The October 2021 meeting surveyed the writings of early 20th century female authors. Books by American, British, Danish, and Irish writers were presented. With very little duplication among the members, thirteen different authors were discussed, most of whom had prolific writing careers. Most of the female writers discussed are easily recognizable literary figures, but a few lesser-known authors who wrote mainly nonfiction were also examined. Two volumes—presentation copies with inscriptions and an amazing provenance—by one of those unfamiliar authors lead off this survey.
Ida Husted Harper (1851 – 1931)
Ida Husted Harper was an American author, journalist, and
suffragist. She is most recognized for
her biography of suffragist Susan B. Anthony (1820 – 1906), which Anthony invited
her to write. Harper published the
2-volume The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony in 1898. Harper published a third volume in 1908, two
years after Anthony's death. Prior to
the third volume of Anthony's biography, Harper and Anthony collaborated on a History
of Woman Suffrage published in 1902; this book became known as Volume
Four. Following Anthony's death, Harper
continued the work, writing Volumes Five and Six (1922) herself. The six-volume set of The Life and Work of
Susan B. Anthony in 3 volumes and the History of Woman Suffrage in 3
volumes is collectively considered the complete work. In addition to Harper and Anthony, the History
of Woman Suffrage series was additionally produced by two other prominent
suffragists, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage.
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| The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony |
Harper, Ida Husted. The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony. 2 volumes. Indianapolis and Kansas City: The Bowen-Merrill Company, 1898. First editions of the original 2-volume biography. Both volumes are inscribed by the subject, Susan B. Anthony, to Sarah M. Gage, daughter of Frances Dana Gage, a notable suffragist, abolitionist, and author. Anthony inscribed and dated the books on Christmas day, December 25, 1905, two and a half months before her death. The books were kept in the Gage family, documented by subsequent inscriptions, as Sarah M. Gage later presented them to her sister-in-law, Sarah Sanborn Gage.
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| Gage family inscriptions |
Edith Wharton (1862 – 1937)
Edith Wharton (née Jones) was an American novelist and short
story writer who published 46 books from 1878 to 1937. She published 15 novels, 7 novellas, 11 short
story collections, 3 poetry books, 9 nonfiction titles including her
autobiography, and one anthology as editor.
Wharton's writing often explored themes of social reform and social mores
related to the excesses of the Gilded Age.
She was born into an upper-class New York family and drew upon her insider
knowledge of "American aristocracy" to portray the lives and morals
of the Gilded Age's benefactors. Her
writing dared to lift the lid on the society in which she lived. Wharton was the first female to win the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921 for The Age of Innocence (1920).
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| The House of Mirth and The Fruit of the Tree |
Wharton, Edith. The House of Mirth. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1914. A volume from Scribner's uniform collected editions of the works of Edith Wharton. The House of Mirth was first serialized in Scribner's Magazine beginning in January 1905; it was first published in book form in 1905. One of her early works about New York high society, Wharton's story sought to critique "a society so relentlessly materialistic and self-serving that it casually destroys what is most beautiful and blameless within it." Wharton's pastor described it in a letter to her as, "a terrible but just arraignment of the social misconduct which begins in folly and ends in moral and spiritual death."
Wharton, Edith. The
Fruit of the Tree. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1914. A volume from
Scribner's uniform collected editions of the works of Edith Wharton. First published in 1907, this lesser-known
Wharton title stirred much controversy when it came out because of Wharton's
blunt treatment of untenable labor conditions and management's concern with
maximizing profits. While a fictional
tale, Wharton's psychological and social portraiture raised profound ethical
questions about industrial standards and practices of the time.
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| The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories and Ethan Frome |
Wharton, Edith. The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories and Ethan Frome. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1914. A volume from Scribner's uniform collected editions of the works of Edith Wharton. The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories was first published in 1908. Wharton's fourth short story collection contains seven morality stories and showcases her ability to write vastly different characters from story to story. The novella Ethan Frome was first published in 1911. It is a study in suffering which raises difficult moral questions about the "American economic and cultural realities that produced and allowed such suffering."
