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.
During the early part of ICB
's career she was little regarded or understood. Raymond Mortimer
was one of the first to perceive her quality, and she quickly began to attract the attention of younger...
Literary responses
Christina Stead
Stead's biographer Hazel Rowley observes that reviewers were nonplussed.
Rowley, Hazel. Christina Stead: A Biography. Secker and Warburg.
205
Harold Strauss
in the New York Times Book Review (who found himself reminded of James Joyce
) felt forced to praise . ....
Literary responses
Virginia Woolf
VW
wrote to Ethel Smyth
that the stories were diversions or treats I allowed myself when I had done my exercise in the conventional style.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
4: 231
An Unwritten Novel, she said, showed her...
Literary responses
Dorothy Richardson
Pilgrimage and its author have been grouped with various other writers and literary methods, particularly with Virginia Woolf
, James Joyce
, and Marcel Proust
, who set out to explore and record linked elements...
Literary responses
Christine Brooke-Rose
Brian McHale
says that CBR
's representations here of London's homeless are freshly observed as if firsthand, and that the novel is in the lineage of the great twentieth-century city novels—a London Wandering Rocks...
Literary responses
Edna O'Brien
Jonathan Yardley
, reviewing for the Washington Post, stressed O'Brien's brilliance and her nationality. If what you're looking for is a map of Ireland, the fiction of Edna O'Brien will do just fine. She...
Literary responses
Dorothy Richardson
The first reviewer, in the Sunday Observer, found DR
's narrative strategy extraordinary, but remarkably clear. He noted that her leaving the reader without explanations or apologies was not in the least troubling or...
Literary responses
Claire Keegan
The book was widely acclaimed soon after it was published, receiving the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Martin Healy Award, and the William Trevor Prize. The Los Angeles Times also called it the Best...
Literary responses
Dorothy Richardson
Some of Richardson's readers considered that she, like Joyce
, focused more than necessary on the seamier details of life. Reviewers were not altogether impressed by this novel. Reviewing Richardson again in the Athenæum in...
Literary responses
Mary Lavin
Originally published in the Atlantic Monthly in October 1941, the story At Sallygap has been likened to the works of James Joyce
and Sean O'Casey
.
This book attracted considerable critical attention. It was listed in the Daily Telegraph's Books of the Week and reviewed in the Sunday Times, Times Literary Supplement, The Scotsman, and the Irish...
Literary responses
Mary Lavin
This volume brought ML
critical acclaim. R. J. Thompson
read it as establishing her position as one of the most artful and perceptive masters of the story form in our day.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
In Ireland, wrote the...
Literary responses
Mary Butts
The first edition of Ashe of Rings was not extensively reviewed. Although an unimpressed reviewer for the Liverpool Courier characterised it as another bad case of Futurism (like the writing of James Joyce
and Dorothy Richardson
Kester-Shelton, Pamela, editor. Feminist Writers. St James Press.
Reviewers in Cosmopolitan, the London Review of Books, The Times, the Financial Times...
Literary responses
Marcel Proust
The novel at once gave rise to an intellectual cult, and not among the French. Woolf
wished she could write like Proust, though Joyce
is reported as seeing no special talent in him.
