Notes For November 29th, 2024

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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 in 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 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 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 set 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. Jack breaks his leg and Jill is left with a broken back.

Both kids are bedridden, and everyone fears that Jill will never walk again. Jack keeps 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, 2024

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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 school'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.

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.

Rita famously quipped that lesbian was "the one word that can cause the [National Organization of Women's] Executive Committee [to have] a collective heart attack."

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 girl'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 it 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!

Rita's talent for comedy can also be seen in her semi autobiographical Runnymede series, a blend of comedy and drama. In the first book, Six of One (1978), we meet the main characters. Nicole "Nickel" Smith, the narrator, is a bisexual writer in her 30s who has returned to her hometown of Runnymede, Maryland, which straddles the Mason-Dixon Line.

The other main characters are eccentric, headstrong, and elderly sisters Wheezie and Juts Hunsenmeir - Nickel's aunts - who are deeply devoted to each other, yet constantly at each other's throats. The narrative of their lives moves back and forth in time.

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 nearly three dozen Mrs. Murphy Mysteries. Her latest, Feline Fatale, was published earlier this year, in April.

Another of Rita's mystery series is the Sister Jane series, whose first book, Outfoxed, was published in 2000. It's set in a Blue Ridge Mountain town in Virginia with a strict code of social conduct, a tradition of English-style fox hunting, and an unusual sleuth.

The sleuth in question is Jane Arnold, known as Sister Jane - Master of the prestigious Jefferson Hunt Club. In a neat twist, the foxes, hounds, horses, and other animals speak to each other. They know what the humans are doing, but the humans can't understand them.

Rita 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 their boyfriends and an unexpected guest - 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, 2024

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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 find a fortune in stolen money, after which, he plans to kill them. 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.

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, 2024

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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 IV, had been teaching mathematics at the University of Christ Church, Oxford, when he first met ten-year-old Alice Liddell. Her father, Henry Liddell, was the new Dean of the university.

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 on a rowing trip, Dodgson told Alice a story about a little girl who falls down a rabbit hole and finds herself in a strange, magical, and sometimes scary world.

Alice loved all of Dodgson's stories. The one about the little girl was her favorite. He told her that he was thinking of turning it into a book, and she begged him to do so. 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.

After he completed the manuscript in November of 1864, which included his own illustrations, he made a handwritten copy and gave it 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. a clever play on his own name; Carroll is an Irish surname similar to the Latin word Carolus, which the name Charles comes from.

The initial 2,000 copy press run of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland 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 them would survive.

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 IV)

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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!

Notes For November 22nd, 2024

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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 became the assistant editor of his liberal literary magazine, The Westminster Review. It was unheard of 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 were 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" masterpiece - 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 and into the Grand Canal - some speculated that he had attempted suicide. Whatever the cause, John Cross survived his fall.

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, 2024

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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 lifelong seething 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, 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. For the same reasons, he also blasted Judaism (which gave the world the Old Testament) as well as 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 scathing 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 as ever.

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 - in only three days - 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, 2024

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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 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 serialized 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's 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 brilliant 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 novel, Roderick Hudson. Enjoy!