Published in Zehra Çirak’s third book of poetry, Fremde Flügel auf eigener Schulter (Alien Wings on Your Own Shoulder, 1994), “Frauen—Porträt I” is part of a versatile ekphrastic cycle in which a series of photographs or paintings (or ironically framed… Read More ›
“On a Red Steed” (Na krasnom kone) first appeared in Tsvetaeva’s Remeslo (Craft) in 1923. In this poem, the female speaker traces the development of a woman poet, explores her source of inspiration, and identifies the sacrifices she has to… Read More ›
“Ancestral Weight” (“Peso ancestral”), published in Alfonsina Storni’s second poetry collection and sometimes translated as “Ancestral Burden,” provides a historical dimension to the expression of tensions between the genders evident in her early works, even as it belies the claim… Read More ›
Drawing on her own experience with mental illness and the institutions that manage those afflicted by it, Janet Frame creates a novel that is itself a part of her psychiatric therapy: writing used as a path to greater wholeness and… Read More ›
Geraldine Jewsbury’s first novel, Zoe: The History of Two Lives, was one of the first Victorian novels to interrogate religious skepticism. Jewsbury could not rush through such an important topic, as she explained to her lifelong friend and correspondent Jane… Read More ›
Wilkie Collins first published The Woman in White as a serial in All the Year Round between November 1859 and August 1860. Collins was praised by critics for the care he took with both plotting and character development. When the… Read More ›
Almost since its inception, fiction has focused on social problems, including the rights of women. By its nature, art reflects its era, and much fiction proved to be political, supporting the rights of women and other marginalized groups, either overtly… Read More ›
In Elizabeth Inchbald’s traditional story of forbidden love, a Catholic priest named Dorriforth loves his Protestant ward, Miss Milner, a character who in her youth had been indulged “to the extreme of folly.” Inchbald’s career as an actress informs the… Read More ›
Suffragist Beatrice Harraden had written short stories and one novel before publishing Ships That Pass in the Night, but that work brought her fame as a writer. An example of sentimental fiction, it depicts the doomed love of two patients… Read More ›
Like Henry Rider Haggard’s other romance novels set in Africa, including King Solomon’s Mines (1885) and Allan Quatermain (1887), She: A History of Adventure is based in part on Haggard’s experience in that country. As assistant to Sir Henry Bulwer,… Read More ›
Had her short life not ended tragically by death in childbirth, Mary Brunton might have greatly expanded her volume of work, which influenced writers as important as Jane Austen. Austen praised Brunton’s first novel, Self Control, wondering in print whether… Read More ›
The Secret History of Queen Zarah and the Zarazians proved to be Mary Delarivière Manley’s first success, following the unimpressive productions of two of her dramas. Her story proved popular enough to follow with a sequel, also in 1705. A… Read More ›
George Meredith first published his third novel, Sandra Belloni, under the title Emilia in England. The title character is a singer, discovered while singing in the woods by the three Pole daughters—Arabella, Cornelia, Adela—and their brother Wilfrid, an army officer… Read More ›
A Robin Hood figure, the factual individual named Rob Roy, formed the basis for Sir Walter Scott’s historical fiction Rob Roy. The real Rob Roy (literally “Red Robert,” for his red hair) was a drover who became an outlaw, leading… Read More ›
Sir Walter Scott has long been acknowledged as the first writer of historical fiction, and when he chose Scotland as a setting, he generally produced his best work. He introduced this approach in his first novel, Waverley (1814), when he… Read More ›
First serialized in Temple Bar in 1880, Eliza Lynn Linton’s The Rebel of the Family has enjoyed renewed interest in the 21st century due to the efforts of feminist critics who have focused on the novel’s several controversial issues. While… Read More ›
Of Anthony Hope’s many short stories and various novels, The Prisoner of Zenda remains his best known and enjoyed, praised by contemporaries such as Robert Louis Stevenson, followed by its less successful sequel, Rupert of Hentzau (1898). The novel offers… Read More ›
Long touted as the first English novel, or at the least the first epistolary novel, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela has since had both those positions questioned in light of work by earlier writers, most notably Aphra Behn. It remains of extreme… Read More ›
In her fourth novel, Ann Radcliffe explores the machinery of the Gothic novel but reveals the mysteries referenced in her most popular work’s title. Its popularity validated her publisher’s interest in the work, which had gained unprecedented support by the… Read More ›
Following Anne Radcliffe in creating fiction of the Gothic genre, M. G. Lewis published his sensation fiction, The Monk, for a public eager to indulge in entertainment highly dependent on horror elements. Unlike Radcliffe’s more sophisticated The Mysteries of Udolpho… Read More ›
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