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Women Writers – Lioness at Large

Women Writers

Literature

German Women Writers: Children’s and Young Adult Literature

General introduction to this series of blog posts HERE. Children’s and young adult literature was an era where German women writers were represented even before there were such things as “children’s”, “middle grade”, and “young adult” genres.  In the early 20th century, there were the books of Else Ury, which are still hugely popular today, […]

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Literature

German Women Writers: Mystery and Suspense

General introduction to this series of blog posts HERE. Crime fiction is arguably the most lively genre in the contemporary German literary scene; yet, only a fraction ever makes it to the translation into English (or, for that matter, French or any other languages).  This is true for both male and female authors, and it’s […]

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Literature

German Women Writers: Post-WWII / Contemporary

General introduction to this series of blog posts HERE. When Germany — divided into two unequally-sized halves — picked itself up after the catastrophe that had been the Nazi era and WWII, writers played an increasingly big role in the country’s search for its collective soul and its path to a better future; and finally, […]

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Literature

German Women Writers: 1900 – 1945

General introduction to this series of blog posts HERE. Women writers had made great strides in the 19th century, but it still had taken them almost a millennium to really claim a place of their own in public awareness.  A fair number of the works of early 20th century German women writers exist in English […]

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Literature

German Women Writers: Historical Fiction

General introduction to this series of blog posts HERE. Historical fiction is obviously an important way to visit the past; alas, while I’m happy to report that the genre is alive and extremely well in Germany, only a tiny fraction of the books published — and an even tinier fraction of those written by women […]

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Literature

German Women Writers: The 19th Century

General introduction to this series of blog posts HERE. The below collection of 19th century writers incorporates the initial response to the question about women writing in German that inspired this series of blog posts; beginning with my personal late 18th / early 19th century heroine and with the ladies most closely associated with the […]

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Literature

German Women Writers: The Age of Enlightenment

General introduction to this series of blog posts HERE. The Age of Enlightenment introduced new schools of philosophical and political thought and brought huge advances in scholarship and scientific knowledge — what it still didn’t bring, however, was universal education, including and in particular for women.  So writing (and reading) still remained a pursuit of […]

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Literature

German Women Writers: The Reformation Age

General introduction to this series of blog posts HERE. The Reformation brought new freedoms to women: Luther published an opinion that nuns’ vows were not eternally binding (which opinion, in short order, would earn him a wife), women — both secular and (heretofore) nuns — took an active part in the Reformation movement; and the […]

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Literature

German Women Writers: The Middle Ages

General introduction to this series of blog posts HERE. There is a surprising number of medieval German women writers: not in the hundreds, of course; but definitely almost 20 or perhaps even more than 20, which is not necessarily the number I’d have expected, given that literacy was not a widely-taught skill even among men […]

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Literature

German Women Writers: A Series of Blog Posts

Earlier this year, at the beginning of a buddy read of Andrea Wulf’s Magnificent Rebels (in another venue), a friend asked about German (speaking) 19th century women writers or more specifically, German women writers “in the years between the French Revolution and WWI”.  Another friend and (somewhat belatedly) I came up with a few names, […]

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Literature Reviews

Karen Wynn Fonstad: The Atlas of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth

Blurb: “Find your way through every part of J.R.R. Tolkien’s great creation, from the Middle-earth of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to the undying lands of the West … The Atlas of Tolkien’s Middle-earth is an essential guide to the geography of Middle-earth, from its founding in the Elder Days – as […]

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Literature Reviews

Ngaio Marsh: Swing, Brother, Swing (aka A Wreath for Rivera)

Blurb: Lord Pastern and Baggot is a classic English eccentric, given to passionate, peculiar enthusiasms. His latest: drumming in a jazz band. His wife is not amused, and even less so when her daughter falls hard for Carlos Rivera, the band’s sleazy accordion player. Aside from the young woman, nobody likes Rivera very much, so […]

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Literature Reviews

Ngaio Marsh: Death at the Bar

Well, as it turns out, I can’t leave well alone with just two books by Ngaio Marsh in a row, so here we go … As I revisited Overture to Death — the book immediately following Artists in Crime and Death in a White Tie — last year as part of the Appointment with Agatha […]

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Literature Reviews

Ngaio Marsh: Artists in Crime

Blurb: One of Ngaio Marsh’s most famous murder mysteries, which introduces Inspector Alleyn to his future wife, the irrepressible Agatha Troy. It started as a student exercise, the knife under the drape, the model’s pose chalked in place. But before Agatha Troy, artist and instructor, returns to the class, the pose has been reenacted in […]

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Literature Reviews

Lauren Belfer: City of Light

Blurb: “The year is 1901. Buffalo, New York, is poised for glory. With its booming industry and newly electrified streets, Buffalo is a model for the century just beginning. Louisa Barrett has made this dazzling city her home. Headmistress of Buffalo’s most prestigious school, Louisa is at ease in a world of men, protected by […]

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Literature Reviews

Kylie Logan: The Scent of Murder

Blurb: The way Jazz Ramsey figures it, life is pretty good. She is 35 years old and owns her own home in one of Cleveland’s most diverse, artsy, and interesting neighborhoods. She has a job she likes as an administrative assistant at an all-girls school and a volunteer interest that she’s passionate about — Jazz […]

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Literature Reviews

Priscilla Royal: Sorrow Without End

Blurb: As the autumn storms of 1271 ravage the East Anglian coast, Crowner Ralf finds the corpse of a brutally murdered soldier in the woods near Tyndal Priory. The dagger in the man’s chest is engraved with a strange cursive design, and the body is wrapped in a crusader’s cloak. Was this the act of […]

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Literature Reviews

Ann Cleeves: The Long Call

The first of Cleeves’s Two Rivers books, and while I loved the atmosphere and (generally) the writing as such, the solution was rather a letdown — basically this is yet another mystery harping on corrupt powerful stale pale males. Don’t get me wrong, the particular kind of corruption at stake here, as well as the […]

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Literature Reviews

Margaret Millar: Vanish in an Instant

  The Appointment with Agatha group’s April side read, and the third book by Millar I’ve read this year alone. Though I didn’t like it quite as well as my very first foray into her oeuvre (An Air That Kills), it’s not very far behind, and I can definitely see how the two novels came […]

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Literature Reviews

Susanna Gregory: A Bone of Contention

Matthew Bartholomew mystery #3, and by this time it’s fair to say that Gregory had found her groove. The plot still comes across as mighty complex, but it’s more tightly-constructed than in the first two books — also, I’ve learned (at last) not to get too caught up in individual incidents but, for all their […]

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