sespursongles:

I finished reading Joanna Russ’s How to Suppress Women’s Writing recently, in which she quotes from Ellen Moers’ Literary Women, and it feels delightful to discover so many connections between women writers – Emily Dickinson knew Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh by heart and named her as a mentor, Helen Hunt Jackson encouraged Dickinson to publish her poetry, Amy Lowell and Adrienne Rich later referred to Dickinson as their foremother, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was friends with Mary Russell Mitford and both admired and visited George Sand, Willa Cather called Sand’s novels masterly, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot were pen pals with Harriet Beecher Stowe, George Eliot wrote to Elizabeth Gaskell to say that ‘Cranford’ was an inspiration to her and she re-read Jane Austen’s novels while writing her own, Austen loved Maria Edgeworth’s novels, Nathalie Sarraute admired Ivy Compton-Burnett as one of England’s greatest novelists, etc. etc.

As Russ points out, when reading literary anthologies put together by men and citing maybe half a dozen lone female writers sprinkled over several centuries amidst a sea of male names, you get the impression that women writers were very isolated figures in their time, that their literary ambition and talent was an anomaly completely unrelated to any appreciation of other women writers and wish to emulate them, and it’s so nice to get a reminder that they actually had female mentors and fangirls and friendships with other women writers and they read and studied and admired one another.