My review of Elaine Showalter’s book A Jury of Her Peers is now up at the Quarterly Conversation. The short version is that I liked it. If you want to hear more, check it out!
Bookshop
Check out my book recommendations at Bookshop.
- "…whatever these futilities of mine may be, I have no intention of hiding them, any more than I would a bald and grizzled portrait of myself just because the artist had painted not a perfect face but my own. Anyway these are my humours, my opinions: I give them as things which I believe, not as things to be believed. My aim is to reveal my own self, which may well be different tomorrow if I am initiated into some new business which changes me." Michel de Montaigne
- "If I am asked to explain why I learned the bicycle I should say I did it as an act of grace, if not of actual religion." Frances E. Willard
-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
Recently Read
Other Places I Hang Out
Blogroll
- A Garden Carried in the Pocket
- A Novelist's Mind
- A Striped Armchair
- A Work in Progress
- Bardiac
- Biblibio
- Bibliographing
- Book Fox
- Bookey Wookey
- BookGirl’s Nightstand
- bookpuddle
- Books I Done Read
- Bookslut
- BooksPlease
- Buried in Print
- Charlotte’s Web
- Condalmo
- Conversational Reading
- Couch Trip
- dovegreyreader
- Eve’s Alexandria
- Evening All Afternoon
- Exile on Ninth Street
- Fernham
- Fig and Thistle
- Kate’s Book Blog
- Letters and Sodas
- Letters from a Hill Farm
- Light reading
- Maud Newton
- Musings from the Sofa
- My Porch
- Nigel Beale
- Nonsuch Book
- Novel Readings
- Orpheus Sings the Guitar Electric
- Pages turned
- Pearl
- Pieces
- Reading matters
- Reading, Writing, Working, Playing
- ReadySteadyBlog
- Ripple Effects
- Sasha & the Silverfish
- Sassymonkey Reads
- Shelf Love
- Slaves of Golconda
- Smithereens
- So Many Books
- Sprinter della casa
- Stainless Steel Droppings
- Stuck in a Book
- Tales from the Reading Room
- Telecommuter Talk
- The Bluestocking Society
- The Curious Reader
- The Elegant Variation
- The Existence Machine
- The Hobgoblin of Little Minds
- The Indextrious Reader
- The Library Ladder
- the Literary Saloon
- The Little Professor
- The Mookse and the Gripes
- The Reading Experience
- This Space
- Three Percent
- Tiny Cat Pants
- Up in Alaska
- Vintage Reads
- Vulpes Libris
- Wuthering Expectations
- Zhiv
Categories
Meta
Archives
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- May 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
I did check it out and really enjoyed it.
LikeLike
Thanks for posting, Dorothy, I really enjoyed reading it! Well done.
LikeLike
Nice review! I hadn’t realized that there has never been a history of American women writers before. I wonder if Showalter should have made it a two volume work then so she could be more critical and fit in more writers? But at least it is a start and hopefully others will follow. Now, if I only had time to read it for myself. It’s sitting on a pile just over there…
LikeLike
Wonderful review Dorothy. I really do need to get to this–it sounds interesting despite not necessarily breaking new ground. It’s still nice to see a little attention paid to American women writers (even if she left some notable authors out). I had no idea where the title came from–that sounds like an interesting story and the perfect choice for this book.
LikeLike
Congratulations on a terrific review! I can appreciate that the author was upfront in her personal preferences — who was included, and who was not — though I agree that a “further reading” section would have been most helpful.
LikeLike
Lilian — thank you for the compliment, and thank you for stopping by this blog – welcome!
Mr. W. — thank you! I’m so glad you read and enjoyed it. I learned a lot from reading her book and am glad I decided to.
Stefanie — I wonder if a two-volume work might have been harder to sell, or maybe she wanted to keep it cheap enough for general readers to buy. Anyway, a fuller treatment would have been nice, but at least we have a start that might lead to longer projects later.
Danielle — the story IS a perfect title for the book, and I recommend it if you come across it in one of your anthologies. It’s a story I teach now and then, and it also exists in play form (called Trifles). Thanks for reading the review!
Debby — thank you! I liked her openness about her opinions as well, and that she declared she would include opinions at the very beginning, so I knew what I was getting into. The book is an excellent resource as it is, but a further reading section would have made it even better.
LikeLike