Notes For November 29th, 2019

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 29th, 1832, the legendary American writer Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania. She had three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth, and Abigail, and would base her most famous novel on her experiences growing up with them in New England.

Louisa's father was Amos Bronson Alcott, who called himself Bronson. He was a famous teacher and transcendentalist philosopher who belonged to Ralph Waldo Emerson's Transcendentalist Club.

In addition to his spiritual beliefs, Bronson shared Emerson's ferocious abolitionist convictions. The Alcott family would host a runaway slave in their home. In 1840, when Louisa was eight years old, Bronson moved the family to Concord, Massachusetts.

Growing up in a liberal, intellectual family, Louisa was tutored mostly by her father's friend, the legendary writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau. She also received instruction from Ralph Waldo Emerson and family friends Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller.

Louisa would write of these experiences in an early newspaper article, Transcendental Wild Oats. She would also write of the brief time her family lived in the Utopian Fruitlands commune co-founded by her father.

The commune would fail not only because of the members' philosophical extremes, but also due to the severe New England winter for which most of them were unprepared.

Economic hardship would require Louisa to go to work at a very young age, and she worked at such various jobs as governess, seamstress, domestic servant, and occasionally, as a teacher. What she really wanted to be was a writer.

Her first book, Flower Fables, was published in 1849, when she was seventeen years old. It was a collection of short stories originally written for Ralph Waldo Emerson's young daughter, Ellen. A year later, she began writing for the Atlantic Monthly magazine.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Louisa served as a Union hospital nurse, caring for wounded and sick soldiers in Georgetown, D.C. She wrote vivid detailed letters home chronicling her experiences.

These letters would be revised and published in the Commonwealth newspaper. When they appeared in book form as Hospital Sketches (1863), they brought their author to the attention of critics, who praised her talent.

While she worked to build her career as a writer of traditional fiction, Louisa also wrote sensational, passionate stories and novels strictly for money. They were published under the pseudonym of A.M. Bernard.

These early novels were torrid Gothic potboilers with titles like Behind a Mask, or A Woman's Power, A Long Fatal Love Chase, and Pauline's Passion and Punishment. One novel she published anonymously was called A Modern Mephistopheles.

When her collections of children's stories became successful, Louisa was able to devote herself to traditional fiction. In 1868, she published her most famous novel. Originally intended for young adult readers, it would prove to be not only a critical and commercial success, but also a classic work of American literature.

Little Women told the story of the four March sisters, (Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy) growing up in Concord, Massachusetts, was based on Alcott's experiences growing up with her own three sisters in Concord and Boston. Louisa modeled the character of Jo after herself.

Fifteen-year-old Jo March is the second oldest of the sisters. Intelligent, outspoken, and tomboyish, Jo longs to be a writer. An early feminist, Jo finds herself at odds with the restrictions placed on women in the late 19th century, including not being able to go to college and being pressured to marry.

Through the course of the novel, the March sisters become friends with Theodore "Laurie" Laurence, the handsome, charming, affluent boy next door. An orphan, Laurie lives with his grandfather. He becomes especially close to Jo. They get into various scrapes as Laurie joins in the March sisters' adventures.

The sisters also struggle to overcome their particular character flaws (Jo has a temper, Meg is vain, Beth is shy, and Amy selfish) in order to live up to their parents' expectations and become, well, little women.

The first part of Little Women became a huge hit with both critics and readers, and an overnight sensation, selling over 2,000 copies in 1868. Louisa May Alcott received many letters from fans (and visits from them at her home) clamoring for a sequel.

So, in 1869, Alcott published the second part, Good Wives. Although her fans were begging for Jo to get married - especially to Laurie - she initially resisted the idea, believing that Jo should remain a "literary spinster."

Louisa changed her mind, and in Good Wives, married off not only Jo, but Meg and Amy as well. However, in a surprising twist, Jo marries Friedrich "Fritz" Bhaer, the poor German immigrant and professor who encouraged her to be a serious writer, while Amy eventually marries Laurie.

Louisa would later write, "Jo should have remained a literary spinster, but so many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me clamorously demanding that she should marry Laurie, or somebody, that I didn't dare refuse and out of perversity went and made a funny match for her."

As for her own spinsterhood, in an interview with literary critic Louise Chandler Moulton, she joked that the reason she herself was a spinster was because she had "fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man."

In reality, while traveling through Europe, she'd had a passionate affair with a young man she'd met in Switzerland, a Polish freedom fighter named Ladislas "Laddie" Wisniewski.

Louisa would base the character of Laurie on Laddie. Though she had written of her affair with Laddie in her journal, she tore out those pages prior to her death. The details of their relationship remain unknown.

Little Women would be followed by two sequels: Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Louisa also wrote other memorable novels including Eight Cousins (1875), Under The Lilacs (1878), and Jack and Jill: A Village Story (1880).

Jack and Jill, Alcott's last full length novel published under her own name, is sent in the quaint New England town of Harmony Village. Inseparable best friends and next door neighbors John "Jack" Minot and Jane Pecq are so close that the other kids call them Jack and Jill.

As the novel opens, Jack and Jill go sledding together on a steep, dangerous hill one winter day. Like their nursery rhyme namesakes, they take a nasty fall, which leaves Jack with a broken leg and Jill with a broken back.

Both kids are bedridden, and everyone fears that Jill will never walk again. Jack tries to keep her spirits up while they both recover. They exchange letters often and Jack visits Jill when he's well enough to leave his bed.

Their parents and friends also try to help Jill. As their love for each other deepens, Jack, who recovers from his injury, can't bear the idea that Jill might never walk again. Will she be crippled for life?

Louisa May Alcott suffered from chronically poor health in her later years, which she attributed to mercury poisoning from a typhoid fever treatment. She ultimately died of a stroke in March of 1888 at the age of 55.

Although her early biographers had agreed with her assessment of mercury poisoning, a more recent analysis of her chronic illness indicated that she most likely suffered from lupus.

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Quote Of The Day

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“Keep good company, read good books, love good things and cultivate soul and body as faithfully as you can." - Louisa May Alcott

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel, Jack and Jill. Enjoy!

Notes For November 28th, 2019

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 28th, 1944, the famous American writer and activist Rita Mae Brown was born. She was born in Hanover, Pennsylvania, but grew up in Florida. Her biological mother, an unwed 18-year-old girl, turned her over to an orphanage.

At three months old, Rita was adopted by her new parents, Ralph and Julia Ellen Brown. An intellectually gifted child, she had learned to read when she was three years old. As a high school student, she excelled at both academics and sports.

During Rita's teen years, she lost her adoptive father and began to experiment with sex, taking both male and female lovers. She considered herself a bisexual who preferred women, saying, "I don't believe in straight or gay. I really don't. I think we're all degrees of bisexual."

When she was 16, the father of Rita's high school girlfriend found her love letters and outed her. As a result, she was kicked out of the student council. It was the first and not the last incident of homophobic persecution she experienced.

By 1964, Rita had won a scholarship to the University of Florida. When she wasn't studying, she worked for the civil rights movement. Her scholarship was revoked and she was expelled from university, allegedly because of her civil rights work, but that was just the university's excuse.

The real reason for Rita's expulsion and the loss of her scholarship was that she had been outed as a lesbian by the officers of her sorority. They suspected that Rita was gay and confronted her. She told them that if she was in love with someone, that person's gender didn't matter to her.

After losing her scholarship, a penniless Rita hitchhiked to New York City. Homeless at first, she lived in a car with a male friend and a cat she'd named Baby Jesus. Determined to make something of herself, she put herself through New York University.

Upon graduating with a Bachelor's degree in English and the classics, she continued her education, studying cinematography at the New York School of Visual Arts. She would ultimately receive a Ph.D at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC.

In 1970, while studying at the New York School of Visual Arts, Rita worked for the National Organization for Women (NOW). She would resign in protest over NOW president Betty Friedan's homophobic remarks and attempts to distance NOW from lesbian organizations.

After leaving NOW, Rita Mae Brown co-founded The Furies Collective, a lesbian feminist newspaper collective. She began her literary career with two poetry collections, The Hand That Cradles the Rock (1971) and Songs to a Handsome Woman (1973).

Also in 1973, Rita's classic first novel was published. One of the most controversial young adult novels ever written, it was rejected by every major publisher in New York. She tried to get an agent, but that didn't work, either.

