Author: Constance Fenimore Woolson Publisher: Library of America ISBN: 1598536516 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 710
Book Description
A landmark of literary recovery: the first major edition of an overlooked genius who in her lifetime was considered 19th-century America's greatest woman writer In the eyes of her contemporaries, Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840-1894) ranked with George Eliot as one of the two greatest women writers of the English language. She wrote fiction of remarkable intellectual power that outsold those of her male contemporaries Henry James and Willian Dean Howells. James enshrined memories of his long, complicated friendship with Woolson in The Beast in the Jungle and The Wings of the Dove, and more recently Colm Tobin treated the relationship in his novel The Master. But Woolson's close association with James, and her likely suicide in Venice, have tended to overshadow her own literary accomplishments, pigeonholing her as a martyr to the male literary establishment. This volume, the most comprehensive gathering of Woolson's stories to date, represents the culmination of decades of recovery work done by scholars, and puts the focus back on the work, where it belongs. Set variously in the Great Lakes region, the post-Civil War South, and Europe, Woolson's short stories often concern outsiders of one kind or another--prophets and misfits living in remote landscapes, uneducated coal miners, impoverished spinsters, neglected nuns, a haunted caretaker of the dead, destitute southerners, and female artists driven to extreme behavior as they seek the admiration or approval of established (male) critics or writers. Woolson's minute realism captures both the social texture of her time and the inner emotional lives of these overlooked and marginalized characters. Most of all her writings startle us with their simmering intensity, their sensual descriptions of the environment, and refusal to smooth out the ambiguities and tensions that inevitably result from human efforts to communicate and connect. Her fiction is deeply human, resonating with a power across the centuries that makes them remarkably modern for today's readers.
Author: Anne Boyd Rious Publisher: National Geographic Books ISBN: 0393245098 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
"Biography at its best aims at resurrection. Anne Boyd Rioux has brought the novelist Constance Fenimore Woolson back to life for us. Hurrah!" —Robert D. Richardson, author of the Bancroft Prize–winning William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840–1894), who contributed to Henry James’s conception of his heroine Isabelle Archer in The Portrait of a Lady, was one of the most accomplished American writers of the nineteenth century. Yet today the best-known (and most-misunderstood) facts of her life are her relationship with James and her probable suicide in Venice. This first full-length biography of Woolson provides a fuller picture that reaffirms her literary stature. Uncovering new sources, Anne Boyd Rioux evokes Woolson’s dramatic life. She was a grand-niece of James Fenimore Cooper and was born in New Hampshire, but her family’s ill fortunes drove them west to Cleveland. Raised to be a conventional woman, Woolson was nonetheless thrust by her father’s death into the role of breadwinner, and yet, as a writer, she reached for critical as much as monetary reward. Known for her powerfully realistic and empathetic portraits of post Civil–War American life, Woolson created compelling and subtle portrayals of the rural Midwest, Reconstruction-era South, and the formerly Spanish Florida, to which she traveled with her invalid mother. After her mother’s death, Woolson, with help from her sister, moved to Europe where expenses were lower, living mostly in England and Italy and spending several months in Egypt. While abroad, she wrote finely crafted foreign-set stories that presage Edith Wharton’s work of the next generation. In this rich biography, Rioux reveals an exceptionally gifted and committed artist who pursued and received serious recognition despite the difficulties faced by female authors of her day. Throughout, Rioux goes deep into Woolson’s character, her fight against depression, her sources for writing, and her intimate friendships, including with Henry James, painting an engrossing portrait of a woman and writer who deserves to be more widely known today.
Author: Constance Fenimore Woolson Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 0393352013 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
To celebrate her forthcoming biography of Constance Fenimore Woolson, Anne Boyd Rioux has selected the best of this classic writer’s stories. Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840–1894) was one of the few nineteenth-century women writers considered the equal of her male peers. Harper & Brothers was so enamored of her work that the firm agreed to publish whatever she could write. In this gathering, Rioux has chosen fiction over the course of Woolson’s life, including “In Sloane Street,” never published since it first appeared in Harper’s Bazaar. Woolson’s stories travel from the rural Midwest to the deep South and then across the Atlantic to Italy and England. Her strong characters and indelible settings provide continuity throughout this collection as do her concerns with passion, creativity, imagination, and the demands of society. Whether portraying the keeper of a Union soldiers’ cemetery in the defeated South, a woman writer whose genius goes unrecognized, or the ex-pat denizens of Florence, Woolson’s deft characterization and subtlety create a broad landscape of Americans and their ways no matter where they lived.
Author: Anne Boyd Rioux Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 0393254747 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 255
Book Description
“[An] affectionate and perceptive tribute.”—Wendy Smith, Boston Globe In Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, Anne Boyd Rioux brings a fresh and engaging look at the circumstances leading Louisa May Alcott to write Little Women and why this beloved story of family and community ties set in the Civil War has resonated with audiences across time.
Author: Edith Wharton Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1649741464 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 198
Book Description
Kate Clephane has lived in exile in France since leaving her husband and infant daughter. She is being called back to New York by her now adult daughter to attend her daughter’s wedding. Complicating already complicated matters her daughter is engaged to her one time lover Chris Fenno, a man who cannot be trusted, and worse yet Kate is still deeply in love with him. A novel of scandal and shame and the upper class.
Author: Constance Fenimore Woolson
Author: Constance Fenimore Woolson
Author: Anne Boyd Rious
Author: E. Cobham Brewer
Author: Constance Fenimore Woolson
Author: Edith Wharton
Author: Anne Boyd Rioux
Author: Edith Wharton
Author: Constance Fenimore Woolson
Author: Constance Fenimore Woolson