Bibliograph

Outsiders, five women writers who changed the world, Lyndall Gordon

Type

Label

Outsiders, five women writers who changed the world, Lyndall Gordon

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references and index

resource.biographical

collective biography

Illustrations

illustrationsportraits

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Outsiders

Nature of contents

bibliography

Responsibility statement

Lyndall Gordon

Sub title

five women writers who changed the world

Summary

Outsiders tells the stories of five novelists - Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner, Virginia Woolf - and their famous novels. We have long known their individual greatness but in linking their creativity to their lives as outsiders, this group biography throws new light on the genius they share. 'Outsider', 'outlaw', 'outcast': a woman's reputation was her security and each of these five lost it. As writers, they made these identities their own, taking advantage of their separation from the dominant order to write their novels. All five were motherless. With no female model at hand, they learnt from books; and if lucky, from an enlightened man; and crucially each had to imagine what a woman could be in order to invent a voice of their own. They understood female desire: the passion and sexual bravery in their own lives infused their fictions. What they have in common also is the way they inform one another, and us, across the generations. Even today we do more than read them; we listen and live with them

Target audience

adult

Creator