One agent, a woman, literally threw Rita's manuscript at her, called her a pervert, and told her to get out of her office. She finally found a publisher, a new and small feminist publishing house called Daughters Press, who bought her novel for $1,000.

Rubyfruit Jungle is a picaresque, semi-autobiographical novel about a young woman's coming-of-age as a lesbian, a tale told with humor, pathos, and zest. It paints a frank and honest portrait of lesbians that shatters all the stereotypes.

Molly Bolt is a pretty young girl who has a tempestuous relationship with her mother, Carrie, who informs her that she is an adopted bastard child. Beginning at the age of eleven, Molly experiments sexually with both girls and boys, including her cousin Leroy.

As a teenager, Molly loses her adoptive father Carl, to whom she was close, and has an affair with a cheerleader, Carolyn, who rejects the lesbian label, seeing herself as bisexual.

Determined to make something of herself, Molly becomes an excellent student and wins a college scholarship. When her lesbian affair with her alcoholic roommate is discovered, Molly loses her scholarship and is expelled from university.

Broke but not broken, the feisty Molly heads for New York City to study filmmaking and finds that life in the concrete jungle isn't all she dreamed it would be. Using her beauty, charm, intelligence, and sparkling wit, she determines to become the greatest filmmaker of all time.

Since Daughters Press, the publisher of Rubyfruit Jungle, was so small, there was no marketing or reviews of the novel at the time it was published, nor was it available in any major bookstores.

The novel was mostly sold in small bookshops, by mail, and even out of the trunks of cars. Nevertheless, word of mouth made Rubyfruit Jungle an underground hit, selling 70,000 copies in its first four years.

When the novel gained a wide release, it received great reviews and copies soon appeared on high school library shelves, causing an uproar - a censorship row that would last for many years - due to its sexual content and language.

Rita Mae Brown would write more great novels, including In Her Day (1976), a lesbian comic romance set in early 1970s Greenwich Village. Carole is a conservative, middle aged art history professor whose life is turned upside down when she falls for Ilse, a 20-year-old feminist revolutionary.

Southern Discomfort (1982) is a demented Southern Gothic comedy set in Alabama, circa 1918. It told the story of Hortensia Reedmuller Banastre, a Southern belle trapped in a loveless marriage who falls madly in love with Hercules Jinks - a handsome black prizefighter!

In 1990, Rita decided to try something different. She began a series of mystery novels allegedly co-written by Sneaky Pie Brown - her cat. The Mrs. Murphy Series features the adventures of Mrs. Murphy, a tiger cat, and her human companion, Mary "Harry" Haristeen, who live in the small town of Crozet, Virginia.

In the first novel, Wish You Were Here (1990), someone is brutally murdering Crozet's most prominent citizens. Each victim received a postcard before they were murdered, with a tombstone on one side and the message "Wish you were here" written on the back. Can Harry and Mrs. Murphy solve the murders?

So far, Rita Mae Brown has written over two dozen Mrs. Murphy Mysteries. Her latest, Whiskers in the Dark, was published in June.

She has also written several screenplays for TV movies and feature films, including the famous horror movie The Slumber Party Massacre (1982). She wrote it as a spoof, but the director chose to shoot it as a serious slasher flick, resulting in a cult classic film.

While her parents are away, a high school girl hosts a slumber party for her friends, which is crashed by an escaped mental patient wielding a portable electric drill. While the director meant for it to be taken seriously, it's clearly a parody of slasher films and their tropes.

The movie spawned two sequels, The Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) and The Slumber Party Massacre III (1990), which were neither written by Rita Mae Brown nor related to her original screenplay.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Writers will happen in the best of families." - Rita Mae Brown

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a 90-minute interview with Rita Mae Brown recorded before a live audience as part of the National Writers Series. Enjoy!

Notes For November 27th, 2019

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 27th, 1909, the famous American writer and critic James Agee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. When he was six years old, his father was killed in a car accident. A year later, he and his younger sister Emma were sent to the first of several boarding schools.

James' favorite boarding school was the Saint Andrews School for Mountain Boys in Sewanee, Tennessee. At this school, run by Episcopal monks, Agee met Episcopal priest Father James Harold Flye, who would become a lifelong friend.

When he was sixteen, after spending the summer traveling through Europe with Father Flye, James Agee entered Phillips Exeter Academy prep school, where he became president of the Lantern Club and editor of the Monthly, where his first writings were published.

Although he barely passed most of his classes, Agee was admitted to Harvard after graduation, where he became editor-in-chief of the Harvard Advocate and delivered the class ode at commencement.

After graduating Harvard, Agee married his first wife, Via Saunders, and began writing for Fortune magazine. In 1934, his first and only poetry collection, Permit Me Voyage, was published, featuring a foreword by poet Archibald MacLeish.

While writing for Fortune, Agee spent eight weeks on assignment living with poor sharecroppers in Alabama, but left the magazine before completing his article.

He turned the material into a nonfiction book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). The book only sold 600 copies before it was remaindered. That year, Agee's second marriage broke up.

The next year, James Agee became the literary critic for Time magazine. At one point, he was reviewing up to six books a week. He left Time to become the film critic for the liberal news magazine The Nation.

By 1948, he had become a freelance writer. An assignment for Life magazine resulted in the publication of an acclaimed article about legendary silent film comedians Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Harry Langdon. The article is credited with reviving Keaton's career.

Many of Agee's freelance assignments were movie reviews or articles on films, most of which were later published as Agee On Film and Agee On Film II. He championed Charlie Chaplin's classic film, Monsieur Verdoux (1947), a controversial black comedy that was ahead of its time.

A commercial failure that raised the ire of conservative audiences and the clergy, the movie starred Chaplin as Henri Verdoux, a Parisian bank teller who loses his job to the global depression. So, he comes up with a unique means of supporting his crippled wife and their little son.

Verdoux becomes a professional bluebeard, marrying rich women for their money, then murdering them. The funniest scene finds Chaplin in a rowboat, trying in vain to drown his latest wife, superbly played by comedienne Martha Raye.

When Verdoux is finally captured, tried, and convicted of numerous murders, he gives this memorable speech with a defiant, malicious smile:

As for being a mass killer, does not the world encourage it? Is it not building weapons of destruction for the sole purpose of mass killing? Has it not blown unsuspecting women and little children to pieces? And done it very scientifically? As a mass killer, I am an amateur by comparison. However, I do not wish to lose my temper, because very shortly, I shall lose my head. Nevertheless, upon leaving this spark of earthly existence, I have this to say: I shall see you ALL very soon. Very soon.

Just before his execution, a priest is sent to Verdoux's cell to counsel him. In a final act of defiant bravado, Verdoux tells the priest, "Who knows what sin is... who knows what mysterious destiny it serves? What would you be doing without sin?"

Monsieur Verdoux proved to be quite a shocker for postwar audiences and would be used against Charlie Chaplin a few years later by the infamous HUAC, (House Unamerican Activities Committee) which falsely accused Chaplin of being a communist. He was later banned from re-entering the United States.

In the 1950s, while continuing his work as a freelance writer, James Agee became a Hollywood screenwriter. Before his screenwriting career was derailed by his alcoholism, Agee would co-write the screenplays for two classic films, The African Queen (1951) and Night Of The Hunter (1955).

The African Queen, directed by John Huston, was an adaptation of C.S. Forester's classic novel about British missionary siblings (Robert Morely and Katharine Hepburn) in German East Africa during the outbreak of World War I.

Humphrey Bogart co-starred as Charlie Allnut, the grizzled Canadian boat captain who delivers their mail and supplies and later attempts to rescue Hepburn from the Germans after her brother dies.

Night Of The Hunter, a classic suspense thriller, was directed by Charles Laughton and based on a novel by Davis Grubb. Robert Mitchum starred as Reverend Harry Powell, a preacher and psychopathic killer with the words LOVE and HATE tattooed across his knuckles.

Powell tracks down the two small children of his former cellmate, hoping to get his hands on a fortune in stolen money, after which, he plans to kill the kids. The children find sanctuary with an elderly but tough woman (silent screen legend Lillian Gish) who sings hymns and packs a shotgun.

Despite Agee's success, the ravages of alcoholism and chain-smoking took their toll on his health. On May 16th, 1955, James Agee died of a heart attack (his third) while in a cab en route to a doctor's appointment. He was 45 years old.

