Hello! I just moved the Literary Ladies Guide newsletter to Substack, so thank you to current subscribers who have followed me here and welcome to new subscribers. The focus remains the same — celebrating classic women authors, rediscovering forgotten writers, elevating women’s voices.
Introducing (or re-introducing) myself
I’ve always been good at hiding behind my work! But somehow, the Substack format encourages more personal storytelling. Just the basics for now; I’m a writer, cookbook author, graphic designer, illustrator, and visual artist specializing in limited editions. I’m a “woman of a certain age” with two beloved adult children and a lot of energy. I live in the Hudson Valley region of New York State and love to read (obviously), travel, cook, and am a huge (actually very petite) nerd.
In future newsletters I’ll try to be forthcoming about what I’m writing, reading, and creating. I also just moved my other newsletter, The Vegan Atlas, to Substack so please join me there too if you’re a fan of plant-based food.
The secret and not-so-secret diaries
For many writers, a diary or journal has long been a constant companion and confidant. Into it they poured their dreams, goals and desires, as well as their fears and insecurities. Do today’s writer’s keep diaries and journals? That I don’t know.
What's striking about the entries below (with the exception of Anne Lister’s, which were for a different purpose) is that they reveal a great deal of self-doubt. It goes to show that confidence, something gained over time, might be less important to success than perseverance.
Anne Lister: Also Known as “Gentleman Jack”
The fascinating Englishwoman Anne Lister (1791 – 1840) of Shibden Hall in Yorkshire wasn’t a published writer per se, but a committed diarist with a lot to write about. Known in her local environs as “Gentleman Jack,” Lister’s enormous journals, only recently published, run to twenty-six volumes and four million words. Her life was dramatized in a BBC series, Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister.
Lister's diaries, once decoded, are perfectly unambiguous today. She didn't take any care to hide her long-term lesbian relationship with fellow Yorkshire landowner Ann Walker; quite the opposite. They were the first women to have a same-sex wedding ceremony, in York (1834) though it wasn’t legally recognized. Here’s an early entry dated 1816:
“Ann & I lay awake last night till 4 in the morning. I let her into my penchant for the ladies. Expatiated on the nature of my feelings towards her & hers towards me. Told her that she ought not deceive herself as to the nature of my sentiments & the strictness of my intentions towards her.
I could feel the same in at least two more instances & named her sister, Eliza, as one, saying that I did not dislike her in my heart but rather admired her as a pretty girl. I asked Ann if she liked me the less for my candour, etc., etc. She said no, kissed me & proved by her manner she did not.”
Read the full article, Glimpses into the Secret Diaries of Anne Lister, by Literary Ladies Guide contributor Francis Booth.
Louisa May Alcott: Beginning “Little Women” reluctantly
In 1868, Louisa May Alcott’s publisher casually suggested that she try writing a “girls’ story” for their list. Thinking little of the request, she cranked it out in two and a half months, though her heart wasn’t in it.
Neither she nor her publisher thought it was in any way remarkable. Still, it was fast-tracked, and the proof of the entire book was ready in a month or so after she turned in the manuscript. These excerpts, dated 1868, are from The Journals of Louisa May Alcott.
May — Mr. N. wants a girl’s story, and I begin “Little Women.” Marmee, Anna, and May all approve my plan. So I plod away, though I don’t enjoy this sort of thing. Never liked girls or knew many, except my sisters; but our queer plays and experiences may prove interesting, though I doubt it.
June — Sent twelve chapters of “L.W.” to Mr. N. He thought it dull, and so do I. But work away and mean to try the experiment; for lively, simple books are very much needed for girls, and perhaps I can supply the need.
August — Roberts Bros. made an offer for the story, but at the same time advised me to keep the copyright; so I shall. Proof of whole book came. It reads better than I expected.
Not a bit sensational, but simple and true, for we really lived most of it; and if it succeeds that will be the reason of it. Mr. N. likes it better now and says some girls who have read the manuscript say it is “splendid”! As it is for them, they are the best critics, so I should be satisfied.
Late August — First edition gone and more called for. Expects to sell three or four thousand before the new year. Mr. N. wants a second volume for spring. Pleasant notices and letters arrive, and much interest in my little women, who seem to find friends by their truth to life, as I hoped.
You might also enjoy Louisa May Alcott's Advice to Aspiring Writers
L.M. Montgomery: Desperately seeking a publisher
Like many authors battered by continual rejection, L.M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery gave up and placed the worn Anne of Green Gables manuscript in a hatbox and gave up. After it languished in a freezing attic for nearly a year, she decided to give it one more shot and sent it to Boston publisher L.C. Page.
Maud’s extensive journals are collected in the multi-volume Journals of L.M. Montgomery. The first the first two excerpts from her journal are from when Anne was finally accepted, and the last one after it was published.
