Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
James Joyce
-
Standard Name: Joyce, James
Irish exile JJ
, hailed by Yeats
as a new kind of novelist even before his first novel was published, became one of the leading practitioners of modernism. As well as poems, a play, and a volume of short stories, he produced three important novels, from the last of which he put out several separate sections long before the whole appeared. Joyce encountered obstacles to publishing almost all his books, raised by censors both official and self-appointed. Without the tireless patronage of Harriet Shaw Weaver
and Sylvia Beach
, his last two books might never have been published at all.
Her parents named her after Anna Livia Plurabelle of Joyce
's Finnegans Wake, and after Julian of Norwich
, medieval anchoress and author of Revelations of Divine Love.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Cultural formation
John Millington Synge
He first met William Butler Yeats
, one of two major Irish literary contemporaries who also rejected religion in their youth, in 1896. (The other scoffer at religion, James Joyce
, he met only once...
death
Harriet Shaw Weaver
Samuel Beckett
, hearing of the news in Paris, remarked to Sylvia Beach
: I . . . shall think of her when I think of goodness.
Lidderdale, Jane, and Mary Nicholson. Dear Miss Weaver. Viking.
455
Having dedicated her life to English...
Education
Catherine Cookson
As a young adult CC
took on her own education. With varying degrees of success she studied grammar, elocution, French, and the violin. She also discovered the public library. Colleagues at work got her to...
While working on her doctorate in 1963, HC
travelled to the United States to research James Joyce
's manuscripts for her doctoral thesis, and, in California,, she prepared a second thesis on Robinson Jeffers...
Education
Ali Smith
After completing her studies at Aberdeen, Smith began working towards a doctorate at Newnham College, Cambridge (still a women-only body). Continuing her work on the area of her MLitt, she determined to focus on the...
Education
Edna O'Brien
O'Brien meanwhile cultivated her passion for reading and writing. The first book she purchased was Introducing James Joyce, edited by T. S. Eliot
: this volume, she notes, made me realize that I wanted...
Family and Intimate relationships
Olivia Manning
As a very young woman OM
began an affair with the charistmatic Hamish Miles
(Edward Garnett
's assistant at the publishing firm of Jonathan Cape
, and editor of a little magazine). He was...
Family and Intimate relationships
Bryher
Though emotionally empty, the marriage was artistically productive. Most significantly, Bryher's introductions and family funds allowed McAlmon to establish his influential press, Contact Editions
. Thus, Bryher's money and social connections enabled the publication of...
Family and Intimate relationships
Dorothy Wellesley
DW
seems to have first met Hilda Matheson
just before the latter took over the role of central player in Vita Sackville-West
's love-life. But Matheson (director of talks for the BBC
, soon to...
Family and Intimate relationships
Sylvia Plath
SP
married Ted Hughes
at the Church of St George the Martyr in Bloomsbury, London, on James Joyce
's Bloomsday.
Wagner-Martin, Linda. Sylvia Plath: A Biography. Simon and Schuster.
134
Butscher, Edward. Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness. Seabury Press.
189
Family and Intimate relationships
Sylvia Beach
SB
was hunting down a copy of Paul Fort
's Vers et prose, and was directed to Monnier's bookshop. She found the shop's owner surprisingly warm and friendly. Adrienne declared that she like[d] America...
Family and Intimate relationships
Q. D. Leavis
Though both husband and wife were to influential, F. R. Leavis became one of the leading literary critics of the twentieth century. A dynamic speaker and teacher, he was known for his uncompromising, exclusive, often...
Friends, Associates
Djuna Barnes
DB
arrived in Paris with letters of introduction to Ezra Pound
and James Joyce
, and she soon came into contact with a great number of the US expatriates living there at this time, including...
Timeline
11 January 1904: Father John Creagh began a series of fiery...
Building item
11 January 1904
Father John Creagh
began a series of fiery antisemitic sermons in Limerick, which provoked a pogrom.
2 July 1914: The first issue of the magazine Blast, edited...
Building item
2 July 1914
The first issue of the magazine Blast, edited by Wyndham Lewis
, formally announced the arrival of Vorticism, an avant-garde movement in art.
December 1919: The last issue of The Egoist: An Individualist...
Writing climate item
December 1919
The last issue of The Egoist: An Individualist Review was published.
1926: Soon after Chatto and Windus published The...
4 December 1931: The BBC announced the resignation of Hilda...
Writing climate item
4 December 1931
The BBC
announced the resignation of Hilda Matheson
, its director of talks, which she had actually submitted in October. This was the climax of a long-running struggle over a series of talks by Harold Nicolson
1946: Critic Erich Auerbach published, in German,...
Writing climate item
1946
Critic Erich Auerbach
published, in German, the influential study which became in its English translation, 1953, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. He wrote it at Istanbul, as a Jewish refugee...
By late October 1975: The short-story volume Angels at the Ritz,...
Writing climate item
By late October 1975
The short-story volume Angels at the Ritz, by expatriate Irish writer William Trevor (born Trevor Cox
in 1928), was hailed by Graham Greene
as probably the best collection of stories since Joyce
's Dubliners.
October 1996: Irish journalist and writer Nuala O'Faolain...
Writing climate item
October 1996
Irish journalist and writer Nuala O'Faolain
published her autobiography Are You Somebody? The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman.
22 January 2008: Day, the fifth novel by Scottish author,...
Women writers item
22 January 2008
Day, the fifth novel by Scottish author, playwright and stand-up comedian A. L. Kennedy
(whose unmentioned first name is Alison), won the 2007 Costa (formerly Whitbread) Book of the Year prize.
Texts
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Egoist, 1917.
Joyce, James. Chamber Music. Elkin Mathews, 1907.
Joyce, James. Dubliners. Grant Richards, 1914.
Joyce, James. Exiles. Grant Richards, 1918.
Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. Faber and Faber, 1939.
Joyce, James. Pomes Penyeach. Shakespeare and Company, 1927.
Joyce, James. Stephen Hero. J. Cape, 1944.
Joyce, James. Ulysses. Shakespeare and Company, 1922.