In 1957, his first and only novel, an autobiographical novel titled A Death in the Family, was published posthumously. A year later, it won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Four years later, the novel was adapted as a Broadway play by Tad Mosel. Titled All the Way Home, the play also won a Pulitzer Prize and was itself adapted as a feature film in 1963 and as a PBS TV movie in 2002.

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Quote Of The Day

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"I'm very anxious not to fall into archaism or 'literary diction.' I want my vocabulary to have a very large range, but the words must be alive." - James Agee

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Cotton Tenants, a 30,000 word nonfiction work commissioned but never published by Fortune magazine on poor tenant farmers in the Deep South during the Great Depression. Written by James Agee in 1941 and thought long lost, it was rediscovered and published in 2013.

Notes For November 26th, 2019

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 26th, 1864, the legendary English writer Lewis Carroll gave a copy of the completed manuscript of his classic novel, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, to Alice Liddell, the little girl whom he named the book's heroine after.

Carroll, whose real name was Charles Dodgson, had been teaching mathematics at the University of Christ Church, Oxford, when he first met ten-year-old Alice Liddell. The new Dean of the university was Henry Liddell, who had come to Oxford along with his wife and children.

Dodgson became a close friend of the Liddell family, and often took Alice and her siblings out for boat rides. Of all the Liddell children, Dodgson was closest to youngest daughter Alice.

A brilliant mathematician who also possessed an above average talent for wordplay, Dodgson would tell Alice fantastic stories. One day, while they were out alone for a rowing trip, Dodgson told Alice a story about a little girl who falls down a rabbit hole and finds herself in a strange and magical world.

Alice loved all of Dodgson's stories. The one about the little girl was her favorite, so she begged him to write a book of his stories. He promised her that he would. Originally, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland was going to be a 15,500 word novella, but Dodgson expanded it to almost twice that length.

When he completed the manuscript in November of 1864, which included his own illustrations, he made a handwritten copy that he gave to Alice Liddell as an early Christmas present.

The homemade book featured the original title, Alice's Adventures Under Ground, and was inscribed, "A Christmas Gift to a Dear Child, in Memory of a Summer Day." The "summer day" was a reference to the rowing trip he and Alice had taken the previous summer.

The following year, in 1865, Dodgson's novel was published as Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, under his now famous pseudonym, Lewis Carroll. The initial press run of 2,000 copies was held back when illustrator John Tenniel complained about the print quality.

A new edition was soon printed and released. Though it came out the same year, in December of 1865, the publication date was given as 1866. It sold out fast, and Dodgson became an overnight sensation - though he would become more famous in England as photographer than as a writer.

It was this occupation that gained him entrance into high society. He would photograph many notable people, including legendary poet Alfred Lord Tennyson. When he retired as a photographer in 1880, he'd taken over 3,000 photographs, but less than 1,000 of these images have survived.

Dodgson wrote several more children's books, including a poetry collection, but none would be as popular or enduring as Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and its sequel, Through The Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871).

Adapted numerous times for the stage, screen, radio, and television, the Alice books continue to enchant new generations of fans - both children and adults - with their magic, humor, and wit.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Life, what is it but a dream?" - Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson)

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Lewis Carroll's classic novel, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

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Joanna M. Weston

I have two poems up at Writing in a Woman's Voice. Scroll down for the second.

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Notes For November 22nd, 2019

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 22nd, 1819, the legendary English writer Mary Anne Evans, best known by her male pen name George Eliot, was born in Warwickshire, England. Growing up, she had more formal education than most girls in the Victorian era.

She was an intellectually gifted child and a voracious reader. Her father invested in her education partly because he feared that her homely looks would most likely prevent her from landing a husband.

Mary Anne's father was the manager of Arbury Hall, a magnificent estate belonging to the aristocratic Newdigate family. Because of his position, she was granted access to the estate's formidable library of books.

She used the library to educate herself from the age of sixteen; her visits to Arbury Hall exposed her to the stark contrast between the lives of the rich and the poor, which would influence her writing.

Around this time Mary Anne's mother died, so she served as her father's housekeeper and cook. When her brother Isaac married, he and his new wife took over the family home. Mary Anne and her father moved to a new home near Coventry.

There, she was introduced to Coventry society, and struck up a friendship with Charles and Cara Bray, a wealthy couple known for their philanthropy and reputation as progressive free thinkers.

Through the Brays, Mary Anne Evans was introduced to the great philosophers and writers of the day, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Owen, Harriet Martineau, and Herbert Spencer.

She also met liberal theologians with whom she explored her simmering discontent with the conservative, evangelical Anglican beliefs her father raised her with. When she began questioning the literal truth of the Bible, her father threatened to kick her out of his home.

Mary Anne's father never followed through with his threats. She continued to serve as his cook and housekeeper until he died in 1849. She was 30 years old at the time. A few days after his funeral, she accompanied her friends the Brays on a trip to Switzerland.

She decided to remain in Geneva rather than return home with the Brays. There, she was befriended by French artist Francois d'Albert Durade and his wife, Juliet. Francois painted a portrait of her.

The following year, Mary Anne returned to England. Sometimes known as Marian, she began using the name Marian Evans. She determined to become a writer. She stayed with her old friend John Chapman, a radical publisher.

She would become the assistant editor of his liberal literary magazine, The Westminster Review. It was unheard for a woman to become a magazine editor during the Victorian era, and her living arrangement with John Chapman would add more fuel to the fire of scandal. The worst was yet to come.

A few years later, in 1854, Mary Anne Evans moved in with George Henry Lewes, a philosopher and critic whom she had met three years earlier. She had finally found her true love. Lewes was married, but he and his wife Agnes had an open marriage. They also had seven children, four of which had been sired by Agnes' lover, Thornton Leigh Hunt.

Since Lewes had named himself as the father of Hunt's children on their birth certificates knowing that they were not his, he couldn't divorce Agnes. If he did, he would be considered an accomplice to her adultery and subject to criminal prosecution under British law.

Although they never did marry, Mary Anne and George Henry Lewes considered themselves husband and wife, and lived together as such. Mary Anne even used George's last name. After enjoying what she considered to be her honeymoon in Germany, she resumed her literary career.

She edited and wrote for The Westminster Review. What she really wanted to be was a novelist. Knowing that women writers in the Victorian era were either derided or not taken seriously, she took the pen name George Eliot.

Mary Anne's first novel, Adam Bede, was published in 1859. Her tale of a handsome young squire in a rural English town caught up in a love "rectangle" who finally realizes who his true love really is became an instant hit.

Suddenly, everyone was talking about this new and talented writer named George Eliot whose true identity was a mystery. Speculation about who he might be spread like wildfire.

When a failed writer named Joseph Liggins claimed that he was George Eliot and took credit for her work, Mary Anne Evans came forward and proved that she was the real George Eliot.

It wasn't long before word got out about Mary Anne's scandalous relationship with George Henry Lewes. While most of her readers were shocked, her popularity wasn't affected. Neither was her talent, as she continued to write great novels. Two of her best known, classic novels were Silas Marner (1861) and Middlemarch (1871-72).

Silas Marner told the story of the title character, a weaver living in a small town in Northern England in the early 19th century. When Marner is falsely accused of stealing from the Calvinist congregation he belongs to, he's kicked out of Church. His fiancee breaks up with him and marries another man.

Heartbroken, Marner leaves town and settles in the village of Raveloe, where he becomes a bitter, miserly recluse obsessed with gold coins, which he hoards in his home. When someone breaks in and steals all of his gold, Marner sinks into a deep depression.

Then, one cold winter night, he finds something far more precious than gold - a golden-haired two-year-old girl who wandered into his home. He follows her tracks in the snow and finds her mother dead of exposure.

Silas Marner decides to adopt the orphaned little girl and names her Eppie after his mother and sister. In raising his loving daughter, Marner's broken heart finally heals. Eppie grows up to be a fine and respected young woman.

When the secret of her true parentage is revealed, Eppie's biological father offers her a life of luxury as a gentleman's daughter. She politely refuses, telling him that she could never be happy without her real father - Silas Marner.

Middlemarch would prove to be "George Eliot's" magnum opus - a 900+ page epic novel published in several volumes. The English historical novel, which takes place from 1830-32, would establish the author's reputation as one of the most accurate chroniclers of rural English life in the early Victorian era.

