screen (it was actually filmed twice).

. . . . . . . . . . . 

Precious Bane by Mary Webb

Precious Bane, the 1926 novel by English author Mary Webb, is a coming–of–age novel set in the English countryside. Our heroine, Prue Sarn, is a sharply observant young woman of Shropshire during the Napoleonic Era who has been born with a disfigured lip.

Her harelip leads the others in her superstitious village to treat her as an outsider due to the association it shares with witchcraft. Despite the hardships of rural life, her disfiguration and its resulting perceptions Prue endearingly finds beauty and compassion for all around her. 

 The colorful cast of Precious Bane includes Prue’s brother Gideon, whose temperament is the of polar opposite of hers. Gideon, the inheritor of the family farm, cannot see anything in his environment outside of its potential to be exploited for personal monetary gain.

In contrast Prue’s romantic interest Kester Woodseaves, a skilled weaver, shares a profound empathy for his world and sees this same beauty in. English traditions and folklore fill out the world around Prue as her disfigurement encourages the suspicion of her community and ultimately the false accusation of murder and witchcraft to which Prue must defend.

Ultimately Mary Webb gifts her audience with a satisfying conclusion fitting for its kindhearted and empathetic protagonist. Read more about Precious Bane.

. . . . . . . . . . . 

Lolly Willowes
by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Lolly Willowes was the first novel by modernist author Sylvia Townsend Warner. It’s now considered an early feminist classic. A comedy of manners, this novel is steeped in social satire.

In his piece on this novel, Literary Ladies Guide contributor Frances Booth presents two reviews from 1926, when the book was originally published. The Scotsman’s review began:

“There is a piquant charm in this quiet chronicle of the life of an old spinster who makes a compact with the Devil, throws her relations to the winds, and asserts her right to stay out all night in the hills.

If it be objected that the patient Aunt Lolly whose submissive girlhood, submissive sisterhood, and submissive aunthood are so delicately and with fine persistence pictured by the writer could never develop into such a “monstrosity” as a witch, then the objector is referred to the exquisite old lady herself, who, it is certain, will charm doubt into conviction.”

A more recent look back at Lolly Willowes in the Guardian lauds it as “an elegantly enchanting tale that transcends its era.” Read more about Lolly Willowes.

. . . . . . . . . . . 

“Sweat” – a short story
by Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston’s short story, “Sweat,” is nuanced and eloquently compact. Hurston maximizes each word, object, character, and plot point to create an impassioned and enlightening narrative.

Hurston addresses a number of themes, such as the trials of femininity, which she explores with compelling and efficient symbolism. In her introduction to the 1997 anthology entirely devoted to the story (“Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston), editor Cheryl A. Wall wrote:

“The many levels on which ‘Sweat’ can be read make it one of Zora Neale Hurston’s most enduring works. It was published in 1926, early in Hurston’s career, indeed, long before she had dedicated herself to the profession of writing.”

“Sweat” was originally published in Fire!! Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists (1926), and is now in the public domain, so you can read it in full here.

The post Literary Centenaries 2026: Classic Fiction by Women Writers appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

A prolific writer of poetry, novels, biography and commentary in vernacular French, she earned a living with her writing and is considered the first professional woman writer in Europe.

Christine de Pizan’s husband died of the plague in 1389, a year after her father’s death, leaving her to support her children and her mother as a court writer. This was considered a male occupation.

She skillfully used patronage in turbulent political times, with royalty commissioning her work, and became a prolific writer, with forty known works which include poetry, novels and biography, as well as literary, historical, philosophical, political and religious commentary.

Christine was personally involved in the production of her books, supervising the production of beautifully illustrated manuscripts that were acquired by fellow intellectuals for their own libraries.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . .

The Book of the City of Ladies

Why did Christine de Pizan write The Book of the City of Ladies (Le Livre de la Cité des Dames)?

