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Outsiders: Cinque scrittrici che hanno cambiato il mondo
Outsiders racconta le storie di cinque romanziere – Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner, Virginia Woolf – e dei loro famosi romanzi. Conosciamo da tempo la loro grandezza individuale, ma questa biografia di gruppo getta nuova luce sul genio che condividono. Outsider, fuorilegge, emarginata: la reputazione di una donna era la sua unica certezza. Come scrittrici, hanno fatto propria quest’identità, approfittando della lontananza dall’ordine dominante per scrivere le loro opere. Tutte e cinque sono cresciute senza madre. Senza un modello femminile a portata di mano, hanno imparato dai libri e, se fortunate, da un uomo illuminato. Complesse, contraddittorie, difficili, combattute ma eccezionalmente determinate e capaci di esercitare un’influenza nella sfera pubblica, hanno dovuto immaginare un modo di essere donna per inventare una propria voce. Capivano il desiderio femminile: la passione e la trasgressione della vita reale permeano le loro narrazioni. Ancora oggi facciamo più che leggerle; le ascoltiamo e viviamo con loro. Cinque biografie per cinque scrittrici dalle identità decisamente originali e fuori dai canoni.
Outsiders è una genealogia al femminile della letteratura anglosassone da cui emergono cinque personalità assolutamente uniche e singolari, con un tratto comune: la condizione di donne e autrici in una società dominata dagli uomini.
Outsiders è una genealogia al femminile della letteratura anglosassone da cui emergono cinque personalità assolutamente uniche e singolari, con un tratto comune: la condizione di donne e autrici in una società dominata dagli uomini.
384 pages, Paperback
First published March 19, 2019
78 people are currently reading
1642 people want to read
About the author
Lyndall Gordon
19 books115 followersLyndall Gordon (born 4 November 1941) is a British-based writer and academic, known for her literary biographies. She is a Senior Research Fellow at St Hilda's College, Oxford.
Born in Cape Town, she was an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town, then a doctoral student at Columbia University in New York City. She married the pathologist Siamon Gordon; they have two daughters.
Gordon is the author of Eliot's Early Years (1977), which won the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize; Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life (1984), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life (1994), winner of the Cheltenham Prize for Literature; and Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft, shortlisted for the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize. Her most recent publication is Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and her Family's Feuds (2010), which has overturned the established assumptions about the poet's life.
(from Wikipedia)
Born in Cape Town, she was an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town, then a doctoral student at Columbia University in New York City. She married the pathologist Siamon Gordon; they have two daughters.
Gordon is the author of Eliot's Early Years (1977), which won the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize; Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life (1984), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life (1994), winner of the Cheltenham Prize for Literature; and Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft, shortlisted for the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize. Her most recent publication is Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and her Family's Feuds (2010), which has overturned the established assumptions about the poet's life.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 74 reviews
February 28, 2018
Opening lines: ‘Like many as a child, I made friends with characters in books.’
March 17, 2023
I came across this one by chance, it was listed as a result for Google searches on George Eliot and Virginia Woolf.
This search result caught my attention for having 5 biographies of 5 women writers in one book; two of these are George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. The third, I was surprised to find was Emily Bronte. The remaining two were Mary Shelley and Olive Schreiner (the last one was an author I have not heard before).
What struck me first about this book was it contained the biography on Emily Bronte. Realistically, as most of her work has been destroyed, it’s not possible for a full-length biography of her life to be written mostly based on authentic sources or information. So, I liked how Lyndall Gordon took what there is and wrote the equivalent of a very long lengthy essay about Emily Bronte.
Each biography is this length, each one is detailed and references at least one work from that author. The weakest of the five biographies, unsurprisingly, is Emily Bronte’s, where there were more references to her novel Wuthering Heights, but reading the other four, I am happy with the quality of information, where each one has given me a better understanding of each author; which will be of help when reading their works.
Making this another good find from Google searches.
This search result caught my attention for having 5 biographies of 5 women writers in one book; two of these are George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. The third, I was surprised to find was Emily Bronte. The remaining two were Mary Shelley and Olive Schreiner (the last one was an author I have not heard before).
What struck me first about this book was it contained the biography on Emily Bronte. Realistically, as most of her work has been destroyed, it’s not possible for a full-length biography of her life to be written mostly based on authentic sources or information. So, I liked how Lyndall Gordon took what there is and wrote the equivalent of a very long lengthy essay about Emily Bronte.
Each biography is this length, each one is detailed and references at least one work from that author. The weakest of the five biographies, unsurprisingly, is Emily Bronte’s, where there were more references to her novel Wuthering Heights, but reading the other four, I am happy with the quality of information, where each one has given me a better understanding of each author; which will be of help when reading their works.
Making this another good find from Google searches.
May 13, 2020
Review in English | Reseña en Español
Unfortunately, this book was not for me and I felt a bit disappointed because the subject was wonderful. In “Outsiders, Five Women Writers Who Changed the World” , Lyndall Gordon tells us the stories of five English novelists of the 19th and early 20th century and the challenges and difficulties they faced in pursuing their passion, writing, and of the consequences of living freely and expressing their own voices.
I was really interested in learning more from the lives and times of Mary Shelly, Emily Brontë and Virgina Woolf, whose works I’ve read, and to get introduced to George Eliot and Olive Schreiner, with whom I am not familiar with. And it all began well – in fact, on the foreword, Gordon made a promising start writing the following:
I thought, “wow, this book is really going to be a memorable collection of essays of wonderful women writers and the relationship between readers and books” . But in the end, this did not happen. In short, I found the writing style perhaps, too academic, too detached?
I am not sure if my feelings result from the fact that I am used to reading a lot of biographies (mainly in Spanish) whose writing is more “sassy” but without losing seriousness in the topic exposed. In any case, I never truly connected with the stories and lives of the authors. I felt that while there was a lot from their backgrounds and families, there was also a lot of detail on other people and things I was not really interested in. For example, in Mary Shelly’s chapter, there are A LOT of references to Percy B. Shelly. I mean, I know he was such a big influence in hrt life and he actually encouraged her to write and to seek her voice, but at some point I felt there was too much info on him. Also, I did not find him likeable –while he always encouraged her to write, the other side of his personality was strange, as he abandoned his first wife and two children and did not seem really attached to the children he had with Mary.
Anyhow, I think the writing style was dull for a topic that was very interesting and I could not really connect. Also, to be fair to the book, I am not a native English speaker and there were many words I read for the first time and did not understand. However, the thing is, I consider myself pretty fluent in the language so finding these words confirmed my suspicion that the text is too academic and not so much as the literary essay I had expected.
Finally I must also say that though I wanted to know a bit more from these novelists, the only one I truly like was Emily Brontë and that might have also contributed to my opinion on this book. I definitely do not like Virgina Woolf and I found Frankenstein fine, but I did not love it. That said, I went into this book seeking more –something that would made me understand better these works and sympathize with the authors. While I did find Mary Shelly and Olive Schreiner’s lives interesting, nothing of the information or analysis presented there made me crave to know more and in the case of Virginia, I guess I just felt even more detached from her and have no additional interest to continue exploring her work.
___________
Por desgracia este libro no fue para mí y me resultó algo decepcionante porque el tema prometía mucho. En “Proscritas. Cinco mujeres que cambiaron el mundo”, la autora Lyndall Gordon presenta las historias de cinco novelistas del siglo XIX y principios del XX y las dificultades que enfrentaron en la persecución de su pasión –la escritura – así como las consecuencias que enfrentaron por vivir y expresarse libremente.
