Emily Midorikawa

Emma Claire Sweeney

A fascinating, inspirational look at the relationships between some of our best-loved female authors and their little-known literary collaborators and friends

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

A Secret Sisterhood

"Out of the Shadows tells the stories of six enterprising Victorian women whose apparent ability to move between the realms of the dead and the living allowed them to cross rigid boundaries of gender and class, and to summon unique political voices. The clairvoyance of the Fox sisters from upstate New York inspired some of the era's best-known female suffrage activists and set off an international sâeance craze. Emma Hardinge Britten left behind a career on Broadway for the life of a "trance lecturer," whose oration on the death of Abraham Lincoln was celebrated by tens of thousands. The meteoric rise of Victoria Woodhull, born into poverty in Ohio, took her from childhood medium to Wall Street broker to America's first female presidential candidate. And Georgina Weldon, whose interest in spiritualism nearly saw her confined to an asylum, went on to become a favorite of the press and a successful campaigner against Britain's archaic lunacy laws. These extraordinary tales illuminate a radical history of female influence that has been -until now-confined to the dark"--

Six Visionary Victorian Women in Search of a Public Voice

Out of the Shadows

A Secret Sisterhood uncovers the hidden literary friendships of the world’s most respected female authors. Drawing on letters and diaries, some of which have never been published before, this book will reveal Jane Austen’s bond with a family servant, the amateur playwright Anne Sharp; how Charlotte Brontë was inspired by the daring feminist Mary Taylor; the transatlantic relationship between George Eliot and the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe; and the underlying erotic charge that lit the friendship of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield – a pair too often dismissed as bitter foes. In their first book together, Midorikawa and Sweeney resurrect these literary collaborations, which were sometimes illicit, scandalous and volatile; sometimes supportive, radical or inspiring; but always, until now, tantalisingly consigned to the shadows.

The Hidden Friendships of Austen, Bronte, Eliot and Woolf

Queen Victoria's reign was an era of breathtaking social change, but it did little to create a platform for women to express themselves. But not so within the social sphere of the séance--a mysterious, lamp-lit world on both sides of the Atlantic, in which women who craved a public voice could hold their own. Out of the Shadows tells the stories of the enterprising women whose supposedly clairvoyant gifts granted them fame, fortune, and most important, influence as they crossed rigid boundaries of gender and class as easily as they passed between the realms of the living and the dead. The Fox sisters inspired some of the era’s best-known political activists and set off a transatlantic séance craze. While in the throes of a trance, Emma Hardinge Britten delivered powerful speeches to crowds of thousands. Victoria Woodhull claimed guidance from the spirit world as she took on the millionaires of Wall Street before becoming America’s first female presidential candidate. And Georgina Weldon narrowly escaped the asylum before becoming a celebrity campaigner against archaic lunacy laws. Drawing on diaries, letters, and rarely seen memoirs and texts, Emily Midorikawa illuminates a radical history of female influence that has been confined to the dark until now.

Emily Midorikawa

About

Books

Join the club