It began with a literary controversy known as “The Debate of the Rose” (“La Querelle de la Rose”) involving several intellectuals. As the only woman involved, she questioned some parts of Jean de Meun’s long poem “Le Roman de la Rose” (1275), a continuation of an earlier medieval poem (1240) with the same title written by the French poet Guillaume de Lorris.

Jean de Meun is often considered the greatest of French medieval poets, and “Le Roman de la Rose” was possibly the most read work in Europe in medieval times and beyond, hence its influence on society. It also criticized women, courtly love, and marriage, depicting at length the supposed vices of women and the means by which men could outwit them.

In The Book of the City of Ladies, Christine takes aim at the misogynistic views expressed by Jean de Meun in  “Romance of the Rose” by defending female virtues through many examples of famous biblical, historical and mythological women.

Christine first criticized Jean de Meun’s misogynistic views in her three essays “Epistle to the God of Love” (“Épître au Dieu d’Amour,” 1399), “The Tale of the Rose” (“Le Dit de la Rose,” 1402) and “Letters on the Debate of the Rose” (“Querelle du Roman de la Rose,” 1403).

. . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Then she wrote The Book of the City of Ladies (Le Livre de la Cité des Dames, 1405) to give a passionate and well-organized defense of women by showing their many contributions to society.

In this work, she builds up a symbolic city named the City of Ladies (hence the title) by dialoguing with the three allegorical figures Reason, Justice and Rectitude sent to help her in this task. Step by step, Christine chooses 165 famous biblical, historical and mythological women as the building blocks for the outside walls, the inside walls and the buildings of the City of Ladies.

Her main source of inspiration was De Mulieribus Claris (Concerning Famous Women, 1361–62), an earlier collection of women’s biographies written in Latin prose by the Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio. It was the first compilation devoted exclusively to women in medieval western literature, with the biographies of 106 historical and mythological women.

After the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in 1450, The Book of the City of Ladies was printed several times in the 15th and 16th centuries. It became a major source of inspiration for several French women writers, including Gabrielle de Bourbon, Anne of France, Marguerite de Navarre and Georgette de Montenay.

Christine’s book, written in vernacular French, was translated into English by Brian Anslay, an English administrator to King Henry VII and King Henry VIII, and published in 1521 as the Boke of the Cyte of Ladies. Some early printed editions didn’t reference Christine de Pizan as the author, which was unfortunately quite common for women’s writings at the time and beyond.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Christine wrote a follow-up titled The Treasure of the City of Ladies (Le Trésor de la Cité des Dames), a manuscript dated 1405, also known as The Book of the Three Virtues (Le Livre des Trois Vertus). It is meant as a manual of education for women, with advice about how to cultivate useful qualities, including a good education.

These two works are now considered some of the earliest feminist writings. They have drawn the fascination of modern feminists such as French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Christine de Pizan presents her Book to Margaret of Burgundy
from The Treasure of the City of Ladies
. . . . . . . . . . . .

Contributed by Marie Lebert. Edited by Nava Atlas, Literary Ladies Guide. See more entries by Marie Lebert, most profiling women translators.

The post Christine de Pizan and The Book of the City of Ladies appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Novels have long provided rich narrative material for film, though it seems that this practice is less common that it was in the past. At least in the first part of the 20th century, well-regarded bestsellers were regularly adapted to film. This could be relative, though; so many more books are being published and vying for attention in the present.

Following these, you’ll find a list of a dozen more Oscar-nominated and winning films that helped cement their original novels in the public imagination, even if some of their authors are not well remembered today.

. . . . . . . . . . 

Cimarron (1931)

Cimarron was a 1930 novel by the prolific Edna Ferber. It was quickly adapted to film, earning accolades and winning the Academy Award for Best Picture (then called Best Production) in 1931 It was the first (and remained one of only a handful of) western to win this major award.

Though it wasn’t the first of Ferber’s novels to be adapted to film, it was a far more expansive (and expensive) production. It paved the way for more Hollywood blockbusters based on other Ferber novels, including Showboat, Giant, and others.