Estaba muy interesada en saber más sobre la vida y el contexto de Mary Shelly, Emily Brontë y Virginia Woolf, a quienes he leído, así como conocer a George Elliot y Olive Schreiner, autoras que no he leído. Y todo comenzó bien en el libro; de hecho, el prefacio prometía mucho, ya que Gordon inicia con el siguiente texto:
Con este inicio pensé “wow, este libro será una colección memorable de ensayos sobre escritoras extraordinarias y las relaciones entre los lectores y los libros.” Pero, por desgracia esto no sucedió. Creo que, en resumen, la escritura y el estilo me parecieron demasiado académicos y demasiado ¿desapegados?, del tema expuesto.
No estoy segura si a esto contribuyó el hecho que estoy acostumbrada a leer muchas biografías –sobre todo escritas en español – cuyo estilo es más, ¿cómo decir?, “picante” pero sin perder la seriedad del tema que expone. Tampoco es que lea biografías en revistas del corazón, pero lo cierto es que con este libro, nunca llegué a conectar con las historias y vidas de las autoras. Siento que a pesar que hubo mucho detalle y contexto de sus vidas y aquellas personas fundamentales en su desarrollo, también hubo mucha información de otras personas que realmente no me interesaban. Por ejemplo, en el capítulo de Mary Shelly, hay MUCHAS referencias y menciones de Percy B. Shelly. Y claro, una parte se entiende porque fue una gran influencia en su vida y él la animó a escribir y buscar su propia voz, pero en un punto sentí que él siempre estuvo ahí, como una sombra. Por otra parte, no lo encontré del todo agradable ya que si bien apoyó a Mary, tenía una personalidad difícil –después de todo, abandonó a su primera esposa e hijos y no pareció nunca cercano a los hijos que tuvo con Mary.
En general siento que fue el estilo de escritura del texto lo que no me gustó, pareciéndome en muchos puntos, lento y aburrido, lo cual es una pena porque insisto, las vidas de estas mujeres daban para mucho. Sin embargo, y para ser un poco justa con el libro, lo cierto es que al no ser el inglés mi primera lengua, muchas palabras me resultaron desconocidas, pero, por otra parte, creo que manejo bastante bien el idioma por lo que creo que encontrar estas palabras desconocidas confirman mis sospechas que es un libro muy académico y no tanto un ensayo literario, que era lo que esperaba.
Por último, también reconozco que a pesar de que quería saber más de estas novelistas, la única cuyo trabajo me gusta es <>Cumbres Borrascosas> de Emily Brontë, lo cual también pudo ser causante que este libro no me encantara. Lo he dicho antes, pero Virginia Woolf no me gusta y Frankenstein me pareció una novela buena pero no me encantó. Pero, aun con esto, lo que buscaba era que con esta lectura pudiera entender algo más del contexto y del trabajo de estas autoras y descubrir algo que me hiciera ver sus escritos con una nueva luz. Y si bien las biografías de Mary Shelly y Olive Schreiner me gustaron, no encontré en ellas un análisis que me hiciera querer saber más de ellas y, en el caso de Virginia, me siento incluso más lejana y sin interés de continuar explorando su trabajo.
Unfortunately, this book was not for me and I felt a bit disappointed because the subject was wonderful. In “Outsiders, Five Women Writers Who Changed the World” , Lyndall Gordon tells us the stories of five English novelists of the 19th and early 20th century and the challenges and difficulties they faced in pursuing their passion, writing, and of the consequences of living freely and expressing their own voices.
I was really interested in learning more from the lives and times of Mary Shelly, Emily Brontë and Virgina Woolf, whose works I’ve read, and to get introduced to George Eliot and Olive Schreiner, with whom I am not familiar with. And it all began well – in fact, on the foreword, Gordon made a promising start writing the following:
“Like many as a child, I made friends with characters in books. It’s a strange tie between reader and writer. We come to know a lasting poet or novelist more intimately than we do people of our own place and time, closer in a way than love and friendship.”
I thought, “wow, this book is really going to be a memorable collection of essays of wonderful women writers and the relationship between readers and books” . But in the end, this did not happen. In short, I found the writing style perhaps, too academic, too detached?
I am not sure if my feelings result from the fact that I am used to reading a lot of biographies (mainly in Spanish) whose writing is more “sassy” but without losing seriousness in the topic exposed. In any case, I never truly connected with the stories and lives of the authors. I felt that while there was a lot from their backgrounds and families, there was also a lot of detail on other people and things I was not really interested in. For example, in Mary Shelly’s chapter, there are A LOT of references to Percy B. Shelly. I mean, I know he was such a big influence in hrt life and he actually encouraged her to write and to seek her voice, but at some point I felt there was too much info on him. Also, I did not find him likeable –while he always encouraged her to write, the other side of his personality was strange, as he abandoned his first wife and two children and did not seem really attached to the children he had with Mary.
Anyhow, I think the writing style was dull for a topic that was very interesting and I could not really connect. Also, to be fair to the book, I am not a native English speaker and there were many words I read for the first time and did not understand. However, the thing is, I consider myself pretty fluent in the language so finding these words confirmed my suspicion that the text is too academic and not so much as the literary essay I had expected.
Finally I must also say that though I wanted to know a bit more from these novelists, the only one I truly like was Emily Brontë and that might have also contributed to my opinion on this book. I definitely do not like Virgina Woolf and I found Frankenstein fine, but I did not love it. That said, I went into this book seeking more –something that would made me understand better these works and sympathize with the authors. While I did find Mary Shelly and Olive Schreiner’s lives interesting, nothing of the information or analysis presented there made me crave to know more and in the case of Virginia, I guess I just felt even more detached from her and have no additional interest to continue exploring her work.
___________
Por desgracia este libro no fue para mí y me resultó algo decepcionante porque el tema prometía mucho. En “Proscritas. Cinco mujeres que cambiaron el mundo”, la autora Lyndall Gordon presenta las historias de cinco novelistas del siglo XIX y principios del XX y las dificultades que enfrentaron en la persecución de su pasión –la escritura – así como las consecuencias que enfrentaron por vivir y expresarse libremente.
Estaba muy interesada en saber más sobre la vida y el contexto de Mary Shelly, Emily Brontë y Virginia Woolf, a quienes he leído, así como conocer a George Elliot y Olive Schreiner, autoras que no he leído. Y todo comenzó bien en el libro; de hecho, el prefacio prometía mucho, ya que Gordon inicia con el siguiente texto:
“Como muchos niños, me hice amiga de los personajes en los libros. Es un vínculo extraño entre el lector y el escritor. Conocemos a un poeta o novelista más íntimamente que a las personas de nuestro propio lugar y tiempo, más cercanos que el amor y la amistad.”
Con este inicio pensé “wow, este libro será una colección memorable de ensayos sobre escritoras extraordinarias y las relaciones entre los lectores y los libros.” Pero, por desgracia esto no sucedió. Creo que, en resumen, la escritura y el estilo me parecieron demasiado académicos y demasiado ¿desapegados?, del tema expuesto.
No estoy segura si a esto contribuyó el hecho que estoy acostumbrada a leer muchas biografías –sobre todo escritas en español – cuyo estilo es más, ¿cómo decir?, “picante” pero sin perder la seriedad del tema que expone. Tampoco es que lea biografías en revistas del corazón, pero lo cierto es que con este libro, nunca llegué a conectar con las historias y vidas de las autoras. Siento que a pesar que hubo mucho detalle y contexto de sus vidas y aquellas personas fundamentales en su desarrollo, también hubo mucha información de otras personas que realmente no me interesaban. Por ejemplo, en el capítulo de Mary Shelly, hay MUCHAS referencias y menciones de Percy B. Shelly. Y claro, una parte se entiende porque fue una gran influencia en su vida y él la animó a escribir y buscar su propia voz, pero en un punto sentí que él siempre estuvo ahí, como una sombra. Por otra parte, no lo encontré del todo agradable ya que si bien apoyó a Mary, tenía una personalidad difícil –después de todo, abandonó a su primera esposa e hijos y no pareció nunca cercano a los hijos que tuvo con Mary.