This brilliant, classic novel remains to this day one of the most popular works of English literature ever written. In 1877, five years after the publication of Middlemarch, Mary Anne Evans was introduced to one of her biggest fans, Princess Louise - the daughter of Queen Victoria.

Her admiration and acceptance by the royal family squelched the flames of her scandalous personal life. She would court scandal again in 1880, when, two years after the death of her lover George Henry Lewes from illness, she married John Cross, a man twenty years her junior.

Her new husband was supposedly mentally unstable, and when he had an accident during their honeymoon in Venice - he fell off their hotel balcony into the Grand Canal - some speculated that he had attempted suicide. Whatever the cause, John Cross survived.

He and Mary Anne returned to England and settled into a new home in Chelsea. Unfortunately, she soon fell ill with a throat infection. She had been suffering from kidney disease for a few years, so the throat infection took a toll on her frail health.

Mary Anne Evans, aka George Eliot, died on December 22nd, 1880, at the age of 61.

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Quote Of The Day

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“The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision.” - George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of George Eliot's classic epic novel, Middlemarch. Enjoy!

Notes For November 21st, 2019

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 21st, 1694, the legendary French writer and philosopher Voltaire was born. He was born François-Marie Arouet in Paris, France. He came from an upper class family; his father was a treasury official, his mother a noblewoman.

As a boy, Voltaire received his education at the Collège Louis-le-Grand, a Jesuit private school. There, he learned Latin and Greek. Later, he would become fluent in Italian, Spanish, and English.

Voltaire's father intended for him to become a lawyer, so after he completed his schooling he was sent to study law. But Voltaire wanted to be a writer. While pretending that he was apprenticed to a notary public, he had taken up the life of a bohemian poet.

His father found out what he was up to, and he was sent away to Normandy to study law, but he continued writing. When Voltaire's father arranged for him to work as secretary to the French ambassador to the Netherlands, he took the job.

In the Netherlands, he fell in love with a girl named Catherine Olympe Dunoyer, a French Protestant refugee. The couple planned to elope, but were foiled by Voltaire's father, who would not be scandalized by having a Protestant marry into his family.

This planted the seeds for Voltaire's seething lifelong hatred of not only the Catholic Church, but religion in general, as well as the aristocracy and bourgeois mores. Taking his famous pen name, he became one of France's greatest and most controversial writers.

Voltaire's poetry and prose works were of a polemic nature, and he possessed a rapacious wit. He wrote many polemic tracts, pamphlets, and books - over 2,000 during his lifetime. A leading figure of the French Enlightenment, his writings, radical for their time, often got him in trouble.

He was not an atheist; he believed in the existence of a higher power, but disputed the validity of the Bible and other religious books, considering them to be collections of fairy tales written by men that inspired ignorance, intolerance, cruelty, and violence.

Voltaire loathed religious institutions like the Catholic Church. In a letter to Frederick II, the King of Prussia, he wrote, "[Catholicism] is without a doubt the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and the most blood-thirsty [religion] ever to infect the world."

He didn't single out the Church or Christianity in general for criticism. He also blasted Judaism (which gave the world the Old Testament) for the same reasons, and also Islam, which he called "a false and barbarous sect" founded by a "false prophet."

Rejecting the biblical story of Adam and Eve, Voltaire believed that each race had its own distinct origin, and that no one race was superior to the others. For this reason, and because he had always championed civil liberties and human rights, he denounced slavery, adding to his reputation as a radical.

In 1717, the publication of Voltaire's epic poem La Henriade, a satirical attack on the French monarchy and the Catholic Church, resulted in his arrest. He served almost a year in the Bastille. Imprisonment failed to temper his poison pen, and by 1726, he found himself in trouble again.

Outraged by Voltaire's retort to his insult, Chevalier de Rohan, a young aristocrat, obtained a royal lettre de cachet from King Louis XV - a warrant for Voltaire's arrest and imprisonment without trial.

To avoid serving more time at the Bastille, Voltaire fled to England. He returned to Paris nearly three years later. He continued to write and publish polemical essays, poetry, and prose. Though banned in France, his works were circulated secretly and remained popular.

Voltaire's essay collection Philosophical Letters on the English praised the constitutional monarchy of England for its respect for human rights while condemning the French monarchy for violating them.

The outrage over his writings would escalate. He would flee arrest again, then return. Eventually, King Louis XV banned Voltaire entirely from France. He moved first to Germany, then settled in Switzerland, where he wrote his classic philosophical comic novel Candide and lived for 28 years.

When Voltaire finally returned to Paris in February of 1778, he was met with a hero's welcome. Around three hundred people came to visit him. He died three months later at the age of 83.

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Quote Of The Day

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"An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination." - Voltaire

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Voltaire's classic philosophical comic novel, Candide. Enjoy!

Notes For November 20th, 2019

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 20th, 1875, Roderick Hudson, the first novel by the legendary American writer Henry James, was published. James was an American who emigrated to England, where he lived, wrote, and became a British subject.

He had previously written a novella, Watch and Ward (1871), which was published in serial format by the Atlantic Monthly magazine. This early work, overly melodramatic and primitive in technique, would prove an embarrassment to James, and he disowned it.

Watch and Ward would not be published in book form until 1878, in a revised version. Thus, Roderick Hudson is considered by the author to be his first published novel.

The novel opens with Rowland Mallet, a wealthy patron of the arts, visiting his cousin Cecilia before leaving on a trip to Europe. He becomes enamored with a bust he sees. Later, he meets the sculptor, Roderick Hudson, a poor young law student and aspiring artist.

The two men strike up a friendship. Rowland offers to take Roderick to Italy, where he can concentrate on his art. He visits Roderick's mother and explains his intentions. She agrees to let him give up his law studies and go to Rome.

After a rough start, Roderick's technique improves and his artistic development takes off. Unfortunately, despite his talent, Roderick is an immature man-child who has trouble coping with his artistic genius. He is also distracted by the women around him.

Engaged to one woman, (Mary Garland) but attracted to another, (Augusta Blanchard) Roderick's romantic entanglements get worse when he meets Christina Light, a coquettish flirt who becomes his muse.

Although she likes Roderick, he's poor, and Christina is interested in marrying for wealth and position. She eventually marries a prince, and Roderick's life plunges into a downward spiral.

Roderick Hudson is considered to be Henry James' most accessible novel, though it does contain his trademark complexities and erotic overtones - in this case, homoerotic overtones in the relationship between Rowland and Roderick.

Christina Light - one of James' favorite creations - would return as the title character in his novel The Princess Casamassima (1886).

Henry James would go on to become of one of the greatest writers of his generation, famous for his masterful novels and novellas such as The American (1877), Daisy Miller (1878), Washington Square (1880), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), and The Bostonians (1886).

His most famous work was the classic horror novella The Turn of the Screw (1898). He also wrote plays, literary criticisms, travelogues, biographies, and memoirs. He died in 1916 at the age of 72.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The advantage, the luxury, as well as the torment and responsibility of the novelist, is that there is no limit to what he may attempt as an executant — no limit to his possible experiments, efforts, discoveries, successes." - Henry James

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Henry James' first novek, Roderick Hudson. Enjoy!

Notes For November 19th, 2019

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 19th, 1942, the famous American poet Sharon Olds was born in San Francisco, California, to an extremely religious "hellfire Calvinist" family. She would reject her religion and become a poet.

After graduating Stanford with an English degree, she moved East to attend Columbia University, where she earned her Ph.D. By the age of 30, Sharon had spent nearly a decade writing poems, none of which satisfied her. She felt she was just imitating the styles of her favorite poets.

So, she sought out her own poetical voice, and at the age of 37, her first poetry collection, Satan Says (1980) was published. It won her the very first San Francisco Poetry Center Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Her second poetry collection, The Dead and the Living, (1984) won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Lamont Poetry Prize. It sold over 50,000 copies. One of my favorite poems from this book is The Connoisseuse Of Slugs:

When I was a connoisseuse of slugs
I would part the ivy leaves, and look for the
naked jelly of those gold bodies,
translucent strangers glistening along the
stones, slowly, their gelatinous bodies
at my mercy. Made mostly of water, they would shrivel
to nothing if they were sprinkled with salt,
but I was not interested in that. What I liked
was to draw aside the ivy, breathe the
odor of the wall, and stand there in silence
until the slug forgot I was there
and sent its antennae up out of its
head, the glimmering umber horns
rising like telescopes, until finally the
sensitive knobs would pop out the
ends, delicate and intimate. Years later,
when I first saw a naked man,
I gasped with pleasure to see that quiet
mystery reenacted, the slow
elegant being coming out of hiding and
gleaming in the dark air, eager and so
trusting you could weep.