Cimarron takes on the subject of the Oklahoma territory Land Run of 1889. The film was nominated for Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Director, though it won only in the categories of Adaptation and Art Direction, other then the top award of Best Production.

Cimarron was remade in 1960, but failed to receive the same level of accolades as the original. Learn more about Cimarron — the book and film.

. . . . . . . . . . 

Gone with the Wind (1939)

Gone With the Wind — the 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell — was a publishing phenomenon from the moment it rolled off the presses. MacMillan published GWTW at a time when the book industry was still suffering from the results of the Great Depression.

At least one person was concerned about the enterprise: Mitchell herself. “I do hope they sell five thousand copies,” she remarked, “so they don’t lose money.” She needn’t have worried: its first day, GWTW sold 50,000 copies. No wonder Hollywood snapped it up.

Over time, Gone With the Wind’s revisionist view of the antebellum South and enslaved people has been, to put it mildly, reconsidered. At the time, the faithful adaptation was a box-office blockbuster. It was nominated for 15 Academy Awards, and won for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Editing.

There’s much to critique about the book and film, and even how the awards played out — Hattie McDaniel, the first Black actress to win Best Supporting Actress — was made to sit at a separate table from her colleagues at the award ceremony.

There’s no excuse for romanticizing slavery, but Margaret Mitchell (who died at age 48 after being struck by a car in Atlanta) burnished her legacy in one surprising way. With her earnings, she secretly funded the medical school education of some twenty Black students at Morehouse College. They had no idea who their benefactor was until decades later.

. . . . . . . . . . 

Rebecca (1940)

The 1940 film version of Rebecca, based on Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel of the same name, is a psychological thriller with a nod to the literary gothic tradition. The black-and-white film, which captured the moody, mysterious feel of the book, was the first American film by director Alfred Hitchcock.

Joan Fontaine starred in the role of the naïve young woman who marries the brooding widower Maxim de Winter, portrayed by Laurence Olivier. Rebecca, the deceased first wife of Maxim de Winter, is never seen in the film. Yet she casts a powerful shadow over the inhabitants of Manderlay castle. The suspense builds until we learn just why she continues to have such a grip on the living.

This film classic is a faithful adaptation of du Maurier’s masterpiece. Because of the Hayes Code, one important detail was changed; it would be a spoiler to reveal it here, so as always, it’s recommended to read the book before seeing the film.

Rebecca was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won two — Best Picture and Cinematography (black and white). Notably, it was nominated for Best Director (Hitchcock), Best Actress (Joan Fontaine), Best Actor (Laurence Olivier), and Best Adapted Screenplay. It appears on numerous best film lists, including the American Film Institute’s (AFI) 100 Years, 100 Thrills.

. . . . . . . . . . 

Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)

Gentleman’s Agreement, the classic 1947 film, was based on the novel of the same name by Laura Z. Hobson, which was published the same year. Hobson doubted any publisher would want to take it on, let alone that it would become an award-winning film.

It’s the story of Philip Schuyler Green, a journalist who poses as a Jew in order to investigate antisemitism in post-World War II New York City and environs. Though it showed only a narrow slice of what was sometimes considered “genteel” antisemitism centered in New York City’s upper class, the film sensitively explores the topic and is quite true to the book.

Gentleman’s Agreement won Best Picture of 1947, with Elia Kazan, getting the award for Best Director. Gregory Peck won for Best Actor, Dorothy Maguire for Best Actress. Though the film seems tame by today’s standards, it smashed Hollywood taboos by dealing with the topic of antisemitism.

. . . . . . . . . . 

To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)

The 1962 film version of To Kill a Mockingbird cemented Harper Lee’s 1960 classic reputation as a Great American Novel. With Gregory Peck as Atticus and two children from Alabama — Mary Badham and Phillip Alford — as Scout and Jem, the film was completely true to the spirit of the novel.

