A Secret Sisterhood

The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf

Emily Midorikawa, Emma Claire Sweeney

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780544883789
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

Two female writers and best friends bring to light the literary friendships of four iconic female authors. Male literary friendships are the stuff of legend; think Byron and Shelley, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. But the world's best-loved female authors are usually mythologized as solitary eccentrics or isolated geniuses. Coauthors and real-life friends Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney prove this wrong, thanks to their discovery of a wealth of surprising collaborations: the friendship between Jane Austen and one of the family servants, playwright Anne Sharp; the daring feminist author Mary Taylor, who shaped the work of Charlotte Brontë; the transatlantic friendship of the seemingly aloof George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe; and Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, most often portrayed as bitter foes, but who, in fact, enjoyed a complex friendship fired by an underlying erotic charge. Through letters and diaries that have never been published before, A Secret Sisterhood resurrects these forgotten stories of female friendships. They were sometimes scandalous and volatile, sometimes supportive and inspiring, but always—until now—tantalizingly consigned to the shadows. With a foreword by Margaret Atwood "A thought-provoking meditation on literary friendship as well as engagingly intimate glimpses of four of the world's finest writers."— San Francisco Chronicle "A medley of vivid narratives." — The Atlantic "Midorikawa and Sweeney have committed an exceptional act of literary espionage. English literature owes them a great debt." — Financial Times "A vital and necessary contribution to women's history, literary history, and the literature of friendship."—Kate Bolick, author of Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Introduction: In Search of a Secret Sisterhood
• Jane Austen & Anne Sharp
• A Circle of Single Women
• Rebellion Behind Closed Doors
• Closing Ranks
• Charlotte Brontë & Mary Taylor
• Three’s a Crowd
• Two Adventurous Spirits
• One Great Myth
• George Eliot & Harriet Beecher Stowe
• The Stuff of Legend
• The Specter of Scandal
• An Act of Betrayal
• Plates
• Katherine Mansfield & Virginia Woolf
• Friends or Foes?
• Cat-and-Mouse
• Life and Death
• Epilogue: A Web of Literary Connections
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index
• About the Authors
• Connect with HMH