Beer uses their individual stories to tell a larger truth about literary history and how it pertains to women. There are running threads of patriarchal oppression, obviously, but specifically the spread of religious fervour and sexual panic. To sell your mind was, and is to some, the same as selling your body and the links between the aggressive response to female writers and sex workers was equally interesting and disturbing. Clearly, some of these authors are more well known to us today than others, but even someone as famous as Jane Austen is only a blinding success in hindsight. Her legacy was hard fought, well earned, and never guaranteed. It’s a little surprising, then, that in writing about them, Beer begins to lose heart. She speaks about lost lives. They were misunderstood and not taken seriously. “It seems that selling a lot of books was not enough.” The fact that we haven’t been discussing the work of Braddon for the last 150 years is, she says, “one of the sadnesses driving this book.” The essay ends by asking us to think about Bradstreet’s “tendentious take on history, her blindness to the colonized and her silences where we might have hoped for words.” We know very little about Bradstreet to begin with. It’s therefore unsurprising that this essay has the least to offer Beer’s central theme. Our September/October issue i s available in bookshops as well as Waitrose, WHSmiths, Booth’s and Easons.

An alternate history of English literature, retelling the lives and accomplishments of eight female writers. Alongside her work as a biographer, Anna teaches English Literature and Creative Writing to undergraduates and postgraduates; contributes to the Oxford Student Texts series for Oxford University Press; and makes regular lecture and media appearances. There’s also an occasional mismatch between the seriousness of the scholarship and the rather jaunty tone of the writing. It’s certainly hard to square the circle when you’re trying to appeal to a general audience. Beer reminds me a little of Rachel Maddow, who is sometimes a bit too brisk and chummy in her effort to communicate vast amounts of data without boring the masses. Unfortunately, when we get to the essay on Anne Bradstreet, Eve begins to lose her bite. Perhaps Beer wrote this chapter to maintain a steady chronology. But I don’t see how Bradstreet fits the book’s premise. In fact, Beer suggests that Bradstreet’s poetry might have been published — with the help of her father, husband, and brother-in-law — to counter the scandalous behavior of her sister Sarah, a London preacher. “Why should Bradstreet do our feminist heavy lifting,” Beer asks. To which I reply, tell us more about Sarah! In contrast, an enormous amount has already been written about Jane Austen, and the essay on her offers little that’s new. Beer does have an interesting take on The Watsons, however, a satirical commentary about women’s economic dependency that Austen never finished.This is part biography, part revisionist history, and part literary philosophy, through the lives of eight writers whose work, created between the 14th and 19th centuries, has survived against the odds to today. Beer works chronologically from two late-medieval autobiographers Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe (Kempe is hilarious by the way, definitely recommend), Renaissance poet Aemilia Lanyer, Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet, Restoration playwright Aphra Benn, 18th century traveller and letter writer Mary Wortley Montagu, through to two major novelists of the 19th century Jane Austen and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Mind you, Beer knows all too well that the desire to be liked and not to come across as self-important is one of the pitfalls of the highly intelligent, educated woman. She describes Montegu in just such a way, imagining her to be like Vice President Kamala Harris, smiling too much because her “desire to please is also rooted in her sex.” Warned not to write – and certainly not to bite – these women put pen to paper anyway and wrote themselves into history.

We look forward to welcoming you to a Champagne Drinks Reception on Friday 22 September to launch the weekend, which includes our annual Gaudy Dinner on Saturday 23 September. Booking is now open for both these events.Biographer Anna explores the lives and work of eight women all game changers, ground breakers, or simply brilliant writers in their particular genre and there are plenty of stories to tell. But Anna will also be making some surprising connections with one of her previous biographical subjects, John Milton, whose first wife was Mary Powell from Forest Hill. Anna will offer entertaining insights into the lives and works of these women you may never think about Jane Austen in the same way again! As a literature student myself, naturally I was intrigued when offered to attend the event on behalf of Bristol Women’s Voice. The talk was hosted by the lovely staff at Gloucester Road Books and Sidney & Eden, and chaired by Helen Taylor, a retired English professor. It turned out to be a friendly evening of thought-provoking discussion about gender in our literary history. Women writing against the odds The Linton Lecture will be followed by a drinks reception for event speakers, OCLW Linton Friends, OCLW Visiting Scholars and invited guests. But dismantling the patriarchy can’t be done alone, and all of these authors found male allies to get their work into print. Kempe had scribes; Austen and Bradstreet had fathers and brothers (and, in Bradstreet’s case, a husband) to champion them; Braddon had the support of her husband and publisher. Dr Rahul Raina (Kellogg, 2013) will share lessons learned from Microsoft’s customer success engagements at Ontario Power Generation (OPG)

Anna Beer investigates the lives and achievements of eight women writers, uncovering a startling and unconventional history of literature At the end of the discussion, the audience could ask questions, and I asked how Anna hopes that this book may be used or received. She said she wasn’t sure if it would make a difference at all. Over the weekend of 22 – 24 September 2023 we will once again host our Meeting Minds Global series of events for Kellogg and Oxford alumni.That we know about Montegu at all is owed to a trip she took to Rotterdam in her 70s, while dying of cancer. There, she handed over her papers to an evangelical Presbyterian minister for safekeeping. They were published after her death in 1763 and “still have the power to charm but also provoke outrage.” Beer admits that she can’t do Montegu’s life justice in one short chapter. I only wish she’d write a whole book about this woman. Medicine and philosophy, astronomy and theology all combined for millennia to insist that the female body is intrinsically faulty, cold, wet, irrational, changeable and above all fallen: unfit for the task of authorship. You can see why people questioned whether Trota of Salerno, a female doctor in 11th-century Italy, actually wrote a number of texts about diseases and health conditions affecting women. Surely a woman could not possess the intelligence and expertise to have written the works? Beer presents them chronologically, with each essay devoted to an individual author, except for the first. That one concerns Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, two devotional writers from the early 1400s. Kempe was a survivor, writing her pilgrimage travelogue at a time when possessing a single Bible verse in English was punishable by death. Julian, on the other hand, wrote from an anchorhold — a doorless, enclosed cell in a church. In her Revelations of Divine Love, she defied convention by writing for a female readership and by conceiving of God as mother as well as father. Corruption, Capital, Power – today’s world through the lens of corruption– Thiago Alves Pinto, John Drysdale and Robert Barrington The next essay is about Aemilia Lanyer, the illegitimate daughter of an Elizabethan court musician, who was subsequently educated by Katheryn Parr. She was the first woman to seek status as a professional author. She also wrote for women. Her poem “Salve Deux Rex Judaeorum,” now considered an important Renaissance text, re-imagines Genesis in Eve’s defense. Eve might’ve eaten the apple, but Jesus was betrayed by men.

It made me think about the importance of uplifting women in all types of work that they do, whether that be creative, professional or domestic. And that literature and literacy are also a privilege not afforded to everyone. An empowering manifestoAnna and Helen talked about how women through the ages have been unable to find writing success as they silenced themselves for protection in society. However, they were writing nonetheless, and they could’ve had a legacy similar to their male contemporaries. Yet they were rarely taken seriously enough. Women’s work was usually ignored and appropriated; it was hardly ever shared or published. So this book is also for those who aren’t featured: women writers whose work no one ever knew about. Importance beyond the academic world