Harper Lee originally wanted the role of Atticus Finch to go to Spencer Tracy, even writing him a letter to ask that he star in the film. He was unavailable, but as it turned out, there couldn’t have been a more fitting actor to portray Atticus than Gregory Peck. Lee came to came to adore him, and the two remained friends until Peck’s death in 2003.

In recent years, TCAM has been viewed with a different lens, especially after the publication of Go Set a Watchman (2015), which was originally promoted as a sequel. Now it has come to be viewed as a first draft of TCAM. Watchman follows the twenty-something Scout as she return home to Alabama to visit her father, Atticus. Watchman upset readers who were displeased to find that Atticus, TCAM’s heroic and beloved lawyer and widowed father, was actually a bigot.

It’s interesting to ponder whether the new framing has affected the stature of the film, as it has the book. The film was nominated for 8 Academy Awards and won 3: Best Actor, Adapted Screenplay, and Art Direction.

. . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . .

More Oscar-nominated films based on novels by women writers

Here are a dozen more entries, is by no means an exhaustive list!

1931 – Bad Girl (based on the 1928 novel by Viña Delmar) – nominated for 3 awards, including Best Picture; won for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.

1942 – Now, Voyager (based on the 1941 novel by Olive Prouty) – nominated for 3 awards, won for Best Score.

1944 – Laura (based on the 1943 novel by Vera Caspery) – nominated for 5 awards, won for Best Cinematography, B&W.

1945 – A Tree Goes in Brooklyn (based on the 1943 novel by Betty Smith) – nominated for 3 Academy Awards, won 2: Best Supporting Actor James Dunn, Special Juvenile Award, Peggy Ann Garner.

1956 – Giant (based on the 1952 novel by by Edna Ferber) – nominated for 9 awards, won for Best Director, George Stevens.

1956 – The King and I (based on the 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Langdon – nominated for 9 Academy Awards, won 5, including Best Actor for Yul Brynner, and several technical awards.

1957 – Peyton Place (based on the 1956 novel by Grace Metalious) – nominated for 9 awards, won none.

1959 – Gigi (based on the 1944 novella by Colette) – nominated for 9 awards, won all of them, including Best Picture, Direction, and adapted screenplay.

1994 – Little Women (based on the 1868 novel by Louisa May Alcott) – nominated for 3 Academy wards, including Winona Ryder for Best Actress; won none.

1975 – Murder on the Orient Express (based on the 1934 novel by Agatha Christie) – nominated for 6 academy awards, won one, Best Supporting Actress Ingrid Bergman.

2019 – Little Women (again! based on the 1868 novel by Louisa May Alcott) – nominated for 6 academy awards, including Best Picture, Actress, Adapted Screenplay; won for Best Costume Design.

2022 – Women Talking, based on the 2018 novel by Miriam Toews – nominated for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay; won for the latter.

The post 5 Classic Novels by Women Writers that Became Oscar-Winning Films appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

The best first lines surely are evocative, and set the stage for what’s to come, like this one from Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. “Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” 

And what devoted reader isn’t familiar with the first line of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice — “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

Compared with this memorable opening, P and P ends with a thud: “With the Gardiners they were always on the most intimate terms. Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.”

Say what? It reads as if the usually brilliant Jane Austen ran out of steam when it came to the last  sentence of her most iconic work. It’s quite a run-on, too!

. . . . . . . . . . 

. . . . . . . . . . 

We can say the same for the end of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. In my memory (and I reread the novel just a few years ago), the end revolved around the memorable line “Reader, I married him.”

While that iconic line is indeed in the last section, it continues to meander for a bit before ending with: “My Master,” he says, “has forewarned me. Daily He announces more distinctly,—‘Surely I come quickly!’ and hourly I more eagerly respond,—‘Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!’”

I honestly didn’t remember this last line at all. I’ll have to take Charlotte to task when I see her in heaven.

Here I am, critiquing two of the most iconic writers in the English language. It follows from noodling over how a novelist (or memoirist for that matter) decides how to end a story — it must be a torturous decision! The best last lines, to my mind, pull the narrative together and cement the reading experience, whether we later consciously remember them or not.