Sharon's style of confessional poetry uses raw, often profane language and striking imagery within a plainly spoken narrative to convey truths in subjects such as family relationships, sexuality, the body, domestic violence, and political oppression.

She would continue to publish poetry collections; memorable volumes include The Gold Cell (1987), The Father (1993), and The Wellspring (1996).

Sharon's work has been anthologized in over 100 collections and has been translated into seven languages for international publication. From 1998-2000, she served as New York State Poet Laureate.

In 2005, Sharon became famous for a publication that had nothing to do with her poetry. First Lady Laura Bush had invited her to the National Book Festival in Washington D.C. She declined the invitation.

In an open letter published by the prominent liberal news magazine, The Nation, Sharon explained her reason for declining the invitation:

I tried to see my way clear to attend the festival in order to bear witness--as an American who loves her country and its principles and its writing--against this undeclared and devastating war.

But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.

What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of permitting "extraordinary rendition:" flying people to other countries where they will be tortured for us.

So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.

In addition to her career as a poet, Sharon is also a teacher of English and creative writing. She lives in New York City, where she taught creative writing at New York University. Her 2012 poetry collection, Stag's Leap, made her the first American woman to win the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry and also won her a Pulitzer Prize.

Sharon Olds' most recent poetry collection, Odes, was published in 2016.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The older I get, the more I feel almost beautiful." - Sharon Olds

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features Sharon Olds giving a poetry reading. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

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Rasmenia Massoud

Late last year, my novella Circuits End was accepted for publication in a novella anthology by Running Wild Press. The pub date isn't until December 1st, but I just found out this morning that Circuits End was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. This story did go through the fiction list, a few years ago, one chapter at a time.

So thank you not just for helping me fix the broken parts of the story, but for being so patient with me assaulting the list with all those chapters. Especially Aaron and Wayne, who I'm pretty sure ended up critiquing the entire novella.

Thanks, guys.

Jeannette de Beauvoir

A Fatal Folly, the fifth book in my Saydney Riley mystery series, was officially published and is now available on Amazon. Holly Folly is approaching, and Sydney Riley is feeling far from festive.

She hasn’t heard from her boyfriend in weeks, a mysterious stranger has crashed into her beloved “little green car,” and, in a moment of temporary insanity, she’s invited her parents for the holidays. She’s convinced things could not possibly get worse—until she stumbles over a body at the lighting of the lobster pot Christmas tree.

As if this is not enough, when a gold coin and nameplate of a missing fishing boat are discovered, she’s asked to investigate the unsolved mystery of a murdered fisherman. While Provincetown is aglow with holiday lights and events, Sydney, Provincetown’s unofficial sleuth, is in the dark but determined to uncover the motive for both murders.

Wayne Scheer

I haven't been submitting much lately, but here's an old creative nonfiction piece I recently revised and it's in the current edition of the Birmingham Arts Journal. My story begins on page 36.

Dave Gregory

My interview with Bruce Meyer, a poet, writer and editor, who - with 64 books to his credit - remains one of Canadian literature's best kept secrets, is now online at the Blake-Jones Review. "Just Write the Next One" is a lengthy article but it's filled with miracles, setbacks, tips, advice and inspiration.

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Notes For November 15th, 2019

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 15th, 1887, the famous American poet Marianne Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri. She was born in the living quarters of her grandfather's church. He was a Presbyterian minister.

Marianne's father had walked out on the family before she was born, so she spent her early years living in her grandfather's home. Her grandfather died when she seven, and her mother moved the family to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where she began her education.

After attending college and business school, Marianne taught at the Carlisle Indian School for several years. In 1915, when she was twenty-eight, her first published poem appeared.

Marianne continued to write and determined to become a professional poet. She and her mother moved to New York City, where she would become an assistant librarian at the New York Public Library.

As her publication credits grew, with her works published in major literary magazines and newspapers, she was befriended by some of the greatest poets of the day, such as William Carlos Williams, H.D. (Hilda Dolittle), Wallace Stevens, and T.S. Eliot.

In 1919, she struck up a friendship with Ezra Pound, a fellow American poet famous for his poetry and controversial for his political views. She continued to write to him even after the end of the war, as he languished in a brutal military prison.

Pound had been serving time for treason. In the 1930s, he proclaimed his support for fascism and admiration of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. During the war, he had lived in Rome and recorded propaganda radio broadcasts for Mussolini.

Although politically conservative, Marianne had denounced fascism long before America's entry into World War II and was revolted by Pound's anti-Semitism. Yet, she remained his friend. Pound would suffer a mental breakdown in prison, be declared insane, and transferred to a mental hospital.

Marianne Moore's first poetry collection, Poems, was published in London in 1921. It was actually published without her knowledge or consent by her friend H.D. as a surprise. When Marianne received her copy, she wasn't happy with the selection of poems, the editing, or the layout.

She continued to write and publish collections of her poetry, establishing herself as one of the finest poets of her generation. From 1925-29, she served as an editor for the famous literary magazine, The Dial (1840-1929). She won the Helen Haire Levinson Prize, awarded by the famous literary magazine Poetry, in 1931.

Marianne became a celebrity among the New York literati. She was quite a character; whenever she went out, no matter what the occasion, she'd wear her trademark black cape and matching tricorn hat.

She was a huge sports fan, and her favorite sports were baseball and boxing. She regularly attended ballgames and boxing matches. Her favorite boxer was Muhammad Ali, and she wrote the liner notes for his 1963 spoken word album, I Am The Greatest!

Marianne's fame also attracted the attention of the Ford Motor Company. The company's manager of marketing research asked her to name their newest car, a breakthrough model that they believed would make automotive history.

She came up with a list of names, including the Resilient Bullet, the Ford Silver Sword, the Varsity Stroke, the Andante con Moto, and the Utopian Turtletop.

None of Marianne's names for the new car were chosen. Instead, Ford named it the Edsel. It did make automotive history; with its open vulva-like grille and incredibly poor workmanship, it was the worst American car ever made. In its two years of production, Ford lost $350 million on the Edsel.

In 1951, Marianne published her most famous book, Collected Poems. It won her numerous awards, including a Pultizer Prize. She was a Modernist poet who believed that love of language and heartfelt expression were more important than meter, as you can see in her classic poem, Poetry:

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important
beyond all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it,
one discovers that there is in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not be-
cause a

high sounding interpretation can be put upon them
but because they are
useful; when they become so derivative as to
become unintelligible, the
same thing may be said for all of us – that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand. The bat,
holding on upside down or in quest of some-
thing to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll,
a tireless wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a
horse that feels a flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician – case after case
could be cited did
one wish it; nor is it valid
to discriminate against "business documents
and

school-books;" all these phenomena are important.
One must make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half
poets,
the result is not poetry,
nor till the autocrats among us can be
"literalists of
the imagination" – above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads
in them, shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on one hand,
in defiance of their opinion –
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness, and
that which is on the other hand,
genuine, then you are interested in poetry.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others." - Marianne Moore

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a rare recording of Marianne Moore reading her classic poem, Bird-Witted. Enjoy!

Notes For November 14th, 2019

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 14th, 1851, Moby Dick, the classic novel by the legendary American writer Herman Melville, was published in the United States. It had been published in England as The Whale a month earlier - a release that proved to be a disaster.

Melville's classic adventure novel was based in part on the true story of Mocha Dick, a giant albino sperm whale so named because his territory was the waters off the Chilean island of Mocha.

For many years, Mocha Dick terrorized the whaling ships that sailed through his territory. He was known to attack ships with incredible ferocity. He supposedly had around twenty harpoons stuck in his back by previous whalers.

By the time Mocha Dick was finally killed in the late 1830s, he had successfully fought off one hundred whaling crews and destroyed many ships. Sailors told stories about him in every port, and his legend grew.

When Herman Melville read a book about Mocha Dick, he became fascinated by the true story of a giant killer sperm whale and saw in it the potential for a great novel, one he hoped would prove to be his magnum opus. He had already become famous for such classic novels as Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847).

The narrator of Moby Dick is Ishmael, an itinerant sailor who signs up for work on the whaling ship Pequod along with his new friend Queequeg, a master harpooner from a South Seas island where his father was the chief of a cannibal tribe.