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| The Children |
Wharton, Edith. The Children. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1928. Third printing. The Children tells of seven stepsiblings escaping the constant back-and-forth shuttling between their parents. They flee under the watchful eye of the eldest sister and their protective nanny when they stumble into a chance encounter with a traveling stranger who happens to be an acquaintance of the children's parents. This later Wharton novel continues themes of abandonment, pseudo-adoption or family adoption, and family secrets found in her earlier works.
This copy of The Children came from the Robert
McNamara estate and Diana Byfield McNamara book collection.
Willa Cather (1873 – 1947)
Wilella Sibert Cather was an American novelist, short story
writer, and poet known for her stories of life on the Great Plains. She published 16 books in her lifetime,
including 2 poetry collections, 12 novels, and 4 short story collections. A fifth collection of short stories was
completed and submitted before her death but published posthumously. Two additional volumes of collected stories
were published later. Cather won the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1923 for One of Ours (1922); she was the
second woman to win the prize, behind Edith Wharton.
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| My Antonia |
Cather, Willa. My Antonia. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918. First Editions Library facsimile edition, with slipcase. The story as originally written by Cather was repeatedly rejected by potential publishers. Cather's editor at McClure's Magazine suggested she rewrite it from the main character's viewpoint. Cather asserted she chose to write it in first-person narration because she believed stories portraying deep emotion were most effectively narrated by a character in the story. The 1918 edition opens with a conversation between an author-narrator—presumably Cather herself—and an older version of the main character, Jim Burden, before Jim's first-person narration begins. Cather later agreed with the publisher to cut that introduction from the 1926 revised edition and subsequent printings.
Karen Blixen / "Isak Dinesen" (1885 – 1962)
Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke (née Dinesen) was a
Danish author who wrote works in Danish and English. Her earliest works in Danish, written in her
early 20s, were published under the pen name Osceola; she published her first
work using her given name in 1926. For
her works written in English, she used the pseudonym Isak Dinesen. She also used the pseudonyms Tania Blixen in
German-speaking countries and Pierre Andrézel for French. In addition to her first four works published
in Danish literary journals, Blixen published 7 books in her lifetime. Four more books were published posthumously,
as were three other collections of previously unpublished writings.
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| Last Tales and Ehrengard |
Dinesen, Isak. Last Tales. New York: Random House, 1957. The 12 short stories in this collection were written over a span of about 20 years while Blixen was also attempting to write a novel, which was never published, and three other short story collections. She began compiling stories in 1953 though the book was not published until 1957. The stories in Last Tales were originally written in English; Blixen translated them into Danish herself for concurrent publication as Sidste fortællinger.
Dinesen, Isak. Ehrengard. New York: Random House, 1963. The first posthumously published Dinesen
book, released shortly after her death. The
story was reportedly written during the summer of 1962, months before Blixen's
death. The publisher of the Italian
translation described it as being "written in a prodigious Saint Martin's
summer by the old and sick Blixen, on the threshold of death." Then again, that same Italian publisher also
thought Isak Dinesen was a man!
"Marjorie Bowen" (1885 – 1952)
Margaret Gabrielle Vere Long (née Campbell) was a British
author who wrote exclusively under pseudonyms, publishing 160 books during her
lifetime. She wrote 114 books as
Marjorie Bowen consisting mostly of historical romances, popular history, and
biography. Under the pen name Jospeh
Shearing, she published 17 mystery novels inspired by true-life crimes. Under the alias George Preedy, she published
27 non-supernatural horror novels; and, as Robert Paye she published 2 novels
of supernatural fiction.
