Lost Ladies of Lit

Send us Fan Mail Profoundly dismayed by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, we interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you a special bonus episode on Penelope Mortimer’s must-read 1958 novel, Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting. Abortion and the right to choose are central to the plot, making it just as timely as when it first shocked critics with its “feminine rage.”  Support the sh...

Send us Fan Mail As Merchant Ivory super fans, we were surprised (and chagrined!) that we’d been unaware of Ismael Merchant and James Ivory’s longtime collaborator, novelist and Academy Award winning-screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Hollywood screenwriter Brigitte Hales joins us to discuss Jhabvala and her Booker Prize-winning 1975 novel, Heat and Dust.  Support the show For episodes and show no...

Send us Fan Mail Join us as we uncover a short history of the Proust Questionnaire, from how it got its name to some of the other notable writers from history who’ve filled one out—and we even take a stab at answering a few of the questions ourselves.  Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit:  LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagram @lostladieso...

Send us Fan Mail What Not , Rose Macaulay’s 1918 wild and witty speculative novel of post-First World War eugenics, influenced Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World . Our guest is literary historian Kate Macdonald, who wrote the first collection of scholarly essays on Macaulay and spearheads the publishing company Handheld Press. Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit:  LostLadiesofLit.com...

Send us Fan Mail For this week’s mini, we’re taking “beach reads” literally, and have lined up a list of novels set at or near the seaside. Our selections aren’t necessarily light or fluffy, but they’re definitely page turners. So grab your favorite literary tote and some SPF, and take a listen!  Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit:  LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack ne...

Send us Fan Mail Joining us to discuss Tess Slesinger and her brilliant 1934 novel, The Unpossessed , is her son, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker and novelist Peter Davis, and cultural critic and professor Paula Rabinowitz. Extremely popular for a brief period, Slesinger’s satirical novel about Depression-era, left-wing New Yorkers was printed four times within a month of publication making he...

Send us Fan Mail Join us as we learn more about the first known female tattoo artist in the United States, Maud Wagner. Born in 1877, Maud grew up to become a circus acrobat and, once most of her body was covered with tattoos, a walking exhibition unto herself.  Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit:  LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagram @l...

Send us Fan Mail Lucy Scholes rejoins us this week to discuss Kay Dick and her lost dystopian masterpiece from 1977, They , which has been newly republished by McNally Editions. Lucy, who is the Senior Editor of McNally Editions, rediscovered Dick after coming across her obituary and subsequently wrote about the novel in her column for The Paris Review , “Re-Covered.”  Support the show For episode...

Send us Fan Mail From the book that originally inspired Julian Fellowes to write the screenplays for both Gosford Park and Downton Abbey to Elizabeth Jane Howard’s series The Cazalet Chronicles , in this week's mini we’re chatting about books with Downton -esque vibes .  Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit:  LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us o...

Send us Fan Mail Did you know that Charlotte Brontë’s close friend Mary Taylor was also a novelist? Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney, who co-authored the 2017 non-fiction book A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf, join us to discuss Taylor’s 1890 novel Miss Miles: A Tale of Yorkshire Life Sixty Years Ago . Far from...

Send us Fan Mail In this week’s mini, we’re exploring the work of contemporary fine artists Faith Ringgold and Bisa Butler, whose quilts are inspired by a rich African-American quilting tradition, and Adeline Harris Sears’s 19th century signature quilt with autographs by notables including Charles Dickens, Abraham Lincoln, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.  Support the show For episodes and show notes, v...

Send us Fan Mail In 2021, the British Library Women Writers Series published an edition of Dorothy Evelyn’s Smith’s quietly joyful and sometimes dark coming-of-age novel, O, the Brave Music . Joining us is the series consultant and author of the book’s afterword, Dr. Simon Thomas. Sometimes compared to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and I Capture the Castle , O, the Brave Music is set before the first w...

Send us Fan Mail In this week’s mini episode on “unnatural mothers,” we discuss classics such as Anna Karenina and The Awakening and more contemporary works, including Sheila Heti’s novel Motherhood and Rachel Cusk’s memoir A Life’s Work.  Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit:  LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagram @lostladiesoflit .  Email...

