Stacy

I just finished an American Romanticism course where my professor mixed the canonical works (Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, etc.) with some female writers of the time period who experienced a loss in popularity or merely failed to achieve canon status. Some of the books, I could understand why they never achieved literary status ("The Lamplighter" by Maria Susanna Cummins, for example, is extraordinarily awful) but other books were as amazing as Hawthorne or Melville's works. One book in particular really impressed me. This is "The Amber Gods and Other Stories" by Harriet Prescott Spofford. It's wonderfully complex and has the most amazing language I've read in a while.

So, a few questions: Has anyone read Spofford? Have you ever discovered a long forgotten author, male or female, that most people have never heard of? How do you feel about women's lit? Is a waste of time bringing up old works simply because they were written by women, or is it giving a second chance to authors who were not taken seriously in their time due to their sex?

lisajane

I've never heard of Spofford. I don't think it's a waste of time at all to bring up old works by women and it gives the opporunity for us to respect them, for I'm sure several old works by women are execellent rivals for old works by men. If we didn't read the old works by women and just read ones by men, then we're just as bad as what it was like back then - we won't take women seriously again simply due to their sex.

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'Beauty stands and waits with gravity to start her death-defying leap. And he, a little charleychaplin man, who may or may not catch her fair eternal form spreadeagled in the empty air of existence.' - Laurence Felinghetti, 'The Acrobat'