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| The Viper of Milan |
Bowen, Marjorie. The Viper of Milan: A Romance of Lombardy. London: The Bodley Head, 1960. With an introductory note by Graham Greene. Bowen's first novel, The Viper of Milan, was first published in 1906. It was written when she was 16 years old but not published until she was 21. The story is set in Renaissance Italy during the 14th century and fictionalizes the brutal rivalry of the Duke of Milan and the Duke of Verona. The book was repeatedly rejected by publishers who considered it inappropriate for a young woman to have written such a violent historical novel. Once published, it became a best-seller and established Bowen as a successful author.
As one of the directors of The Bodley Head, Graham Greene
advocated for the publisher to obtain the rights and republish The Viper of
Milan. The new edition was published
in 1960, eight years after Bowen died.
Green often explained when asked about influential writers that he did
not consider books read as an adult to be influential to the writer, but books
read at a young age held considerable influence. In his introductory note to this new edition,
Greene writes that Bowen's novel, which he pulled from the library shelf and
read at the age of fourteen, was the source of his ambition to become a writer.
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| Bookplate of Rolland Comstock |
This copy of The Viper of Milan came from the library of book collector Rolland Comstock and bears his bookplate.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950)
Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American poet, playwright,
and performance artist. She published 15
books of lyrical poetry and performed readings of her poetry to audiences
across the country. Several other poetry
collections were published posthumously.
She was short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1921, and won
the award in 1923, becoming the third woman to win the prestigious poetry
prize. She also wrote four plays in
verse as well as the libretto for The King's Henchman, an opera in three
acts. She published her prose under the
pseudonym Nancy Boyd, resisting lucrative offers to publish her novels under
her own name. Humorously, Edna St.
Vincent Millay wrote the preface to one of Nancy Boyd's books, Distressing
Dialogues (1924):
Miss Boyd has asked me to write a preface
to these dialogues, with which, having followed them eagerly as they appeared
from time to time in the pages of Vanity Fair, I was already
familiar. I am no friend of prefaces,
but if there must be one to this book, it should come from me, who was its
author's earliest admirer. I take
pleasure in recommending to the public these excellent small satires, from the
pen of one in whose work I have a never-failing interest and delight.
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| Fatal Interview and Conversation at Midnight |
Millay, Edna St. Vincent.
Fatal Interview: Sonnets.
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1931. Second printing. Millay's seventh poetry collection, Fatal
Interview was her first collection consisting solely of sonnets.
Millay, Edna St. Vincent.
Conversation at Midnight.
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937. Stated first edition. Millay wanted Conversation at Midnight
to be read and thought of as a play, not a narrative poem; today it is most
often simply described as a narrative poem.
The original manuscript was lost in a hotel fire and Millay had to
reconstruct it from memory.
Dorothy L. Sayers (1893 – 1957)
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a British novelist, poet,
playwright, and classics translator. She
first wrote poetry before turning to crime stories and murder mysteries. In the late 1930s, she abruptly stopped
writing detective fiction and began writing religious essays and plays as well
as translations of the works of Dante.
She published 65 books in her lifetime, including: 16 novels; 4 poetry
collections; 6 stage plays, 4 radio plays, and 1 screenplay; 3 short story
collections plus 4 edited anthologies; 6 English translations of classic works;
and 21 nonfiction titles.
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| The Man Born to Be King |
Sayers, Dorothy. The Man Born to Be King. London: Victor Gollancz, 1943. Contains the 12 plays which made up The Man Born to Be King: A Play-Cycle on the Life of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, a twelve-episode radio series broadcast on BBC from December 1941 to October 1942. The book also contains an introduction by the author, production and casting notes, and a foreword detailing the history of the production and the controversy it stirred. Sayers's introduction is an apologetic for both the theology and the structure of the play-cycle.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896 – 1953)
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was an American author who lived in,
and wrote about, rural Florida. In her
lifetime, she published five novels, a memoir along with a corresponding
cookbook, and one short story collection.
