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A review by therealkathryn
Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist by Anne Boyd Rioux
4.0
I picked this up because I had never heard of Constance Fenimore Woolson - even though I grew up in Michigan and her biggest selling novel is partially set on Mackinac Island. I asked (well-read) friends and they had never heard of her either, even though she wrote for Harper's and the Atlantic, sold thousands of copies of books, and was a good friend of Henry James as well as friends with many other contemporaries in the literary world. Woolson was not a favorite of William Dean Howells, the editor of The Atlantic and Harper's, who was influential in shaping the view of modern American literature. She also died relatively young and before realism had firmly taken hold. Since Woolson continuously pushed herself to explore new settings, characters, and approaches to writing, she likely would have explored that style as well. The descriptions of her works in this biography make a number of them sound pretty Victorian, with a fair amount of devotion to duty and self-sacrifice.
Woolson was a very private person who doesn't entirely come through in the letters and other documents left from her lifetime. She shows through more in autobiographical characters in some of her stories, such as Gertrude from "In Sloane Street" - described by Rioux as "an image of the superfluous, discarded spinster Woolson feared she had become" (p. 276 of the ARC). I found it quite sad that Woolson never rejected the limited view society had of single women and fully celebrated her own talent and the life of exploration that she chose. It's true she was not financially successful but her writing achievements were impressive. Furthermore, wherever she went she was in demand at social events, so she must have been quite personable as well, despite her aversion to social interactions and lifetime struggle with depression.
Soon after I picked this up NPR had a segment on Best-selling 19th C writers you may not have heard of (I had not heard of any of them). It seems too many women have been left behind or excluded from "literary" traditions as defined by men like Howells. This biography is a good start in bringing Woolson more to the fore, and here's hoping we see more on women authors who have, likely unfairly, been mostly forgotten.
Woolson was a very private person who doesn't entirely come through in the letters and other documents left from her lifetime. She shows through more in autobiographical characters in some of her stories, such as Gertrude from "In Sloane Street" - described by Rioux as "an image of the superfluous, discarded spinster Woolson feared she had become" (p. 276 of the ARC). I found it quite sad that Woolson never rejected the limited view society had of single women and fully celebrated her own talent and the life of exploration that she chose. It's true she was not financially successful but her writing achievements were impressive. Furthermore, wherever she went she was in demand at social events, so she must have been quite personable as well, despite her aversion to social interactions and lifetime struggle with depression.
Soon after I picked this up NPR had a segment on Best-selling 19th C writers you may not have heard of (I had not heard of any of them). It seems too many women have been left behind or excluded from "literary" traditions as defined by men like Howells. This biography is a good start in bringing Woolson more to the fore, and here's hoping we see more on women authors who have, likely unfairly, been mostly forgotten.