Send us Fan Mail Join us for a wonderfully funny and poignant conversation about life, death, and motherhood with award-winning writer Hilma Wolitzer. Her short stories, most of them originally appearing in magazines in the 1960s and 1970s, were re-discovered by her daughter, bestselling author Meg Wolitzer, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and published last summer in a new collection e...

Send us Fan Mail In today’s mini episode, we’re focusing on one of Ukraine’s best-known poets and playwrights, Laryssa Kosach, who wrote under the pen name Lesya Ukrainka. Her play The Forest Song is a masterpiece of Ukrainian drama.  Discussed in this episode:  The Forest Song  by Lesya Ukrainka Looking for Trouble  by Virginia Cowles Lost Ladies of Lit episode on Virginia Cowles’ Looking for Tro...

Send us Fan Mail Abolitionist, suffragist, and writer Frances Harper was widely acclaimed in her day and one of the first African-American women to be published in the United States. Her novel Iola Leroy is an eye-opening look at what it was like for Black Americans in the midst of, and in the decades following, the Civil War. Joining us in conversation is award-winning author, professor, and lite...

Send us Fan Mail In this week’s mini, we’re discussing the life and work of literary critic Gillian Beer whose classic scholarly publication from 1983, Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth Century Fiction, should be essential reading for anyone who loves 19th century literature.  Discussed in this episode:  Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin,...

Send us Fan Mail Catbird’s Leigh Plessner joins us to discuss the 1931 novella Sundays and its fascinating author, French socialite Daisy Fellowes. Heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune, Fellowes was the Paris editor of the American Harper’s Bazaar and muse to the likes of Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Salvador Dali. Karl Lagerfeld reportedly once called her “the chicest woman I ever...

Send us Fan Mail In this week’s mini, we’ll tell you all about fly girls Beryl Markham and Amy Johnson, pioneering aviators from the 1930s whose fascinating exploits deserve to be as well known as those of their more famous fellow aviatrix, Amelia Earhart. Markham was also a writer, and her memoir about her adventures, West with the Night , was highly praised by Ernest Hemingway.  Discussed in thi...

Send us Fan Mail Did you know that Noel Streatfeild’s 1936 children’s book Ballet Shoes is based on her earlier novel The Whicharts , a tawdrier and not-for-children “shadow twin” that was published five years prior? Find out why it’s our favorite of the two in this week’s episode with our guest, author and bookstagrammer Wendy-Marie Chabot.  Discussed in this week’s episode:  Ballet Shoes  by Noe...

Send us Fan Mail Inspired by Dorothy B. Hughes’s noir novel Ride the Pink Horse , we’re exploring the fascinating history of merry-go-rounds in life and literature. And speaking of horses, we share feedback from listeners who wrote in regarding Episode 28, A Short History of Riding Saddle.  Discussed in this episode:  Ride the Pink Horse  by Dorothy B. Hughes Strangers on a Train  (1951 film) Stra...

Send us Fan Mail It’s a mystery to us why novelist Dorothy B. Hughes isn’t as well known as her fellow mid-century hardboiled/noir counterparts Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. This week, we’re discussing her 1963 crime novel The Expendable Man , a psychological thriller that had us on the edge of our seat—and even questioning our own instincts.  Discussed in this episode:  The Expendable Ma...

Send us Fan Mail Bedridden from a young age and diagnosed with the catchall term “hysteria,” Henry and William James’s sister, Alice, kept an account of her slow decline toward death in a diary that has made her something of a feminist icon. In this week’s mini, find out how she felt about the Jack the Ripper murders and why her writing wasn’t published until half a century after her death.  Suppo...

Send us Fan Mail New York Times book editor and returning guest Sadie Stein joins us to discuss the semi-lurid, yet weirdly wonderful 1909 novel A Girl of the Limberlost by the once wildly popular novelist and McCall's magazine columnist, Gene Stratton-Porter.  Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit:  LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagra...

Send us Fan Mail From the 14th century’s The Boke of St. Albans by Juliana Berners to Lauren Groff’s latest novel, Matrix , join us for a discussion on falconry in literature and our fascination with these captive birds of prey.  Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit:  LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagram @lostladiesoflit .  Email us: Conta...