En general siento que fue el estilo de escritura del texto lo que no me gustó, pareciéndome en muchos puntos, lento y aburrido, lo cual es una pena porque insisto, las vidas de estas mujeres daban para mucho. Sin embargo, y para ser un poco justa con el libro, lo cierto es que al no ser el inglés mi primera lengua, muchas palabras me resultaron desconocidas, pero, por otra parte, creo que manejo bastante bien el idioma por lo que creo que encontrar estas palabras desconocidas confirman mis sospechas que es un libro muy académico y no tanto un ensayo literario, que era lo que esperaba.
Por último, también reconozco que a pesar de que quería saber más de estas novelistas, la única cuyo trabajo me gusta es <>Cumbres Borrascosas> de Emily Brontë, lo cual también pudo ser causante que este libro no me encantara. Lo he dicho antes, pero Virginia Woolf no me gusta y Frankenstein me pareció una novela buena pero no me encantó. Pero, aun con esto, lo que buscaba era que con esta lectura pudiera entender algo más del contexto y del trabajo de estas autoras y descubrir algo que me hiciera ver sus escritos con una nueva luz. Y si bien las biografías de Mary Shelly y Olive Schreiner me gustaron, no encontré en ellas un análisis que me hiciera querer saber más de ellas y, en el caso de Virginia, me siento incluso más lejana y sin interés de continuar explorando su trabajo.
April 2, 2019
I’ve read a lot about Emily Brontë and George Eliot and don’t have a particular interest in Mary Shelley, so I picked this up mostly to learn more about Olive Schreiner and Virginia Woolf. Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm was the subject of one chapter of my MA thesis; I’m currently reading one Woolf novel plus a bibliomemoir about her. The book was requested back at the library, so in the end I only managed the barest skim I’d forgotten that Schreiner was also a political activist, chiefly for women’s rights. Gordon’s main idea is that these five writers were ahead of their time ideologically. “We have long known the greatness of these five as individual writers, but here we have looked at them collectively. A recurring issue has linked them. These outsiders do not make terms with our violent world; they do not advance themselves by imitation of the empowered. Instead they speak out against the humbug of authority and its ‘baubles’ – the decorations and honours – disguising the mess rulers have made. These voices say no to arms and patriotism.”
January 2, 2019
I began reading this book hoping for a comparative biography of five groundbreaking women authors who had defied the shackles of their rigid societies and found ways to thrive through reading and writing. I suppose I got most of that but not quite in the way I was expecting.
This reads like a textbook or series of connected essays. Each of the women’s stories is covered thoroughly and biographical elements are fleshed out in thorough detail. But the focus is on how each of them, in their own ways, rejected the norms of the society and times they were living in and embraced their outsider status. For some, this was a conscious decision while others were more-or-less reacting to circumstances. Throughout the book there is a strong streak of feminism, especially for the later authors who lived through the beginnings of the women’s suffragist movement.
I was happy with the content that the author delivered. I am less enthusiastic about the style. This is not an easy read and I frequently found myself re-reading paragraphs to make sure I understood the material. At times I felt like I was reading this as part of a graduate-level course on Literature or Women’s Studies. Given the author’s background and status as a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a fellow of St. Hilda’s College in Oxford, this is hardly surprising. In the end, I would have preferred a more grounded biography and less of an academic approach.
This reads like a textbook or series of connected essays. Each of the women’s stories is covered thoroughly and biographical elements are fleshed out in thorough detail. But the focus is on how each of them, in their own ways, rejected the norms of the society and times they were living in and embraced their outsider status. For some, this was a conscious decision while others were more-or-less reacting to circumstances. Throughout the book there is a strong streak of feminism, especially for the later authors who lived through the beginnings of the women’s suffragist movement.
I was happy with the content that the author delivered. I am less enthusiastic about the style. This is not an easy read and I frequently found myself re-reading paragraphs to make sure I understood the material. At times I felt like I was reading this as part of a graduate-level course on Literature or Women’s Studies. Given the author’s background and status as a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a fellow of St. Hilda’s College in Oxford, this is hardly surprising. In the end, I would have preferred a more grounded biography and less of an academic approach.
January 26, 2019
Fantastic stuff! I loved this exploration of five women writers who all resisted the establishment in various ways and thereby made personal space-time in which to live, love, create and imagine. As outsiders, they sought and fought for alternative pathways. ... Oh, I haven't felt so rebellious or true for a long long time. Fie on my gloomy existential crisis! Now that I am retired from the day job, and have my equivalent of "£500 a year and a room of my own", the harness, bridle and blinders are coming off.
Come join me in the Outsiders Society, if you wish!
###
I re-read the chapter on Virginia Woolf, partly because I love her, and mostly because I'm researching the various feminisms active around the time of the Great War and the Give Women Votes movement. This is still fantastic stuff - in fact, even better than I remember!
Come join me in the Outsiders Society, if you wish!
###
I re-read the chapter on Virginia Woolf, partly because I love her, and mostly because I'm researching the various feminisms active around the time of the Great War and the Give Women Votes movement. This is still fantastic stuff - in fact, even better than I remember!
October 16, 2019
Of the five women writers in this book, I was familiar with Shelley, Brontë, Eliot, and Woolf but not with Olive Schreiner. I tried for two months to read this book but was only able to force myself to read the fourth chapter about Schreiner simply because I wanted to learn about her. Why would it be so difficult for a woman writer who loves learning about and reading other women writers to get through this book? Names.
One of the first things I learned as a historian was to think carefully about the names I used in a paper, article, or book. Be honest with the evidence but also be aware that you must be clear so that your reader (expert or not) can follow what you are saying. Lyndall Gordon uses a lot of beautiful language but when it comes to be clear, she fails in this book.
It may be true that authors use different names throughout our lives for various reasons and that historically women's names have changed with their legal status but some of the confusion could be easily overcome by simply picking a one name and referring to the author consistently then pointing any name changes when they happened once or twice.
Also simply because both a husband and wife (or child and parent) may share a surname does not mean that you use the woman's first name while using the surname for the man; in fact, doing so reeks of sexism. All five of these authors were fighting against sexism merely to get published and all of them address sexism in their work. Use initials or call each by their first name but don't repeat the sexism that women writers have been struggling against for centuries.
Finally, I found it deeply disappointing that more time was often spent on the family and friends of the author the chapter was supposed to be about. This was particularly true of the Shelley chapter and Brontë's chapter felt more like family saga than her specific life. Yes, women writers are often limited by their relationships but please focus on them when you claim to be writing about them.
One of the first things I learned as a historian was to think carefully about the names I used in a paper, article, or book. Be honest with the evidence but also be aware that you must be clear so that your reader (expert or not) can follow what you are saying. Lyndall Gordon uses a lot of beautiful language but when it comes to be clear, she fails in this book.
It may be true that authors use different names throughout our lives for various reasons and that historically women's names have changed with their legal status but some of the confusion could be easily overcome by simply picking a one name and referring to the author consistently then pointing any name changes when they happened once or twice.