I’ve read all but one of the novels whose last lines I’ve collected here (that would be Middlemarch by George Eliot — I’ve yet to get through this tome!), but reading these last lines presented following makes me want to turn back to the beginning of these books and start anew. 

. . . . . . . . . . 

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)

 

“… my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.”
      He sprang from the cabin-window as he said this, upon the ice raft which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.

. . . . . . . . . . 

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)

 

I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.

. . . . . . . . . . 

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868)

 

Touched to the heart, Mrs. March could only stretch out her arms, as if to gather children and grandchildren to herself, and say, with face and voice full of motherly love, gratitude, and humility…
      “Oh, my girls, however long you may live, I never can wish you a greater happiness than this!”

. . . . . . . . . . 

Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871)

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

. . . . . . . . . . 

The Awakening by Kate Chopin (1899)

 

Edna heard her father’s voice and her sister Margaret’s. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air.

. . . . . . . . . . 

The Secret Garden
by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911)

 

Across the lawn came the Master of Misselthwaite and he looked as many of them had never seen him. And by his side with his head up in the air and his eyes full of laughter walked as strongly and steadily as any boy in Yorkshire—Master Colin!

. . . . . . . . . . 

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1920)

 

He sat for a long time on the bench in the thickening dusk, his eyes never turning from the balcony. At length a light shone through the windows, and a moment later a man-servant came out on the balcony, drew up the awnings, and closed the shutters.
      At that, as if it had been the signal he waited for, Newland Archer got up slowly and walked back alone to his hotel.

. . . . . . . . . . 

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925)

 

“I will come,” said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?
     It is Clarissa, he said.
     For there she was.

. . . . . . . . . . 

Their Eyes Were Watching God 
by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)

 

The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.

. . . . . . . . . . 

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938)

 

The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.

. . . . . . . . . . 

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (1962)

 

Mrs Whatsit said breathlessly, “Oh, my darlings, I’m sorry we don’t have time to say good-bye to you properly. You see, we have to—” But they never learned what it was that Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which had to do, for there was a gust of wind, and they were gone.

The post Not-so-Famous Last Lines from Classic Novels by Women Writers appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

At right: Genevieve Forbes Herrick, who is very rarely depected in a photo.

The American newsroom of the first decades of the twentieth century, where front-page news was produced, was all but closed to women. Ishbell Ross, a respected journalist of the 1920s, believed that all city editors secretly thought: “Girls, we like you well enough, but we don’t altogether trust you.”

At the dawn of the 1900s, American journalism was changing at a dizzying pace. In newsrooms of major city papers, the clacking of typewriters had replaced the scribbling of pens. The linotype machine revolutionized the printing process. Now, each letter of type didn’t have to be set by hand.

Just as important, the kind of splashy undercover stories that made stunt girl reporters like Nellie Bly and Winifred Bonfils famous was falling out of favor. Investigative journalism, newly respectable, relied on careful research and fact-checking instead of wild set-ups and dramatic storytelling of earlier times.

Something else that was changing — finally — was the number of female journalists. In the 1880s there were just a few hundred in the entire country. By 1900 that number grew to nearly 2,200, and by the end of the 1930s, there were about 16,000 women in American journalism.

Sure, it was a great improvement. But the majority of “girl reporters,” as they were called, were assigned to women’s pages or features that weren’t front page news — society, home, fashion, and family.          

Of course, there was nothing wrong (and there still isn’t) with covering those topics — if that’s what a woman reporter chose to do. But for the most part, female journalists weren’t given that choice and continued to be unwelcome in city newsrooms. That doesn’t mean that women had failed.

Women’s pages, as they were called, helped sell papers. By the 1930s, women were serving as editors, producing longer features and Sunday magazines, and working in business, art, mechanical, and promotional departments. Here, we’ll look at the careers of three women journalists whose hard news reporting made it to the front page despite the odds.

. . . . . . . . . .

