A Secret Sisterhood

August 7, 2017
Midorikawa and Sweeney (Owl Song at Dawn) explore some lesser-known literary friendships in this evocative and well-researched ode to female solidarity. They describe, for instance, how Jane Austen cultivated a friendship across class lines with her niece’s governess, a woman named Anne Sharp with literary ambitions of her own. Charlotte Brontë and feminist author Mary Taylor met at boarding school and would ultimately overcome Taylor’s first (and typically teenage) assessment of Brontë: “You are very ugly.” George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe are shown through their letters to have been thoughtful and admiring supporters of each other’s work. The section dealing with Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield is perhaps the most fascinating, as their friendship survived a great deal of mutual professional rivalry. Midorikawa and Sweeney also capture their subjects’ settings in riveting detail, including Austen’s Bath, Eliot’s Regent’s Park, and, in particular, the Garsington Manor flower gardens that Woolf and Mansfield both loved (and wrote competing stories about). The authors (who are themselves close friends) astutely explain that the friendships they depict became lost to cultural memory due to prevailing stereotypes of female authors as “solitary eccentrics or isolated geniuses.” It is a delight to learn about them here, as related by two talented authors.

August 15, 2017
Rich and revealing portraits of four literary friendships.Because female authors are so often "mythologized as solitary eccentrics or isolated geniuses," Midorikawa and Sweeney (Owl Song at Dawn, 2016), both teachers at New York University in London, set out to uncover overlooked friendships. As Margaret Atwood puts it in the foreword, the authors successfully "retrace forgotten footsteps, and tap into emotional undercurrents." The close relationship between Jane Austen and Anne Sharp would be lost if it wasn't for Jane's niece, Fanny, whose writings included much information about her governess, Anne, who liked to pen theatricals. It turns out Jane had "deep affection" for Anne, her "most treasured confidante." Over the years, on and off, they "would find all sorts of ways to support each other's endeavors." Jane "treated Anne as her most trusted literary friend." Charlotte Bronte and the pioneering feminist writer Mary Taylor were "good friends" despite quite differing personalities. Taylor was energetic and political while Charlotte was quiet and diffident. So when Mary wrote to her that Jane Eyre was "so perfect as a work of art," she also criticized it "for not having a greater political purpose." Despite disagreements and debates, they found a "space for themselves in the rapidly changing Victorian world." When George Eliot heaped great praise upon Harriet Beecher Stowe (whose bestselling fame was greater than Eliot's) for Uncle Tom's Cabin, Eliot received an unexpected letter from Stowe, which praised Eliot's works, and a friendship was born. Until, that is, Eliot shockingly learned of Stowe's published criticism of Byron for his incestuous relationship with his sister. It created a "frostiness" in their relationship, but it endured. Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield played a literary cat-and-mouse game with each other thanks to social differences and creative rivalry, but they remained friends. Despite occasional fictional flourishes, these forgotten friendships, from illicit and scandalous to radical and inspiring, are revelations.

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October 15, 2017

Midorikawa (Owl Song at Dawn) and Sweeney, who corun the site SomethingRhymed.com, provide evidence of sustained, collaborative female friendships in the lives of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf. Extraordinary detective work has uncovered letters pointing to friendships between Austen and Anne Sharp, the governess/playwright who became a trusted friend to the novelist; Bronte and the radical feminist writer Mary Taylor; Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin; and Woolf and the younger, more successful (at the time) Katherine Mansfield. In revealing these literary alliances, Midorikawa and Sweeney point out obstacles the novelists faced in trying to have their work recognized. At times, though, there is too much hypothesizing, especially in the case of Austen, since the details of her friendship with Anne are from Austen's ten-year-old niece's letters, sketchy evidence at best. Fascinating is the relationship of Mansfield and Woolf, which alternates from fierce rivalry to sexual attraction. VERDICT Readers interested in women writers and these authors in particular will find this work enlightening.--Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo

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