Also simply because both a husband and wife (or child and parent) may share a surname does not mean that you use the woman's first name while using the surname for the man; in fact, doing so reeks of sexism. All five of these authors were fighting against sexism merely to get published and all of them address sexism in their work. Use initials or call each by their first name but don't repeat the sexism that women writers have been struggling against for centuries.
Finally, I found it deeply disappointing that more time was often spent on the family and friends of the author the chapter was supposed to be about. This was particularly true of the Shelley chapter and Brontë's chapter felt more like family saga than her specific life. Yes, women writers are often limited by their relationships but please focus on them when you claim to be writing about them.
April 15, 2019
A collection of short biographies of women writers, but linked together to show the influence each one had on the women who came after her. I really liked this aspect and it set the book apart from similar books that just tell each woman's story one after another.
It helps to have some knowledge of the authors' work beforehand as Gordon refers to their fictional creations a lot but it's not essential; I'd never heard of Olive Schreiner before but that didn't stop me enjoying that particular chapter. There are also a few spoilers in Gordon's discussion of Wuthering Heights (including a section about the ending) so it's worth reading that book before getting to the Emily Bronte section.
It helps to have some knowledge of the authors' work beforehand as Gordon refers to their fictional creations a lot but it's not essential; I'd never heard of Olive Schreiner before but that didn't stop me enjoying that particular chapter. There are also a few spoilers in Gordon's discussion of Wuthering Heights (including a section about the ending) so it's worth reading that book before getting to the Emily Bronte section.
January 21, 2018
Lyndall Gordon’s passion for literature is evident on every page of her recent book Outsiders: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World. The book is split into separate parts, each documenting the lives of famous female writers, Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner and Virginia Woolf. It is clear throughout that Gordon is in awe of and intrigued by the ‘otherness’ of her subjects. Despite separating each biography, Gordon draws links between each of her subjects, casting each as ‘outsiders’ within their societies, who rejected convention and defied the social expectations held of women in their times. Where the history is vague, Gordon uses her own judgement, experiences and intuition as a female writer to develop careful assumptions about the motivations and mindsets of these writers at some of the most significant times in their lives. This book is truly a celebration of these five female writers, their enduring works and their unwillingness to conform.
July 8, 2018
This was a very good read with so much new information to me. I did not now anything about Mary Shelley, nee Godwin or her mother Mary Godwin, nee Wollstonecraft. Nor had I heard about Olive Schreiner. Emily Bronte, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, I have read and am somewhat familiar with their lives. This book really makes one think about just what it takes to be a true "reformer" or for that matter a writer. One needs lots of time and time is something woman, especially married woman have trouble carving out for themselves. When they do they are often set apart from society. One thought that has come to me and the author did not give an opinion on, is would these 5 be disappointed or pleased with where woman are today in society. We do have a long way to go from what they envisioned but we have come a long way.
December 22, 2018
Echt heel mooi. Informatief, meeslepend en verhalend en toch ook een eigen invalshoek om aan het denken gezet te worden. Ook voor niet-feministisch georienteerden een mooie chronologische ontwikkeling van de ontworsteling van de vrouw aan een opgelegd maatschappelijk keurslijf.
May 1, 2019
You , like me ,will enjoy this book if you grew up reading these ladies mesmerizing works of fiction and want to dive deeper into their lives .
October 5, 2022
Did a lot to help me understand my dad's love of Woolf.
March 15, 2019
Literary biographies of five (all surprisingly motherless) women writers: Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner, and Virginia Woolf.
Living openly with the married Shelley and having his children, Mary was shunned even by her father. Shelley and Byron seemed kind of like jerks; although Shelley did support Mary’s writing, it appears he was also having an affair with her stepsister, and Byron took the stepsister’s child, and kept the mother away from her. Women really were powerless.
The discussion of Emily Bronte details how her life experiences impacted her writing of both poetry and Wuthering Heights. She and her sisters were sent to a school for clergymen’s daughters-- the cruelty they experienced there was never to be forgotten by any of them. Indeed, the harsh treatment may have contributed to their early deaths.
George Eliot, another “clever girl as misfit,” was also shunned for living with a man married to someone else. Mr. Lewes and his wife had an “open marriage,” which was quite shocking enough. Carlyle, the author says, “spoke reprovingly of a ‘strong-minded woman’ who lures a husband away from his wife and children.”
Olive, the only writer with whom I was unfamiliar, came of age in South Africa. Her novel, The African Farm, sold well but, like Bronte and Eliot, under a man’s name and, according to some, her Women and Labour became “the bible of the women’s movement.” However, she left the Women’s Enfranchisement League because their platform excluded women of color.
Virginia Woolf was subject to periods of “black melancholy,” undoubtedly exacerbated by her abusive half-brothers. The family doctor warned that higher education of “the weaker sex” could lead to insanity.
This thoroughly researched and readable assessment of five important writers is recommended to those with an interest in literature, or in women’s history.
Living openly with the married Shelley and having his children, Mary was shunned even by her father. Shelley and Byron seemed kind of like jerks; although Shelley did support Mary’s writing, it appears he was also having an affair with her stepsister, and Byron took the stepsister’s child, and kept the mother away from her. Women really were powerless.
The discussion of Emily Bronte details how her life experiences impacted her writing of both poetry and Wuthering Heights. She and her sisters were sent to a school for clergymen’s daughters-- the cruelty they experienced there was never to be forgotten by any of them. Indeed, the harsh treatment may have contributed to their early deaths.
George Eliot, another “clever girl as misfit,” was also shunned for living with a man married to someone else. Mr. Lewes and his wife had an “open marriage,” which was quite shocking enough. Carlyle, the author says, “spoke reprovingly of a ‘strong-minded woman’ who lures a husband away from his wife and children.”
Olive, the only writer with whom I was unfamiliar, came of age in South Africa. Her novel, The African Farm, sold well but, like Bronte and Eliot, under a man’s name and, according to some, her Women and Labour became “the bible of the women’s movement.” However, she left the Women’s Enfranchisement League because their platform excluded women of color.
Virginia Woolf was subject to periods of “black melancholy,” undoubtedly exacerbated by her abusive half-brothers. The family doctor warned that higher education of “the weaker sex” could lead to insanity.
This thoroughly researched and readable assessment of five important writers is recommended to those with an interest in literature, or in women’s history.
February 4, 2022
For full disclosure, I did not read this whole book, and contemplated whether to write a review or not, but chose to for future readers like me. Like many readers, the very first sentence of the introduction pulled me in, or rather pulled in the young girl I used to be. From that sentence on I was hooked, and couldn’t wait to travel along with five women writers who changed the world.
At first it was exciting. I couldn’t put this book down, and kept reading, barely looking up, as I walked to the kitchen to refill my tea. When I read a biography I don’t want to feel like I’m being lectured to by a professor, like I’m doing an assignment. I want to feel like I’m reading a captivating novel, and that is exactly how Lyndall Gordon made me feel.
There were a few times I questioned whether what the author was telling me was her opinion or fact. Did Mary really think that or did Gordon? Did Godwin really think that or was it Gordon? Since the topic of this book is amongst my favorites I ignored those few times and read on.
And then I came to the bottom of page 48, where the author so clearly gives her views on abortion. Now, I can read from an author that I have opposing views with, but a biography is an objective place. I’m trusting that the storyteller is giving me the facts, hopefully in such an eloquent way that they read like fiction, and not opinions. Gordon lost my trust as a reader when I got to that paragraph. I could no longer trust what she was writing as fact, and had to stop reading.
Maybe you’re not like me, and that doesn’t matter to you. In that case read on, she is a good storyteller, but is it fact or opinion?
