by Cornelia Sorabji (2001)
"Born into a Parsee family in Nasik in the Bombay Presidency in 1866, Cornelia Sorabji's identity was shaped by three streams of cultural influences - the British, the Indian and the Parsee. Sorabji was India's first woman barrister. This is her autobiography from early childhood to adulthood. Written with a radically feminist perspective, it traces the author's self-development, and depicts the status and lifestyle of orthodox Hindu women, to the amelioration of whose legal and personal status she dedicated herself. This is an immensely readable book, full of wry humour. At the same time, addressing as it does a turbulent period of British rule in India, it deals with issues of colonialism, and questions of identity arising out of a complex racial, religious and cultural hybridity." "This autobiographical piece is a contribution to Indian women's studies, and will be welcomed by general readers as well as scholars of literature."--BOOK JACKET.
Kerry A. Graves
Excerpts from the girlhood diary of Louisa May Alcott, describing her family life, lessons, and experiences on a communal farm in the 1840s. Includes sidebars, activities, and a timeline related to this era.
Anne Edwards
A biography of Peggy Mitchell Marsh, who led a life as interesting as those of her characters in her epic, Gone with the Wind.
Mary Wheeling White
Evelyn Scott (1893-1963), an expatriate of the South, was one of the most active, creative minds among the American modernists, commanding the attention and esteem of her fellow critics and authors for more than two decades. A ruinous denouement of health and career, however, left her all but forgotten by the time of her death, and it is only recently that scholars have begun to appreciate her achievements. In her critical biography of Scott, Mary Wheeling White depicts an independent idealist whose art and personality shared a defining trait: rebellious thinking. At age twenty, Scott fled her home in New Orleans for Brazil, embarking on a lifelong series of love affairs, exiles, and physical, emotional, and financial afflictions. She also began her serious writing, developing many of the techniques of impressionism, stream of consciousness, and symbolic realism that would mark her better work. Over the years she formed friendships with other literary figures - Theodore Dreiser, Emma Goldman, Lola Ridge, Charlotte Wilder, and others - who helped her through many a low time and saw emerge from the turmoil Scott's challenging imagist poetry, startling experimental fiction, and graceful memoirs. Scott is best known for her autobiography Escapade (1923), which recounts her years in Brazil; her shockingly modern first novel, The Narrow House (1921); and The Wave (1929), which has been hailed as the greatest novel about the American Civil War. She published numerous other works, including eight additional novels and another autobiography, and completed a substantial body of writing that remains unpublished. Despite her prodigious oeuvre, Scott, like many other modernist women writers, receded into the shadows through neglect. By rereading her life and works, Mary Wheeling White helps resurrect the recognition Scott's writing deserves and forces a reexamination of the making of literary exemplars during one of the most vital eras in American letters.
Marie Cardinal
Une femme seule, quelque part dans le midi. Elle rêve à l'Algérie son pays natal perdu il y a longtemps. Elle revoit le port, le quai, le bateau sur lequel elle a embarqué, un bébé dans les bras, sans savoir qu'elle ne reviendrait plus jamais au pays de son enfance. Au fur et à mesure que se déroule la vie quotidienne de la narratrice éclatent à la surface de sa conscience des bulles de souvenirs. Telle la scène, bouleversante, de la mort du père. Elle a quatorze ans et connaît peu cet homme avec qui elle ne vivait pas. Au pied du cercueil où il repose, d'étranges pensées l'assaillent : est-il nu dans sa boîte? Quel homme, désormais pourrait lui donner autant d'amour qu'un père? ... Mais les échappées oniriques de la narratrice ne se bornent pas à l'enfance. D'autres scènes, d'autres hommes viennent la visiter sous sa tonnelle. -- Back cover.