Also on the crew of the Pequod are harpooners Tashtego and Daggoo, and chief mate Starbuck. The crew is under the command of Captain Ahab, a tyrant with a hidden agenda.

While on a whaling trip off the coast of Japan, Captain Ahab's ship was attacked by Moby Dick, a giant albino sperm whale. The ship was destroyed, and in the process, the giant whale bit off part of Captain Ahab's leg.

The crew of the Pequod has no idea that their captain plans to risk their lives to satisfy his monomaniacal desire for revenge against Moby Dick. When it becomes obvious that this is no ordinary whaling trip, Starbuck is the only one who objects.

Captain Ahab isn't deterred from his quest when Starbuck points out the madness of his plan and that revenge is against their religion - they're Quakers. In the novel's exciting climax, Ahab and nearly his entire crew pay the ultimate price for his revenge. Ishmael is the sole survivor of the Pequod's final battle with Moby Dick.

Although today Moby Dick is rightfully considered an epic masterpiece of American literature, the novel was savaged upon its first publication in England. Critics referred to it as "so much trash belonging to the worst school of Bedlam literature."

The scathing reviews were thanks to Melville's monumentally incompetent British publisher, who chopped up his already experimental manuscript for the censors, rearranged the ending, and forgot to include the crucial epilogue.

Melville had no idea that the UK version of his novel was so badly botched until it was too late. Shocked and confused by the bad reviews in British magazines, he was relieved when Moby Dick was published in America in its correct and unexpurgated original version.

Unfortunately, by then, the damage was done. The American reading public's interest had changed from sea adventures to tales of the American West and the Yukon gold rush, and though Moby Dick did receive good reviews from American critics, readers still remembered the bad reviews of the English critics.

The warm reception by American critics to the definitive version of Moby Dick was not enough to undo the damage done to the novel by its British publisher and make it the magnum opus Herman Melville had hoped for. It sold less than 3,000 copies during his lifetime. His total earnings from it were $556.37

He continued to write over the next several years, but after his novel The Confidence-Man was published in 1857, he plunged into alcoholism and depression and his writing came to a screeching halt.

In 1876, Melville published his classic epic poem Clarel, and it sold so poorly that he couldn't afford to buy back the unsold copies at cost, so they were burned. Unable to make money as a writer, he scraped by as a customs agent for New York City.

When Herman Melville died in 1891 at the age of 76, he had been completely forgotten as a writer. In a final insult, an article on Melville published in The New York Times ten days after his death mistakenly referred to him as Hiram Melville.

His last work, the classic novella Billy Budd, Sailor, was published posthumously in 1924 and became an instant classic that would rekindle an interest in his work. Moby Dick would finally receive its due as one of the greatest American novels of all time.

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Quote Of The Day

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"To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it." - Herman Melville

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Herman Melville's classic novel, Moby Dick. Enjoy!

Notes For November 13th, 2019

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 13th, 1850, the legendary Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father was a renowned civil engineer who designed, built, and maintained lighthouses - a family business which Stevenson's uncles and grandfather worked for.

As a boy, Robert Louis Stevenson was sickly. Prone to coughs and fevers, which worsened considerably during the winters, he most likely suffered from bronchiectasis resulting from pertussis, commonly known as whooping cough. Stevenson's parents were devout Presbyterians, but not incredibly strict.

His nanny, Alison Cunningham, was a fiercely religious Calvinist. Though her religious fervor gave Stevenson nightmares, she nursed him tenderly through his illnesses. She also read to him often and told him folk tales, planting the first seeds of his writing career.

When he was six years old, Stevenson began his schooling. Odd looking and eccentric, he didn't fit in with the other kids. His frequent illnesses kept him out of school, so he received most of his early education from private tutors.

He didn't learn to read until he was seven or eight, but he began writing stories before that, dictating them to his mother and nanny. After he learned to read and write, he continued to write compulsively. When he was eleven, he entered Edinburgh Academy.

At the age of sixteen, Robert Louis Stevenson published his first piece, an essay titled The Pentland Rising: A Page Of History, 1666 (1866), which was an account of the covenanters' rebellion. His father, who was proud of his interest in writing, paid for the printing.

However, he expected Robert to follow in his footsteps and join the family business. So, when he entered the University of Edinburgh in November of 1867, he majored in engineering. He hated it.

Having no interest in or enthusiasm for the study of engineering, he avoided lectures whenever he could. He joined the Speculative Society - the University's exclusive debating club - whose members would become lifelong friends of his.

During vacations, Stevenson traveled with his father around the Scottish islands to inspect the family's lighthouses and other engineering works. He enjoyed these travels, but only as a source of prospective writing material.

In 1871, Stevenson finally told his father that he wanted to be a writer and not an engineer. His father was displeased, but agreed to a compromise: Stevenson would study law to have something to fall back on.

While he studied, Stevenson adopted a bohemian lifestyle. He wore his hair long, rejected his religion, and spent his meager allowance on cheap pubs and brothels. Although he graduated and qualified for the Scottish Bar, he never practiced law.

Instead, he began his writing career, and when his parents learned that he had become a libertine, they disowned him. It would be years before he reconciled with them.

In late 1873, Stevenson went to England to visit his cousin. While there, he hobnobbed with London's literati and struck up a friendship with Leslie Stephen, editor of the Cornhill Magazine, who was impressed by his work.

When Stephen visited Edinburgh in 1875, he met with Stevenson and took him to see a friend of his, William Henley, a patient at the Edinburgh Infirmary. He was a colorful, talkative character who had a wooden leg.

Henley and Stevenson became friends, and it is believed that the character of Long John Silver in Treasure Island was inspired by Henley.

Robert Louis Stevenson continued to travel. One of his journeys was a canoe trip taken through Belgium and France with Sir Walter Simpson, his old friend from the Speculative Society. The trip would serve as the basis of Stevenson's first book, An Inland Voyage, (1878) a travelogue.

The canoe trip would take him to Grez in September of 1876, where he would meet Fanny Osbourne, a separated single mother ten years his senior. They would become lovers the following year.

In August of 1878, Fanny returned to her home in San Francisco while Stevenson stayed in Europe and went on a 12-day, 120-mile solo hike through the Cevennes Mountains in South central France.

Stevenson wrote of the journey in his next book, Travels With A Donkey In The Cevannes. (1879). It was one of the earliest nonfiction books to present hiking and camping as recreational activities. To prepare for the trip, Stevenson commissioned one of the first sleeping bags to be made for him.

Using the money he earned from Travels, Stevenson booked second class passage on the steamship Devonia and sailed to New York City. From there, he traveled across the country by train, bound for San Francisco, where Fanny was waiting for him. This trip was chronicled in his book The Amateur Emigrant, which would be published posthumously in 1895.

Unfortunately, when Stevenson reached Monterey, the trip had taken a huge toll on his fragile health. Too weak to go on to San Francisco, he was joined in Monterey by Fanny, who nursed him back to health. They were married in May of 1880.

After Stevenson regained his health, they went to England, where Fanny would help her husband reconcile with his parents. He and Fanny spent the next several years living in various places throughout England and Scotland, searching for a home that would be suitable for his fragile health.

His writing career took off as he wrote his most famous works. Treasure Island (1883), his first novel, was an exciting adventure for children about a boy, Jim Hawkins, who helps search for treasure after receiving a map from pirate Billy Bones, a rum-guzzling lodger at his parents' inn.

Originally titled The Sea Cook before an editor changed it, Treasure Island was a rarity for a children's novel due to its depiction of unrestrained drinking and its moral ambiguity, with the charming and ruthless pirate Long John Silver proving himself to be not all bad.

Kidnapped (1886) was set amidst the historical events of 18th century Scotland. It told the story of Daniel Balfour, an orphaned 17-year-old boy who goes to live with his miserly Uncle Ebenezer. He doesn't know that his uncle cheated his father out of his estate.

When Ebenezer's plan for Daniel's "accidental" death fails, he tricks him into going on board the brig Covenant, where he sells Daniel into slavery. Daniel is shanghaied and forced to work as the ship's new cabin boy.

The Black Arrow (1888) was a swashbuckling adventure set during the Wars of the Roses. In it, young Dick Shelton rescues his lady, Joanna Sedley, becomes a knight, and joins the Black Arrow outlaw gang to avenge the murder of his father, Sir Harry Shelton. His father's murderer turns out to be Sir Daniel Brackley - Dick's guardian.