At first it was exciting. I couldn’t put this book down, and kept reading, barely looking up, as I walked to the kitchen to refill my tea. When I read a biography I don’t want to feel like I’m being lectured to by a professor, like I’m doing an assignment. I want to feel like I’m reading a captivating novel, and that is exactly how Lyndall Gordon made me feel.
There were a few times I questioned whether what the author was telling me was her opinion or fact. Did Mary really think that or did Gordon? Did Godwin really think that or was it Gordon? Since the topic of this book is amongst my favorites I ignored those few times and read on.
And then I came to the bottom of page 48, where the author so clearly gives her views on abortion. Now, I can read from an author that I have opposing views with, but a biography is an objective place. I’m trusting that the storyteller is giving me the facts, hopefully in such an eloquent way that they read like fiction, and not opinions. Gordon lost my trust as a reader when I got to that paragraph. I could no longer trust what she was writing as fact, and had to stop reading.
Maybe you’re not like me, and that doesn’t matter to you. In that case read on, she is a good storyteller, but is it fact or opinion?
May 16, 2019
Umm... this book was fine. It was even good. I enjoyed it. It talks about the lives of five women writers -- Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner, and Virginia Woolf -- and how their outcast or different lives and personalities resulted in their careers as writers, and sometimes how their lives influenced the stories they wrote.
The aspect that made me think, "Umm..." a few times was when Gordon emphasized the men in those women writers' lives. Like, I thought this was a "Yay women," girl power-type book, but then it's like "Aw, Percy Shelley helped Mary Shelley," and George Eliot's romantic partner(s) helped her, and Virginia Woolf's husband blah blah blah. Now, this wasn't ALL the time, but it was often enough (and really it was just a few times, but they stuck in my head) and strong enough (more than just "He helped her by proofreading her book"-type of help; more of he had connections, he edited it and made it "better" [i.e., Percy Shelley. I just wanted Mary Shelley to say, "Back off, jackass. This is *my* book"], etc.) that it made me wonder if I'd misread the tone of the book: Is this not a girl power book? Is this a "Behind every great woman is a great man" book?
It's still a nice biography of the five writers, and interesting at times about how events in their lives are reflected in their stories (characters, events, plots, or the times), it's just that when Gordon started bringing in the "Oh, how lucky she was to have this man" implication, it made me scratch my head.
The aspect that made me think, "Umm..." a few times was when Gordon emphasized the men in those women writers' lives. Like, I thought this was a "Yay women," girl power-type book, but then it's like "Aw, Percy Shelley helped Mary Shelley," and George Eliot's romantic partner(s) helped her, and Virginia Woolf's husband blah blah blah. Now, this wasn't ALL the time, but it was often enough (and really it was just a few times, but they stuck in my head) and strong enough (more than just "He helped her by proofreading her book"-type of help; more of he had connections, he edited it and made it "better" [i.e., Percy Shelley. I just wanted Mary Shelley to say, "Back off, jackass. This is *my* book"], etc.) that it made me wonder if I'd misread the tone of the book: Is this not a girl power book? Is this a "Behind every great woman is a great man" book?
It's still a nice biography of the five writers, and interesting at times about how events in their lives are reflected in their stories (characters, events, plots, or the times), it's just that when Gordon started bringing in the "Oh, how lucky she was to have this man" implication, it made me scratch my head.
March 8, 2019
From a biographical point of view, this was an interesting look at the 5 writers and how their experiences of being outsiders in some way influenced their writing, but overall it just didn't convince.
Firstly, I found Gordon's writing style confusing at times, and the general overarching thesis didn't quite hang together for me. Mary Wollstonecraft was mentioned so often I felt she should have been the first writer mentioned instead of Mary Shelley, and why stop with Virginia Woolf? I was also pretty irritated by the constant references to Emily Dickinson - as though there was supposed to be a chapter about her but it got cut and some of the references accidentally left in.
I always enjoy a bit of George Eliot biography and I was interested to read more about Mary Shelley, but I felt Olive Schreiner was shoehorned in because Gordon feels a personal connection to her. The chapter about Emily Brontë is, inevitably, really more about Charlotte, and I was surprised that there was no reference to the missing manuscript that many scholars feel was written by Emily and destroyed by Charlotte.
But what do I know - I'm certain Gordon is a much better read and better researched writer than I am a reader. It's a nice idea of a book but didn't quite work for me.
Firstly, I found Gordon's writing style confusing at times, and the general overarching thesis didn't quite hang together for me. Mary Wollstonecraft was mentioned so often I felt she should have been the first writer mentioned instead of Mary Shelley, and why stop with Virginia Woolf? I was also pretty irritated by the constant references to Emily Dickinson - as though there was supposed to be a chapter about her but it got cut and some of the references accidentally left in.
I always enjoy a bit of George Eliot biography and I was interested to read more about Mary Shelley, but I felt Olive Schreiner was shoehorned in because Gordon feels a personal connection to her. The chapter about Emily Brontë is, inevitably, really more about Charlotte, and I was surprised that there was no reference to the missing manuscript that many scholars feel was written by Emily and destroyed by Charlotte.
But what do I know - I'm certain Gordon is a much better read and better researched writer than I am a reader. It's a nice idea of a book but didn't quite work for me.
May 26, 2020
Contiene vidas de escritoras fascinantes y por eso tiene cierto interés, pero no hay rastro de ese cambio en el mundo. Se centra mucho más, muchísimo más, en las relaciones con los hombres y en los salseos que en cómo las escritoras y sus obras influyeron en el mundo.
No tiene estructura, es increíblemente caótico para ser tan corto y se va mucho por las ramas, además de ir intercalando datos absurdos que no vienen a nada, es como si los hubiese le��do y hubiese dicho "uy qué curioso esto, lo meto por ahí como sea". No tiene estilo, es como si te lo estuviese contando tu prima.
En definitiva, está bien, OK, pero en absoluto cumple lo que promete su título.
No tiene estructura, es increíblemente caótico para ser tan corto y se va mucho por las ramas, además de ir intercalando datos absurdos que no vienen a nada, es como si los hubiese le��do y hubiese dicho "uy qué curioso esto, lo meto por ahí como sea". No tiene estilo, es como si te lo estuviese contando tu prima.
En definitiva, está bien, OK, pero en absoluto cumple lo que promete su título.
September 8, 2018
A comprehensive biography of four famous women writers… I was excited to read this book because of its intention; that being to revel in the glories of being unique in a strict class society. The stories demonstrated how passion for writing and unflinching support from loved ones can go a long way. However, I wasn’t a big fan of the style of writing and often found the excessive details of the writers’ life rather tedious. All in all, it was not as good as I had hoped it to be.
abandoned
May 19, 2025A parte il fatto che ho l’impressione di non aver letto gli stessi romanzi dell’autrice, tanto li percepiamo in maniera differente, sto ancora cercando di capire come e perché abbia infilato un paragrafo di pippone antiabortista discutendo di Frankenstein. O.O
March 27, 2025
4.5/5 ⭐️
May 22, 2025
Society was at odds with these five women writers because of their innovative lives and ideas.
The women had to be brave in order to propound humanistic values.
The women's writings are a follow on to their internal voices of concern.
It could have been about the biblical Fall and its negative effects (Shelley), domestic violence (Bronte).
Or about denial of self-expression (Eliot and Woolf), and human rights in a war zone (Schreiner).
At times these women were compelled to distance themselves from family members (Shelley and Eliot), live away from home unwillingly (Bronte and Woolf), or live in a war zone (Schriener).
Fathers often tried to be helpful (books); partners and husbands were essential helpers.