“I don’t know what kind of publisher I’ve got. I know absolutely nothing of the Page Co. They have given me a royalty of ten percent of the wholesale price, which is not generous even for a new writer, and they have bound me to give them all my books on the same terms for five years. I didn’t altogether like this but I was afraid to protest, lest they might not take the book, and I am so anxious to get it before the public. It will be a start, even if it is no great success.”
“Well, I’ve written my book. The dream dreamed years ago in that old brown desk in school has come true after years of toil and struggle. And the realization is sweet—almost as sweet as the dream!” (Journals, 1907)
“To-day has been, as Anne herself would say, ‘an epoch in my life.’ My book came to-day … from the publishers. I candidly confess that it was to me a proud and wonderful and thrilling moment … There, in my hand, lay the material realization of all the dreams and hopes and ambitions and struggles of my whole conscious existence—my first book. Not a great book, but mine, mine, mine, something which I have created.” (Journals, 1908)
More about Publishing Anne of Green Gables: How L.M. Montgomery Persevered
Anaïs Nin: “I write in a scattering fashion”
For Anaïs Nin, writing was essential as breathing. This need inspired her iconic multi-volume Diary series, which started as a voyage of self-discovery and eventually transcended the personal into the universal.
Before the Diaries that made her famous were her early diaries, revealing that her desire to write outstripped her self-perceived abilities. The following selection is from The Early Diaries of Anaïs Nin, 1921, when she would have been eighteen:
“When I look down upon my work, it shrinks to almost nothing. One day I write poems and essays, and the next I tear and burn them, to begin again, and in the same manner I have done this for years. Nothing satisfies me.
The reading I do serves only to impress me with my inferiority of style and character. I writing in a scattering fashion, always with a purpose in mind and yet never capable of reaching it. My work lacks ‘roundness,’ concentration and clearness. I drift into vague visions and abstract forms and above all into superfluities.
Against all these handicaps, I have only a few remedies. I know that I have application, a hard-headed kind of persistence … I maintain they are the infirmities of my age, and I will not always be eighteen.
Nevertheless, I am resolved to write, write, and write. Nothing can turn me away from a path I have definitely set myself to follow.”
Virginia Woolf: The agony and ecstasy of writing
A Writer's Diary is quite revealing of Virginia Woolf's process. In it, she details the agonies suffered while in the throes of writing, and the joy she felt when readers and critics praised her works. Here are a few passages:
“I wonder if anyone has ever suffered so much from a book as I have from The Years. Once out I will never look at it again. It’s like a long childbirth. Think of that summer, every morning a headache, and forcing myself into that room in my nightgown; and lying down after a page: and always with the certainty of failure.”
“Now that certainty is mercifully removed to some extent. But now I feel I don’t care what anyone says so long as I’m rid of it. And for some reason I feel I’m respected and liked. But this is only the haze dance of illusion, always changing.”
“Never write a long book again. Yet I feel I shall write more fiction—scenes will form. But I am tired this morning: too much strain and racing yesterday.”
See more in Virginia Woolf: The Most Self-Critical Author of All Time?
Some literary levity …
This cartoon is courtesy of Bob Eckstein. Bob and I are creating a book together (I’m the writer, he’s the illustrator) on the bond between well-known writers past and present and their cats. It will be published in September, 2025, and of course I’ll be saying more about it as the time draws near. Meanwhile, please join Bob’s Substack for humor, insights about the writing life, and more.
What I’m reading (or listening to) now
I’ve been listening to the 42-hour audiobook of Forever Amber since February (with several books and audiobooks in between). This hugely bestselling yet widely banned 1944 book by the mostly forgotten Kathleen Winsor came out when she was just twenty-four. Imagine setting Scarlett O’Hara in Restoration England (late 1600s). It’s a well done yarn, but really, really long.
I just started James by Percival Everett, my book group’s next selection, the retelling of Huckleberry Finn through the eyes of his enslaved companion Jim. I already love it. We recently discussed Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Nobel Laureate Olga Togarczuk. Not an easy read but most of us, including me, really appreciated it.
I'm reading Carson McCullers' "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" which is full of mature insights for a 23-year old. It prompted me to say about Carson in my story, "Two Good Girly Books," "She was born old." I think maybe these surprisingly mature insights at an early age reveal that there is a mature and thoughtful muse at work even during our naive years. We should encourage the muse although it is sometimes awkward. Here is another good insight from Carson that ties in with your "Gentleman Jack" comments regarding lesbianism, which is an expression of a phenomenon that is closer to some families (a gift) than to others: "Mick was at the age when she looked as much like an overgrown boy as a girl. And on that subject why was it that the smartest people mostly missed that point? By nature all people are of both sexes. So that marriage and the bed is not all by any means. The proof? Real youth and old age. Because often old men’s voices grow high and reedy and they take on a mincing walk. And old women sometimes grow fat and their voices get rough and deep and they grow dark little mustaches. And he even proved it himself – the part of him that sometimes almost wished he was a mother and that Mick and Baby were his kids.”