She also published around two dozen short stories in serial publications
and literary journals. Her short story
"Gal Young Un" won the O. Henry Award for short stories of
exceptional merit in 1932, and her novel The Yearling won the Pulitzer
Prize for Fiction in 1939. Posthumously,
two more books were published. The
Secret River, a children's book, was published in 1955 and received a Newbery
Honor in 1956. An unpublished
autobiographical novel, Blood of My Blood, penned in 1928 in response to
a writing contest, was discovered in 1988 and published in 2002.
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| The Yearling |
Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan. The Yearling. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1938. First edition, thirteenth printing. Rawlings's fourth novel, The Yearling was released in March 1938 and was an immediate commercial success. It was selected for the April Book of the Month Club and sold over 250,000 copies by year's end. It was the best-selling novel in America in 1938, as determined by Publisher's Weekly. It ranked seventh best the following year, when it won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
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| Author signature |
This copy is signed by the author on the front free end paper.
Elizabeth Bowen (1899 – 1973)
Elizabeth Bowen was an Irish novelist and short story
writer. She published 29 books during
her lifetime, including 10 novels, 10 short story collections, and 9 works of
nonfiction. She is best remembered for
her fiction about life in wartime London.
Bowen was regarded as a thoughtful writer. She said she was interested in "life
with the lid on and what happens when the lid comes off," to describe the irrepressible
forces that transform human experience.
She wrote about the "innocence of orderly life" but also had a
penchant for writing ghost stories.
After her death, three more short story collections were published which
included previously unpublished stories.
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| Why Do I Write? |
Bowen, Elizabeth, Graham Greene, and V. S. Pritchett. Why Do I Write?: An Exchange of Ideas Between Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, and V. S. Pritchett. London: Percival Marshall, 1948. With a Preface by V. S. Pritchett. Given her reputation as a thoughtful writer, Bowen collaborated with Greene and Pritchett to address the question of the responsibility of the writer to society. In a series of letters from each author to the other two—with everyone being included in all correspondence—they ponder the role of the writer in society: Do they have special duties? Or obligations? Or privileges? What is their social function? One point on which the authors agree is that writers bear a responsibility to tell the truth. Bowen concludes the interchange with the final letter, warning that writers must resist society's seeming "determination to make oracles out of writers light-headed with exhaustion." Writers cannot maintain society's demand of a constant public life; rather, "the writer needs to re-charge his batteries by private living." The most society should ask of the writer, Bowen concludes, is simply her/his demeanor.
Vivien Greene (1904 – 2003)
Vivien Greene (née Dayrell-Browning) was a British writer
and a renowned collector of 18th and 19th century dolls' houses. She published her first book, a poetry
collection, in 1921 at the age of 15.
Later, she published three books on English doll's houses: English
Dolls' Houses of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (1955); Family
Dolls' Houses (1973); The Vivien Greene Dolls' House Collection
(1995). In 2006, the Bodleian Library posthumously
published a short story she wrote for her husband, Graham Greene.
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| The Little Wings |
Dayrell, Vivienne. The Little Wings: Poems and Essays. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1921. With an Introduction by G. K. Chesterton. Because of the author's age, the book bears a note written by her mother stating in part, "All of the work of my young daughter contained in this first collection of her verse is original and has been written without aid of any kind… Vivienne's present age is 15½ years."
In 1921, Vivienne Dayrell (or Dayrell-Browning, as her
mother preferred) published her first book, a small collection of poetry and
short essays, with Basil Blackwell. In
1925, she was working for the publisher when it published another aspiring poet's
first collection of verse. Vivienne
wrote to the newly-published poet—one published author to another—to commend
him on his book, Babbling April.
Their continued correspondence progressed to a romantic relationship and
in 1927 Vivien (her now-preferred spelling) married Graham Greene.