Their ideas would follow on from each other, by reading the same and each other's books, or from reading about women who stood out, in the past, like Electra:
“Ancient consciousness of woman … with a demand for something”.
This book is a good introduction to many of the works of these writers- Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch, On a Farm, and To the Lighthouse.
However, it is helpful to be familiar with these authors’ works - Lyndall Gordon's text can be detailed.
Perhaps most importantly, the book concludes on a note encouraging ordinary working people to read, discuss literature, and educate themselves.
...
...
...
Notes
...
1. Mary Shelley Wollstonecraft (1797-1851) - prodigy
Outsider
“Cast out by her father”, unmarried relationship, erasure, perceived stain. Sister, Fanny Imlay, helplessly dependent (as was George Elliot’s Chrissey).
Rising sisters and daughters, sought attachments/mentors outside family - Karl Pearson mathematician, professor at university college (Schreiner), Herbert Spencer (First Principles), Lewes (George Eliot).
Defies custom to go abroad with Percy Bysshe Shelley (English Romantic poet), a married man (Harriet Westbrook - Eliza Ianthe Shelley (1813-1876), a son, Charles died age 12), against her father’s wishes (William Godwin 1756-1836).
When Shelley told Godwin that he intended to leave Harriet and live with Mary, his mentor banished him from the house and forbade Mary from seeing him. Shelley and Mary eloped to Europe on 28 July, taking Mary's step-sister Claire Clairmont with them. Wikipedia.
Her fiction
At an early age, she wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), a man who was “detached from social ties.”
A “monster of sorts creating a monster (put together from the body parts of corpses), bound together as unnatural kin (father figure).”
Written realistically - unresolved estrangement (with her father/family) lies behind the Frankenstein story. She “breathed real emotion into the routine terrors of the Gothic novel.”
Wrote innovatively - used a popular genre to dramatize a philosophical debate, comprising the biblical view of depravity after the Fall.
Religious notions propounded a view that “a new-made creature cannot be acceptable to society until he has been chastised and corrected.”
Frankenstein’s “new-made Creature" takes a contrary view. Frankenstein claims innate benevolence (in a creature), which experience then corrupts.”
Frankenstein’s position is the same as the position of Godwin and Wollstonecraft; originating in Rousseau, and expressed in Wordsworth: Ode on Intimations of Immortality in Early Childhood. Child: “trailing clouds of glory”.
Men
Byword “tenderness.” Mentor.
…
2.Emily Bronte (1818-1848) - visionary, spiritual affinities
Outsider
Reflected in neighbors’ behavior to the Bronte family’s rise in the class system.
Also Emily’s courage in resisting “absurd norms.” Similar social codes reflected in Woolf’s “tea-table talk", George Duckworth’s “correct clothing,” and the “artifice of society girls.”
Woolf rejected public life’s “vainglorious rhetoric, Militarism, medals.” Also honorary degrees.
Emily loved the Yorkshire Moors and the natural world, as with Olive Schreiner’s Matjiesfontein, and Eliot’s “romance of the past” - “I remember the dipping willows”).
Attended three schools Cowan Bridge School (mistreatment), Law Hill School (long hours), and the Pensionnat Heger in Brussels, which she felt compelled to attend (with Charlotte Bronte) for financial reasons (to be able to earn a living).
Her fiction
Her fiction is visionary because of its portrayal of inordinate societal physical and mental abuse, and also because of its bleak portrayal of the consequent nature of spiritual well being on earth.
She portrayed
“A love that can cross the barrier of death.”
Bronte thought of heaven for Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights as a “union of the spirit.”
Because:
“She saw the impossibility of spiritual wholeness in a violent world, which she utterly shunned.”
“Catherine Earnshaw has an affinity for Heath cliff because he knows and shares her far-out nature as no conventional gentleman can.”
Also see: Emily Dickinson.
Men
M. Hager, Brussels, Charlotte Bronte, Mr. Rochester, Jane Eyre “as natural with me as I find it impossible to be conventional with you.”
…
3. George Elliot (1819-1880) - Outlawed (lived in Richmond)
Outsider
Rejected by her father, her brother, Isaac (stipend), shunned in the late 1850s.
Elliot’s three outlaw acts were refusing to go to church with her father, leaving, and distancing herself from the Midlands (and her siblings) to earn her own living in London, and openly cohabiting with her partner, George Henry Lewis, a married man.
However, Elliot remained a moralist and compromised at times, as an unbeliever. Her actions were hard for people to understand because “religion was popularly believed to be the essential foundation of ethics.”
Elliot offers an atheism for believers with the proviso that people’s religion should “lead them above all to sympathize with individual suffering and individual joys.”
Look No More Backward: George Eliot and Atheism. On 'the first great godless writer of fiction. October 5, 2012.
Elliot was interested in the two leading ideas of humanism and evolution. Such that the “biblical reading of George Eliot’s youth came to infuse her new religion of humanism: an ideal of goodness entirely human.” Gordon.
Eliot’s retention of old-fashioned thought processes (terminology) may have confused matters for some people, see Wikipedia:
“Because Eliot retained a vestigial respect for religion, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche excoriated her system of morality for figuring sin as a debt that can be expiated through suffering, which he demeaned as characteristic of "little moralistic females à la Eliot.”
Eliot’s life led her away from her family through no fault of her own; sadly though, she, in turn, distanced her from children (two nieces and three step-sons) who could have benefited from her closer emotional support.
Her fiction
Regardless, her writings about women’s nature (Mr Gilfil’s Love Story) set the groundwork for other writers of “interior drama” (Henry James).
Men
Byword “sympathy.” "…confidence to encourage a woman to be what she felt herself to be.” Her equal.
…
4.Olive Schreiner (1855-1920) - Orator - Boer War
Outsider
Rejected by her brother Fred (stipend), martial law.
Her fiction
Akin to Mary Wollstonecraft, she felt pity for her mother. She rejected marriage as disabling to women (Horatio Bryan Donkin) but, at times, felt compelled by disabling relationships with men.
She was outspoken (against British Imperialism going on in Africa) and her writings verge on oratory. She was committed to independence but promoted women’s traditions of domestic nurture. She was intense. Wrote Africa Farm.
See: Henry Jame: The Portrait of a Lady - Isbabel Archer and Lord Warburton
Men
Schreiner “waves off the kind of brute strength that was useful to primitive societies.”
…
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) - and her sister, Vanessa were explorers, reformers, revolutionists.
Outsider - mental health
Felt stared at, in the street. Felt pressure against being a deviant personality, and was morbidly introspective. Hogarth Press, Richmond.
Thought about making “one’s way through death to join with the dead” for Septimus Warren Smith, Mrs Dalloway.
Her essay “On Being Ill” claims illness as an “act” of separation from the compliant herd, ‘outlaws that we are’.”
Her fiction
“Reading …. Is the reverse of military training which makes an ‘enemy’ unimaginable as a human being.”
The Mysterious Case of Miss V - a search for meaning by a witness who abstains from ready-made definitions.
Phyllis and Rosamond (1906) - lives in the shade. The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn.
.
Wars of the Roses (1906) - fifteenth century mother and daughter holed up at this time
Memoirs of a Novelist, 1909 - woman writer of an earlier generation
The Voyage Out (1915) - marriage untenable with a cold person.
Night and Day (1919) - rational social realism (George Eliot) and poetic (Emily Bronte).
Jacob’s Room (1922) Flaunders - circle the absence. Pre-war life of a boy. Constantly reminds us, must die on Flaunders fields. Elegy for doomed youth.
Mrs. Dalloway (1925) - wars, after effects.