Ida Tarbell

Ida M. Tarbell in 1904

Ida M. Tarbell (1857 – 1944) was known as “muckraker” — a word coined by president Theodore Roosevelt describing journalists who exposed big business’s shady dealings. He didn’t mean it as a compliment. Ida Tarbell’s reputation as a muckraker made her a pioneer in the new brand of detailed investigative journalism. She’s still considered one of the best ever.

Her most famous investigation was of Standard Oil’s unfair business practices, called The History of Standard Oil. This title might sound like a snoozefest, but Tarbell wrote the nineteen-part series in a way that captured readers’ imaginations and made them eager for the next installments.

Through her careful research, Tarbell proved that corporate monopolies hurt the public. Her series led to the 1911 Supreme Court decision that ruled against Standard Oil and broke it apart. Though this was the highlight of her career, Ida never stopped writing.

Tarbell was mainly interested in politics and presidents and was a Lincoln scholar. Strangely, she was against women’s right to vote, making her unpopular with other female journalists and reformers of her time. Still, whenever you see a list of most influential journalists of all time — male or female — Ida Tarbell’s name is always near the top.

. . . . . . . . . .

Genevieve Forbes Herrick

Herrick went undercover to investigate immigration in 1921

Genevieve Forbes Herrick (1894 – 1962) bridged the gap between stunt reporting and the newer breed of investigative journalist. Brilliant and ambitious, she joined the Chicago Tribune in 1921 with a master’s degree to her credit.

The Tribune wanted to steer her toward the women’s pages, but she refused. Instead, Herrick talked her editors into letting her pose as a poor Irish girl to experience what it was like to immigrate to America. Her reporting recounted the terror of the ocean voyage from Ireland and the terrible treatment immigrants faced after arriving through Ellis Island.

Herrick told the hidden truth of how women were forced to strip for unneeded medical exams; how passengers were kicked and shoved into lines by authorities; and how newly arrived parents and children were forcibly separated. Genevieve was asked to testify before the House of Representatives, which resulted in improved conditions at Ellis Island.

Because this exposé was so successful, the Tribune let Herrick report on whatever topics she chose. Through the 1920s and 1930s, she covered politics and promoted women running for office. One of them was Ruth Hanna McCormick, who ran for the House of Representatives in 1928 — and won.

Herrick’s reporting was fearless, whether she was going after Chicago’s corrupt politicians or the city’s mob bosses.

. . . . . . . . . .

Anne O’Hare McCormick

Anne O’Hare McCormick, 1941
(photo from the collection of the Library of Congress)

Anne O’Hare McCormick (1880–1954) started out freelancing for newspapers and magazines. Her career chugged along steadily, though writing about this and that wasn’t very exciting.

That changed in 1921 when her husband was sent to Europe for his work. She asked the New York Times’ managing editor if she could send him reports from overseas. For a woman to be a foreign correspondent was practically unheard of, but the editor agreed.

McCormick plunged right into some of the most challenging topics, including the first in-depth look at the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s rise to power. She documented and reported on the gathering storm of fascism in Europe.

In 1936, McCormick became the first woman to be appointed to the New York Times’ editorial board. The paper’s publisher instructed her: “You are to be the ‘freedom’ editor. It will be your job to stand up … and shout whenever freedom is interfered with in any part of the world.” The following year Anne won the Pulitzer Prize for foreign correspondence — another female first.  

She continued to be an active journalist through the World War II years, and was called “the expert the experts looked up to.” Anne O’Hare McCormick often sounded the first alarm about dangerous dictators. She was trusted by American presidents and respected by everyday readers who learned about the world from her popular column, “Abroad.”

. . . . . . . . . . . .

More about trailblazing journalists on Literary Ladies Guide

• Radio Days: Trailblazing Women Journalists on the Airwaves
• Colonial America’s Intrepid Women Newspaper Publishers
• See the entire category featuring historic women journalists

The post Tarbell, Herrick & McCormick: Women Who Fought to Report Front Page News appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.