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| Laurel for Libby |
Greene, Vivien. Laurel for Libby: A Tale with Cuts. Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2006. Facsimile edition of a small story book written for Graham Greene by his wife, Vivien, on the occasion of their tenth wedding anniversary. In September 1937, Vivien had a dream about a mysteriously long-lived cat which lived 75 years through several generations of the same family. Vivien wrote out the dream and worked with a local book binder to select the paper and materials to copy the manuscript and her own handmade block cut illustrations into a bound book. She completed the sole copy of the story just in time to present it to Graham on their tenth wedding anniversary on October 15, 1937. The lone manuscript remained in Vivien's possession until her death in 2003; the book now resides at the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford.
Lillian Hellman (1905 – 1984)
Lillian Hellman was an American playwright, author, and
screenwriter known for her successful Broadway plays. She authored 11 plays and 7 screenplays. She received one Tony Award nomination for
Best Play for Toys in the Attic (1960) and one Academy Award nomination
for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Little Foxes (1941), becoming the
first female screenwriter to receive an individual Academy Award nomination for
Best Adapted Screenplay. Hellman
co-wrote the book for the operetta Candide, having originally conceived
the idea of adapting Voltaire's novella into a play with incidental music. Hellman also wrote a novel and 4 memoirs
which focused mainly on her colorful lifestyle and passing acquaintances during
her thirty-year relationship with Dashiell Hammett. Her memoirs were criticized as being less
than accurate; novelist Mary McCarthy said of them, "every word she writes
is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'."
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| Four Plays by Lillian Hellman |
Hellman, Lillian. Four Plays by Lillian Hellman. New York: The Modern Library (Random House), 1942. With an introduction by the author. Includes her first four plays: The Children's Hour (1934); Days to Come (1936); The Little Foxes (1939); Watch on the Rhine (1941).
Eudora Welty (1909 – 2001)
Eudora Alice Welty was an American short story writer, novelist,
and essayist who wrote about the American South. She published 21 books, including 12 short
story collections, 6 novels, and 3 essay collections. Best known for her short stories, she
published her first collection in 1936, and won the O. Henry Award for short
stories of exceptional merit on four occasions (1941, 1942, 1943, and
1968). She also received the 1973
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Optimist's Daughter, and the 1983
National Book Award for The Collected Works of Eudora Welty. Welty was the first living author to have her
works published by the Library of America.
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| The Robber Bridegroom |
Welty, Eudora. The Robber Bridegroom. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1942. The novella is inspired by, and loosely based on, a Grimm fairy tale of the same name. Welty's The Robber Bridegroom is a Southern folk tale set in Mississippi along the Natchez Trace, and fairy tale characters are reimagined in the Old South as flatboatmen, river bandits, plantation planters, and Southern belles.
Flannery O'Connor (1925 – 1964)
Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American short story writer,
novelist, and essayist. She is known as
both a Southern writer for her Southern Gothic style and a Catholic writer for
the theological and ethical themes explored in her work. She published two short story collections and
two novels during her short lifetime.
Posthumously, seven books were published under her name, including
previously unpublished prose, a collection of her letters, a collection of book
reviews, a prayer journal, and a complete collection of her short stories. The Flannery O'Connor Award for Short
Fiction, established in 1983 and named in her honor, is an annual prize awarded
by the University of Georgia Press for a collection of short stories or
novellas.
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| The Complete Stories |
O’Connor, Flannery. The Complete Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971. This posthumously published short story collection comprises all the stories published in A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (1955) and Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965) plus several previously unpublished stories. The collection won the 1972 National Book Award for Fiction.
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| A Prayer Journal |
O’Connor, Flannery. A Prayer Journal. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013. With an Introduction by W. A. Sessions. This posthumously published journal was discovered among O'Connor's papers now held at the University of Georgia. The journal entries were written between 1946 and 1947 while she was a college student at the University of Iowa. The journal shows the inseparable nature of her desire to be a writer and her yearning to know God.
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| Introducer's signature |
This copy is signed on the title page by William A. Sessions, who wrote the introduction. Sessions, an author and biographer, is known for his writing about, and relationship with, O'Connor.