To the Lighthouse (1927) - Victorian family - Andrew Ramsey is kill … during the blind course of the Great War.
Unlike War and Peace … denies war the validity of a subject … to read about killing invites vicarious participation, habituates the mind to bloodshed (sensibility). Civilization decays. Andrew’s obliteration, forecast, Absurd heroism upheld by his father as a public memory, Crimean War, poet laureate.
"The Charge of the Light Brigade" is an 1854 narrative poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson about the cavalry charge of the same name at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War.
Orlando (1928) - deviance.
A Room of One’s Own (1929) - history of women’s subjection.
The Waves (1931) - “it sheds the outer life of action to hear six voices, three men and three women, who, collectively, take us through the lifespan of one generation.”
Three Guineas (1938) - closing the pay gap, professional equality.
Between the Acts (1941) - Pageant of English history. Chaucer’s pilgrims/continuity of English characters. Mrs Manresa/Wife of Bath.
The Art of Biography (1938) - the fact that suggests and engenders.
A Writer’s Diary 1958
The Leaning Tower - Workers’ Educational Association 1940 - well-to-do young men, pinch of experience.
Reading, listening and discussion. Her Pacifism spoke to the Vietnam War (1960s) eventually.
Michael Cunningham: The Hours 2002.
Took resolve to raise a public voice.
Men
Equal.
...
The women had to be brave in order to propound humanistic values.
The women's writings are a follow on to their internal voices of concern.
It could have been about the biblical Fall and its negative effects (Shelley), domestic violence (Bronte).
Or about denial of self-expression (Eliot and Woolf), and human rights in a war zone (Schreiner).
At times these women were compelled to distance themselves from family members (Shelley and Eliot), live away from home unwillingly (Bronte and Woolf), or live in a war zone (Schriener).
Fathers often tried to be helpful (books); partners and husbands were essential helpers.
Their ideas would follow on from each other, by reading the same and each other's books, or from reading about women who stood out, in the past, like Electra:
“Ancient consciousness of woman … with a demand for something”.
This book is a good introduction to many of the works of these writers- Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch, On a Farm, and To the Lighthouse.
However, it is helpful to be familiar with these authors’ works - Lyndall Gordon's text can be detailed.
Perhaps most importantly, the book concludes on a note encouraging ordinary working people to read, discuss literature, and educate themselves.
...
...
...
Notes
...
1. Mary Shelley Wollstonecraft (1797-1851) - prodigy
Outsider
“Cast out by her father”, unmarried relationship, erasure, perceived stain. Sister, Fanny Imlay, helplessly dependent (as was George Elliot’s Chrissey).
Rising sisters and daughters, sought attachments/mentors outside family - Karl Pearson mathematician, professor at university college (Schreiner), Herbert Spencer (First Principles), Lewes (George Eliot).
Defies custom to go abroad with Percy Bysshe Shelley (English Romantic poet), a married man (Harriet Westbrook - Eliza Ianthe Shelley (1813-1876), a son, Charles died age 12), against her father’s wishes (William Godwin 1756-1836).
When Shelley told Godwin that he intended to leave Harriet and live with Mary, his mentor banished him from the house and forbade Mary from seeing him. Shelley and Mary eloped to Europe on 28 July, taking Mary's step-sister Claire Clairmont with them. Wikipedia.
Her fiction
At an early age, she wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), a man who was “detached from social ties.”
A “monster of sorts creating a monster (put together from the body parts of corpses), bound together as unnatural kin (father figure).”
Written realistically - unresolved estrangement (with her father/family) lies behind the Frankenstein story. She “breathed real emotion into the routine terrors of the Gothic novel.”
Wrote innovatively - used a popular genre to dramatize a philosophical debate, comprising the biblical view of depravity after the Fall.
Religious notions propounded a view that “a new-made creature cannot be acceptable to society until he has been chastised and corrected.”
Frankenstein’s “new-made Creature" takes a contrary view. Frankenstein claims innate benevolence (in a creature), which experience then corrupts.”
Frankenstein’s position is the same as the position of Godwin and Wollstonecraft; originating in Rousseau, and expressed in Wordsworth: Ode on Intimations of Immortality in Early Childhood. Child: “trailing clouds of glory”.
Men
Byword “tenderness.” Mentor.
…
2.Emily Bronte (1818-1848) - visionary, spiritual affinities
Outsider
Reflected in neighbors’ behavior to the Bronte family’s rise in the class system.
Also Emily’s courage in resisting “absurd norms.” Similar social codes reflected in Woolf’s “tea-table talk", George Duckworth’s “correct clothing,” and the “artifice of society girls.”
Woolf rejected public life’s “vainglorious rhetoric, Militarism, medals.” Also honorary degrees.
Emily loved the Yorkshire Moors and the natural world, as with Olive Schreiner’s Matjiesfontein, and Eliot’s “romance of the past” - “I remember the dipping willows”).
Attended three schools Cowan Bridge School (mistreatment), Law Hill School (long hours), and the Pensionnat Heger in Brussels, which she felt compelled to attend (with Charlotte Bronte) for financial reasons (to be able to earn a living).
Her fiction
Her fiction is visionary because of its portrayal of inordinate societal physical and mental abuse, and also because of its bleak portrayal of the consequent nature of spiritual well being on earth.
She portrayed
“A love that can cross the barrier of death.”
Bronte thought of heaven for Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights as a “union of the spirit.”
Because:
“She saw the impossibility of spiritual wholeness in a violent world, which she utterly shunned.”
“Catherine Earnshaw has an affinity for Heath cliff because he knows and shares her far-out nature as no conventional gentleman can.”
Also see: Emily Dickinson.
Men
M. Hager, Brussels, Charlotte Bronte, Mr. Rochester, Jane Eyre “as natural with me as I find it impossible to be conventional with you.”
…
3. George Elliot (1819-1880) - Outlawed (lived in Richmond)
Outsider
Rejected by her father, her brother, Isaac (stipend), shunned in the late 1850s.
Elliot’s three outlaw acts were refusing to go to church with her father, leaving, and distancing herself from the Midlands (and her siblings) to earn her own living in London, and openly cohabiting with her partner, George Henry Lewis, a married man.
However, Elliot remained a moralist and compromised at times, as an unbeliever. Her actions were hard for people to understand because “religion was popularly believed to be the essential foundation of ethics.”
Elliot offers an atheism for believers with the proviso that people’s religion should “lead them above all to sympathize with individual suffering and individual joys.”
Look No More Backward: George Eliot and Atheism. On 'the first great godless writer of fiction. October 5, 2012.
Elliot was interested in the two leading ideas of humanism and evolution. Such that the “biblical reading of George Eliot’s youth came to infuse her new religion of humanism: an ideal of goodness entirely human.” Gordon.
Eliot’s retention of old-fashioned thought processes (terminology) may have confused matters for some people, see Wikipedia:
“Because Eliot retained a vestigial respect for religion, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche excoriated her system of morality for figuring sin as a debt that can be expiated through suffering, which he demeaned as characteristic of "little moralistic females à la Eliot.”
Eliot’s life led her away from her family through no fault of her own; sadly though, she, in turn, distanced her from children (two nieces and three step-sons) who could have benefited from her closer emotional support.
Her fiction
Regardless, her writings about women’s nature (Mr Gilfil’s Love Story) set the groundwork for other writers of “interior drama” (Henry James).
Men
Byword “sympathy.” "…confidence to encourage a woman to be what she felt herself to be.” Her equal.
…
4.Olive Schreiner (1855-1920) - Orator - Boer War
Outsider
Rejected by her brother Fred (stipend), martial law.
