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A Secret Sisterhood
Oct. 30th, 2018 08:20 amReading Girl Talk did lead to one positive development: it reminded me that I wanted to read Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney’s A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf, which I subsequently zoomed through and adored so much that I popped over to the authors’ blog, Something Rhymed.
There, I discovered that they’re taking guest posts about female literary friendships. And, well, I have a list of such friendships that I have collected over the years. Unfortunately I didn’t take notes on most of it, so I’ll need to track down the information again. (But they’re asking for posts of 500-800 words, so I don’t need to go too nuts. NO SELF you do not need to go to Massachusetts to check out the Josephine Preston Peabody papers in the Houghton Library at Harvard to read all 142 letters she exchanged with Abby Farwell Brown.)
A few possibilities:
The aforementioned Josephine Preston Peabody and Abigail Farwell Brown. There are many charming references it Brown in Peabody’s collected diary and letters (I’ve ILLed the volume, because I no longer have access to the North American Women’s Letters and Diaries database), and I once found a laudatory review wrote of a performance of one of Peabody’s verse dramas, The Piper, although like a fool I didn’t print it out and I no longer have access to that database either.
Jean Webster (who wrote Daddy-Long-Legs) and Adelaide Crapsey (who invented the cinquain). They met at Vassar and remained close friends until Crapsey’s death of tuberculosis: Webster was at the deathbed. I think I read about this in Karen Alkalay-Gut’s biography of Crapsey, but I didn’t take notes. Why didn’t I take notes? You never know when notes will be useful.
Susan Coolidge (author of What Katy Did) and Helen Hunt Jackson. I found an edition of Jackson’s novel Ramona with a lengthy preface/eulogy for Jackson written by Coolidge, when she recounts many incidents in their friendship. The book is probably still in that Half-Price Books. I should fetch it.
Annie Fellows Johnston and her Louisville writing group, many of whom achieved great commercial success and had their books adapted into movies: Johnston’s own Little Colonel became a Shirley Temple feature, while Alice Hegan Rice’s Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch has been adapted to film four times. Rice’s aunt, Frances Little (nee Fannie Caldwell), was also a member of the group and wrote The Lady of the Decoration, which was the best-selling novel in the US in 1907. My main source for this one is Johnston’s memoir - which I actually possess!
Yes. I really ought to try to do those guest posts, don’t you think? I mean all this information is just sitting here, waiting to be shared.
There, I discovered that they’re taking guest posts about female literary friendships. And, well, I have a list of such friendships that I have collected over the years. Unfortunately I didn’t take notes on most of it, so I’ll need to track down the information again. (But they’re asking for posts of 500-800 words, so I don’t need to go too nuts. NO SELF you do not need to go to Massachusetts to check out the Josephine Preston Peabody papers in the Houghton Library at Harvard to read all 142 letters she exchanged with Abby Farwell Brown.)
A few possibilities:
The aforementioned Josephine Preston Peabody and Abigail Farwell Brown. There are many charming references it Brown in Peabody’s collected diary and letters (I’ve ILLed the volume, because I no longer have access to the North American Women’s Letters and Diaries database), and I once found a laudatory review wrote of a performance of one of Peabody’s verse dramas, The Piper, although like a fool I didn’t print it out and I no longer have access to that database either.
Jean Webster (who wrote Daddy-Long-Legs) and Adelaide Crapsey (who invented the cinquain). They met at Vassar and remained close friends until Crapsey’s death of tuberculosis: Webster was at the deathbed. I think I read about this in Karen Alkalay-Gut’s biography of Crapsey, but I didn’t take notes. Why didn’t I take notes? You never know when notes will be useful.
Susan Coolidge (author of What Katy Did) and Helen Hunt Jackson. I found an edition of Jackson’s novel Ramona with a lengthy preface/eulogy for Jackson written by Coolidge, when she recounts many incidents in their friendship. The book is probably still in that Half-Price Books. I should fetch it.
Annie Fellows Johnston and her Louisville writing group, many of whom achieved great commercial success and had their books adapted into movies: Johnston’s own Little Colonel became a Shirley Temple feature, while Alice Hegan Rice’s Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch has been adapted to film four times. Rice’s aunt, Frances Little (nee Fannie Caldwell), was also a member of the group and wrote The Lady of the Decoration, which was the best-selling novel in the US in 1907. My main source for this one is Johnston’s memoir - which I actually possess!
Yes. I really ought to try to do those guest posts, don’t you think? I mean all this information is just sitting here, waiting to be shared.
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