Though he wrote other books, Robert Louis Stevenson's most famous novel was the classic novella, The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. (1888) In this celebrated tale of psychological horror, brilliant doctor Henry Jekyll is a good man troubled by his capacity for cruelty.

So, he invents a potion that he hopes will remove the dark side of human nature once and for all. Instead, the potion unleashes it as a physical manifestation, transforming Jekyll into Edward Hyde, a younger, stronger, bestial man.

Cruel, remorseless, misanthropic, and downright evil, Hyde consorts with prostitutes, steals, and wreaks all kinds of havoc. At first, Jekyll is able to use his potion to change back into himself, but soon, it requires larger doses.

When the potion is used up, Jekyll tries to make more, but he can't - it was an imperfection in one of the ingredients that made it work. Realizing that his next transformation into Hyde will be permanent, Jekyll commits suicide.

In addition to his novels, short story collections, and travelogues, Stevenson also wrote poetry collections. His most famous was a collection of poems for children called A Child's Garden Of Verses (1885). Containing the memorable poems My Shadow and The Lamplighter, the book would be popular with adults as well.

Believing its climate would suit his fragile health perfectly, in 1890, Stevenson bought 400 acres of land in Upolu, one of the Samoan islands. He moved there, built an estate in the village of Vailima, and took the native name Tusitala, which means teller of tales in Samoan.

Believing that the European colonial officials who ruled Samoa were incompetent, Stevenson blasted them in his non-fiction book, A Footnote To History, (1892) which was a chronicle of the Samoan Civil War. The book caused such an uproar that Stevenson feared that the colonial officials would deport him.

In 1894, a bout with writer's block drove Stevenson into a deep depression. He feared he would never write again. Just when he had hit bottom, he suddenly regained his creative juices and began work on a new novel called Weir Of Hermiston.

Believing that it was his best work and reportedly saying that "it's so good, it frightens me," Stevenson channeled all his energy into his writing, oblivious to the tremendous toll it was taking on his fragile health. His last novel would remain unfinished.

Robert Louis Stevenson died suddenly on December 3rd, 1894, at the age of 44, most likely from a stroke. He remains one of the greatest and most influential writers of the 19th century.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish." - Robert Louis Stevenson

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novella, The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. Enjoy!

Notes For November 12th, 2019

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 12th, 1945, the famous American nonfiction writer and journalist Tracy Kidder was born in New York City. After graduating from Phillips Academy prep school in 1963, Kidder enrolled at Harvard, where he initially majored in political science.

He switched his major to English after taking a creative writing course taught by poet and translator Robert Fitzgerald. After graduating from Harvard in 1967, Tracy Kidder served for two years in Vietnam as a first lieutenant for Military Intelligence.

When his tour of duty was up, he returned to the U.S. and began a writing career, eventually enrolling in the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the University of Iowa, where he earned a Master's degree.

While studying at the University of Iowa, Kidder wrote his first nonfiction book. Commissioned by Atlantic Monthly magazine, The Road To Yuba City (1974) was a straightforward, non-judgmental chronicle of the sensational Juan Corona serial murder trial in Yuba City, California.

Corona, a farm labor contractor, was accused of preying on poor migrant farm workers, savagely murdering twenty-five of them by various methods including shooting, stabbing, and bludgeoning. Corona was convicted on all counts and sentenced to 25 consecutive life sentences.

In researching his book, Tracy Kidder rode along on trains packed with migrant farm workers, experiencing their living and working conditions firsthand. During the trial, he interviewed the victims' families and examined all facets of the case.

In doing so, he exposed incredible incompetence in both the prosecution and the defense, leaving the impression that the whole trial was horribly botched. To this day, some believe that Juan Corona was wrongfully convicted.

Unfortunately, The Road To Yuba City proved to be a critical and commercial failure. Kidder disowned it, explaining in a 1995 interview:

I can't say anything intelligent about that book, except that I learned never to write about a murder case. The whole experience was disgusting, so disgusting, in fact, that in 1981 I went to Doubleday and bought back the rights to the book.

"I don't want The Road to Yuba City to see the light of day again," Kidder vowed, and it hasn't. Today, copies are extremely hard to find and go for around $100 on eBay.

Tracy Kidder's next nonfiction book, however, proved to be a huge success in many ways. The Soul Of A New Machine (1981) chronicled a turf war between teams of computer designers within Data General Corporation, which was a top minicomputer vendor in the 1970s.

The engineers are presented with a daunting challenge: in order to compete with the new VAX minicomputer of rival company Digital Equipment Corporation, they must design a new 32-bit minicomputer in one year.

Kidder's book takes a seemingly dry subject and turns it into a riveting suspense thriller, following the engineers as they face hectic schedules (including marathon 24-hour work sessions) and tremendous pressure to complete their task.

The Soul Of A New Machine became a big hit with both critics and readers, and is considered a classic work of journalism. It won Kidder a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1982.

Tracy Kidder continued to write great nonfiction books. House (1985) follows a team of home builders as they struggle to build a family's home on time, within their budget, and to their clients' satisfaction. The book follows the construction of the house from the drawing of the blueprints to the day that the family moves in.

Among Schoolchildren (1989) follows dedicated, compassionate inner-city elementary school teacher Chris Zajac through an entire school year as she struggles to provide a decent education to her poor, neglected, mostly Hispanic students in a riveting and brutally honest look at what it really means to be a teacher.

Old Friends (1994) follows Lou and Joe, roommates at a nursing home in Northampton, Massachusetts. In Home Town, (2000), Kidder's subject is the town of Northampton itself, as he tells the stories of several of its colorful residents.

Mountains Beyond Mountains (2003) is a biography of the noted physician and anthropologist Dr. Paul Farmer and a narrative about the struggles he faces as he tries to provide health care to the poor in third world countries.

In 2005, Kidder wrote My Detachment: A Memoir - an account of his experiences in the Vietnam War, from eager enlistee (and former ROTC cadet) to disillusioned veteran, as he comes to understand the absurdity and immorality of the war he volunteered to fight in. The book is reminiscent of classic antiwar satires such as Catch-22 and M*A*S*H.

Kidder's 2009 book, Strength In What Remains, follows the journey of Deogratias, a young African man from Burundi who in 1994 fled his country's bloody, genocidal civil war and settled in New York City. He was nearly broke and barely able to speak English.

Deogratias delivered groceries for slave wages by day and slept in Central Park at night. Driven by ambition and determination, he worked his way through medical school and became a doctor, then an American citizen. Kidder follows him as he returns to Burundi to build a medical clinic for his poor countrymen.

Tracy Kidder has proven himself to be one of the best contemporary writers of nonfiction. His most recent book, A Truck Full Of Money was published in 2016. It's a biography of software entrepreneur Paul English.

English, a brilliant software developer, created the famous travel website Kayak in 2004, which was acquired by Priceline in 2012 for nearly two billion dollars. He would later create the online corporate travel service Lola.

While becoming hugely successful in online software development, English suffered from bipolar disorder. After the sale of Kayak made him a billionaire, he became a devoted philanthropist.

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Quote Of The Day

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"I think that the nonfiction writer's fundamental job is to make what is true believable." - Tracy Kidder

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features Tracy Kidder and the subject of his most recent book, Paul English, on Talks at Google discussing the book. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

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Mark Piper

My debut novel, You Wish, has won first-place, gold in the 2019 American Eagle Book Awards. Also, my short story, "Mrs. Hubble's Penance," has been accepted by Fabula Argentea and will be published on December 29th.

Rasmenia Massoud

My flash, Dead Flowers is up at X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine.

My story, Twenty-Seven Boxes, is up at Anti-Heroin Chic in their Grief & Loss issue.

Neither one of these stories is cheerful, but... yahoos are cheerful. Thanks to my Fiction pals for helping me to get these two pieces submission worthy.

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Notes For November 8th, 2019

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 8th, 1602, the world famous Bodleian Library, located at Oxford University in England, was opened to the public. Although one of the oldest libraries in Europe, the Bodleian Library was not the first library that existed at Oxford.

The first library at Oxford was founded in the 14th century by Thomas Cobham, the Bishop of Worcester. It began as a small collection of books that were chained to prevent theft. The collection grew steadily, but modestly.