Her fiction
Akin to Mary Wollstonecraft, she felt pity for her mother. She rejected marriage as disabling to women (Horatio Bryan Donkin) but, at times, felt compelled by disabling relationships with men.
She was outspoken (against British Imperialism going on in Africa) and her writings verge on oratory. She was committed to independence but promoted women’s traditions of domestic nurture. She was intense. Wrote Africa Farm.
See: Henry Jame: The Portrait of a Lady - Isbabel Archer and Lord Warburton
Men
Schreiner “waves off the kind of brute strength that was useful to primitive societies.”
…
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) - and her sister, Vanessa were explorers, reformers, revolutionists.
Outsider - mental health
Felt stared at, in the street. Felt pressure against being a deviant personality, and was morbidly introspective. Hogarth Press, Richmond.
Thought about making “one’s way through death to join with the dead” for Septimus Warren Smith, Mrs Dalloway.
Her essay “On Being Ill” claims illness as an “act” of separation from the compliant herd, ‘outlaws that we are’.”
Her fiction
“Reading …. Is the reverse of military training which makes an ‘enemy’ unimaginable as a human being.”
The Mysterious Case of Miss V - a search for meaning by a witness who abstains from ready-made definitions.
Phyllis and Rosamond (1906) - lives in the shade. The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn.
.
Wars of the Roses (1906) - fifteenth century mother and daughter holed up at this time
Memoirs of a Novelist, 1909 - woman writer of an earlier generation
The Voyage Out (1915) - marriage untenable with a cold person.
Night and Day (1919) - rational social realism (George Eliot) and poetic (Emily Bronte).
Jacob’s Room (1922) Flaunders - circle the absence. Pre-war life of a boy. Constantly reminds us, must die on Flaunders fields. Elegy for doomed youth.
Mrs. Dalloway (1925) - wars, after effects.
To the Lighthouse (1927) - Victorian family - Andrew Ramsey is kill … during the blind course of the Great War.
Unlike War and Peace … denies war the validity of a subject … to read about killing invites vicarious participation, habituates the mind to bloodshed (sensibility). Civilization decays. Andrew’s obliteration, forecast, Absurd heroism upheld by his father as a public memory, Crimean War, poet laureate.
"The Charge of the Light Brigade" is an 1854 narrative poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson about the cavalry charge of the same name at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War.
Orlando (1928) - deviance.
A Room of One’s Own (1929) - history of women’s subjection.
The Waves (1931) - “it sheds the outer life of action to hear six voices, three men and three women, who, collectively, take us through the lifespan of one generation.”
Three Guineas (1938) - closing the pay gap, professional equality.
Between the Acts (1941) - Pageant of English history. Chaucer’s pilgrims/continuity of English characters. Mrs Manresa/Wife of Bath.
The Art of Biography (1938) - the fact that suggests and engenders.
A Writer’s Diary 1958
The Leaning Tower - Workers’ Educational Association 1940 - well-to-do young men, pinch of experience.
Reading, listening and discussion. Her Pacifism spoke to the Vietnam War (1960s) eventually.
Michael Cunningham: The Hours 2002.
Took resolve to raise a public voice.
Men
Equal.
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July 5, 2025
I didn’t always appreciate the way the 5 authors are described and portrayed.
Top chapters - Emily Brönte and Olive Schreiner
Most disappointing - Mary Shelley
Top chapters - Emily Brönte and Olive Schreiner
Most disappointing - Mary Shelley
April 10, 2019
An interesting collection of biographies of 5 women writers, with similarities of circumstance, family and ambition--Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner, and Virginia Woolf. I'll look up some of the novels mentioned here. Schreiner is native of South Africa, living at times in England.
November 2, 2018
I nerd out pretty hard for women writers of the 19th century, and this book was a fantastic dive into women writers who bucked the trends of their times to write. The book does a wonderful job exploring each writer - her biography, the contemporary reactions to their lives and books, and their impact on the world of writing and each other.
While I had read and knew about most of the authors, it was nice to dive deeper into their lives through their letters and discussions of the norms of the day. I had never read Olive Schreiner before and am excited to pick her up! I thought Lyndall Gordan did a good job highlighting the privileges that many of them had against other women of their time.
If you enjoy 19th century literature, or female writers, I highly recommend this one. A good Christmas choice by my dad!
While I had read and knew about most of the authors, it was nice to dive deeper into their lives through their letters and discussions of the norms of the day. I had never read Olive Schreiner before and am excited to pick her up! I thought Lyndall Gordan did a good job highlighting the privileges that many of them had against other women of their time.
If you enjoy 19th century literature, or female writers, I highly recommend this one. A good Christmas choice by my dad!
February 14, 2018
Ik moest dit boek recenseren voor de nbd, anders had ik het denk ik niet gelezen. Het maakt op zich wel een interessant punt, door te laten zien dat alleen vrouwen die zich als 'outsider' buiten de gevestigde orde plaatsten, hun eigen mening konden verkondigen, op schrift of in toespraken. Maar van de meeste schrijfsters weten we al veel, er worden ook weer verschillende plots van boeken naverteld, dat voegt niet veel toe. Allen Olive Schreiner, van wie ik nooit gehoord had, was voor mij een eye-opener. Wat een bijzondere vrouw, wat een bijzonder leven, als vredesactivist in het Zuid-Afrika van de Boerenoorlog. Haar boeken staan op Gutenberg, daar ga ik maar eens iets van lezen. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/searc...
August 31, 2018
This was a brilliant, informative, eye-opening read that gave phenomenal detail of the lives of Mary Shelley, George Eliot, Emily Brontë, Olive Schreiner and Virginia Woolf, highlighting the connections between their histories. She depicts their isolation and their bravery, presenting them as headstrong heroines that are tough and fearless. Not only stressing their own struggles and hardships, Gordon also exemplifies the importance of their books and how their characters link to their own lives. She gives clear explanations and incredibly specific facts that you would find difficult to discover anywhere else. It was like reading 5 different biographies all at once and is certainly a necessary read for anyone interested in learning more about female writers.
October 3, 2019
Lyndall Gordon does not prove the point that these are 5 women writers who changed the world. Rather this is a collection of 5 British writers who carried on outside acceptable society of their times. Change the world? Perhaps, but Gordon doesn't prove the point. The points or evidence are ambiguous and scattered throughout the 5 individual pieces. The footnotes don't explain or add to the text and seem insignificant information that is thrown into a footnote. Even the final chapter which, I believe, was put to consolidate the theme is ambiguous. It states these are writers who changed the world but the text does not support the premise. The author does prove these women were outsiders in the times they lived, but not the second half of the title.
May 15, 2021
Unas semblanzas de estas cinco escritoras: Todas marcan una época y se despliegan sobre la siguiente. La dificultad para publicar con su nombre y el conectar con hombres que las apoyen y las motiven en el camino que han decidido recorrer. Todas siguen hasta la actualidad. Han sobrevivido al paso del tiempo y hoy se las lee con sus nombres en las portadas de sus novelas. Abrieron un estrecho camino, desbrozaron, quitaron obstáculos, allanaron y convirtieron en rectas las curvas que les impidieron publicar.
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June 21, 2018
My heart belongs to British literature. This beautiful book dives into the lives and contributions of 5 influential women throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries: Mary Shelly, Emily Bronte, George Elliot, Olive Schreiner, and Virginia Woolf. Each of these women has a story, and their stories have shaped literature, writing, politics, and more. Replete with hardships, loves, losses, and endurance Lyndall Gordon elegantly presents her readers with a truly unforgettable book.
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