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?
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?