Then, around 1436, Humphrey, the Duke of Gloucester, (brother of King Henry V) donated a huge collection of manuscripts to the library.

There wasn't nearly enough room to store these manuscripts at the library's current location, above the north side of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin. So, construction of a new library began.

The new library, located above the Divinity School, became known as Duke Humfrey's Library. By the late 16th century, the library had declined so dramatically that its furniture was being sold off due to lack of interest.

In 1598, Sir Thomas Bodley, a wealthy retired nobleman known for his work as a diplomat, determined to restore and expand the Oxford library as a much needed antidote to "the mediocrity of worldly living." He wrote the following to Oxford's Vice Chancellor:

"Where there hath bin hertofore a publike library in Oxford: which you know is apparent by the rome it self remayning, and by your statute records I will take the charge and cost upon me, to reduce it again to his former use."

Bodley pledged his own money and collected donations from his fellow nobles to finance the library project. He also donated a collection of his own books.

The new library, which took four years to build, was renamed the Bodleian Library. It was opened to the public in November of 1602.

A huge hit with students, the aristocracy, the royal family, and the general British public, the Bodleian Library's collection began to grow rapidly.

When Sir Francis Bacon donated a copy of his classic work Advancement of Learning to the library, he praised Bodley for "having built an ark to save learning from the deluge."

Bodley spent his remaining years acquiring manuscripts from around the world for his library. In 1603, he acquired the library's first Chinese language book.

In 1610, Bodley made a deal with Stationers' Company - England's largest publisher - to place a copy of every one of its volumes in the library.

The Bodleian Library's collection grew so quickly that its building needed to be expanded. Eventually, new buildings were constructed as part of the library's complex.

Although Bodley wouldn't live to see it - he died in 1613 - the Bodleian Library would ultimately become the United Kingdom's second largest library.

Today, the Bodleian Library boasts an incredible collection of over 11 million items, including books, periodicals, maps, sound and music recordings, drawings and prints, and rare handwritten manuscripts such as Shakespeare's First Folios.

Sir Thomas Bodley would have been angered by the Bodleian Library's Shakespeare holdings; he had originally banned play scripts from his library as "very unworthy matters." This and other policies would change over time.

One of the biggest changes in library policy occurred recently, as patrons are now allowed to photocopy or digitally scan library materials.

The library itself, working with the Oxford Digital Library, had already archived most of its pre-1801 holdings on microfilm and continues to digitize its collection.

The fantastic architecture of the Bodleian Library complex has made it an ideal location for filming. It served as the set for the library at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the first two Harry Potter films.

Sir Thomas Bodley would have been horrified. He was an extremely devout Christian and banned all occult books and manuscripts from his library. Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester and the co-founder of Oxford's first library, wouldn't have been thrilled, either.

Humphrey was accused of witchcraft and hanged. His wife Eleanor was exiled to the Isle of Man - after being forced to march in a humiliating "parade of penance." Shakespeare depicted these events in his classic play, Henry VI, Part 2.

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Quote Of The Day

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"No university in the world has ever risen to greatness without a correspondingly great library. When this is no longer true, then will our civilization have come to an end." - Lawrence Clark Powell

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a presentation on one of the Bodleian Library's great treasures - a rare medieval manuscript of Dante's classic epic poem, The Divine Comedy. Enjoy!

Notes For November 7th, 2019

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 7th, 1913, the legendary French writer, philosopher, and journalist Albert Camus was born in El Taref, Algeria. Throughout his life, Algeria was a French colony, and what he saw of colonial life was reflected in his writings and philosophy.

Camus never knew his father Lucien, who died when he was a year old. Lucien was killed in the Battle of the Marne during World War I. Albert and his mother, who was Spanish and half-deaf, lived in poverty in the Belcourt section of Algiers.

While studying at the University of Algiers, Camus excelled at both academics and soccer. His career as a star goalkeeper was cut short when he contracted tuberculosis. The disease would come and go over the years.

After graduating from university, Camus joined the French Communist Party. He was not a hardcore communist, and when he became involved with the Algerian People's Party, the Soviet Union denounced him as a Trotskyite and had the French Communist Party expel him.

The Algerian People's Party was a socialist party led by prominent Algerian nationalist Messali Hadji - one of many leftist parties that had formed a coalition centered around Algerian independence from French rule.

The fragile coalition would break apart due to infighting; the Soviet Union was determined to see a communist Algeria under its control, but the parties not allied with the Soviets were calling for a fully independent Algeria.

After being expelled by the French Communist Party, Albert Camus would associate himself with the French anarchist movement. He began a career in journalism and wrote for socialist newspapers. Meanwhile, the looming threat of Hitler increased.

Camus went to France and tried to enlist in the military but was disqualified because of his recurring tuberculosis. During the Nazi occupation of France, he joined the French Resistance.

The French Resistance cell Camus joined was called Combat, and he served as the editor-in-chief of its underground newspaper of the same name, writing under the pseudonym Beauchard.

When the Allies liberated France, Camus was there to witness and report on the defeat of the Nazis. Later, when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, he was one of the few French newspaper editors to speak out against the bombing and express disgust.

It was during the Nazi occupation of France that Albert Camus would publish his first novel. The Stranger (1942) was a classic work of existentialist philosophical fiction.

Meursault, a young Algerian, drifts aimlessly through the tumultuous French Algerian landscape. Unable to feel for anyone including himself, he attends his mother's funeral, meets a girl, becomes entangled in the life of a local pimp, and ends up inexplicably killing a man.

Arrested, jailed, and put through an absurd trial, Meursault's defense is obviously a deficiency of character - the product of his environment. In telling his story, Camus explores the paradox of existentialism - the search for meaning in a meaningless world.

A year after The Stranger was published, Camus met the legendary French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre at the dress rehearsal of Sartre's play, The Flies. The two men became close friends. Camus referred to Sartre as his "study partner."

In 1947, Camus published his second novel, The Plague. Although set in the 1940s, this classic novel was inspired by an epidemic of cholera that ravaged the population of the Algerian city of Oran in 1849 - right after France colonized Algeria.

In the novel, the streets of modern Oran become infested with rats carrying the plague. The rats start dying en masse, but not before transmitting the disease to the human population.

Dr. Bernard Rieux, a wealthy physician, is the first to recognize that a plague is spreading. He alerts the authorities, who waste time quibbling over what action to take. Rieux opens a plague ward in the town hospital, and its 80 beds are filled in three days.

As the city struggles to contain the plague, the authorities are left with no option but to seal the city to keep the plague from ravaging all of Algeria. One man tries to get criminals to smuggle him out of the city.

Dr. Rieux teams up with civil servant Joseph Grand and tourist Jean Tarrou to treat all the incoming plague cases. Meanwhile, Father Paneloux, an ambitious Catholic priest, declares that the plague is an act of God unleashed to punish the citizens for their sins.

The desperate people of Oran flock to the Church in droves and a new plague begins to ravage the city - the plague of religion. When Father Paneloux witnesses firsthand the efforts to contain the rat plague and the horrors that the disease causes, the priest has a change of heart.

In the 1950s, Camus devoted his life to human rights causes. He worked for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), but resigned when the UN decided to recognize Spain's fascist dictatorship under General Franco.

When the Algerian War broke out in 1954, Camus found himself at a political crossroad. He was in favor of Algerian independence, but opposed the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) freedom fighters - Islamic fundamentalist guerrillas backed by the Soviet Union.

As the vicious FLN guerrillas fought the equally vicious French colonial army, Camus feared for the lives of the innocent Algerian and French citizens caught in the crossfire. He ultimately sided with the French, alienating himself from his friends, including Jean-Paul Sartre.

Undaunted by the criticism, Camus worked behind the scenes to save the lives of imprisoned Algerians who had been sentenced to death by the French colonial government. He was a vocal opponent of capital punishment, a position he expressed in his classic essay, Reflections on the Guillotine.

In 1956, The Fall, Camus' last novel published during his lifetime, was released. The following year, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In addition to his novels, he wrote plays, short stories, essays, and works of nonfiction.

Four years later, on January 4th, 1960, Albert Camus was riding in a car driven by his publisher and friend, Michel Gallimard, when they were both killed in an accident. Camus had originally intended to travel by train with his wife and twin daughters, but decided to ride with Gallimard instead. He was 46 years old.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself." - Albert Camus

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features the full length documentary Albert Camus - The Madness of Sincerity. Enjoy!