Random House New Releases - Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors

My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead

2014-01-28T00:30:00-05:00

My Life in Middlemarch
Written by Rebecca Mead

Hardcover, 256 pages | Crown | Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs; Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors; Literary Criticism & Collections - English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh | $25.00 | 978-0-307-98476-0 (0-307-98476-1)

A New Yorker writer revisits the seminal book of her youth--Middlemarch-- and fashions a singular, involving story of how a passionate attachment to a great work of literature can shape our lives and help us to read our own histories.

Rebecca Mead was a young woman in an English coastal town when she first read George Eliot's Middlemarch, regarded by many as the greatest English novel. After gaining admission to Oxford, and moving to the United States to become a journalist, through several love affairs, then marriage and family, Mead read and reread Middlemarch. The novel, which Virginia Woolf famously described as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people," offered Mead something that modern life and literature did not.

In this wise and revealing work of biography, reporting, and memoir, Rebecca Mead leads us into the life that the book made for her, as well as the many lives the novel has led since it was written. Employing a structure that deftly mirrors that of the novel, My Life in Middlemarch takes the themes of Eliot's masterpiece--the complexity of love, the meaning of marriage, the foundations of morality, and the drama of aspiration and failure--and brings them into our world. Offering both a fascinating reading of Eliot's biography and an exploration of the way aspects of Mead's life uncannily echo that of the author herself, My Life in Middlemarch is for every ardent lover of literature who cares about why we read books, and how they read us.

My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead

2014-01-28T00:30:00-05:00

My Life in Middlemarch
Written by Rebecca Mead

eBook, 256 pages | Crown | Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs; Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors; Literary Criticism & Collections - English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh | $ | 978-0-307-98478-4 (0-307-98478-8)

Not Under Forty by Willa Cather

2013-04-03T00:30:00-05:00

Not Under Forty
Written by Willa Cather

eBook | Knopf | Literary Criticism & Collections - Essays; Literary Criticism & Collections - Feminist Criticism; Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors | $14.99 | 978-0-307-83140-8 (0-307-83140-X)

For Willa Cather, "the world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts." The whole legacy of Western civilization stood on the far side of World War I, and in the spiritually impoverished present she looked back to that. To that she directed readers of these essays, declaring that anyone under forty years old would not be interested in them. But she was wrong: since its first publication in 1936, Not Under Forty has appealed to readers of all ages who share Cather's concern for excellence, for what endures, in literature and in life.

Everybody's Autobiography by Gertrude Stein

2013-03-13T00:30:00-05:00

Everybody's Autobiography
Written by Gertrude Stein

eBook | Vintage | Biography & Autobiography - Women; Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors | $12.99 | 978-0-307-82977-1 (0-307-82977-4)

“Alice B. Toklas wrote hers and now everybody will write theirs.” In 1933 Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas skyrocketed to the top of the bestseller lists, and the author found herself a celebrity. Everybody’s Autobiography is the very Steinian account of her soul-satisfying next five years in France, England, and America, where she made a triumphant tour of the country. Here are Stein’s devastating analyses of some of the major figures of the day whom she met—among them Dashiell Hammett, Charlie Chaplin, Pablo Picasso, Marianne Moore, Mrs. Roosevelt, and Sherwood Anderson—and also of her own life and work.

In Other Worlds by Margaret Atwood

2012-08-21T00:30:00-05:00

In Other Worlds SF and the Human Imagination
Written by Margaret Atwood

Trade Paperback, 272 pages | Anchor | Literary Criticism & Collections; Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors; Science - Biotechnology | $15.95 | 978-0-307-74176-9 (0-307-74176-1)

The author of The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake engagingly explores her lifelong relationship to science fiction, both as a reader and as a writer.

At a time when the borders between literary genres are increasingly porous, Margaret Atwood maps the richly fertile crosscurrents of speculative and science fiction, slipstream, utopias and dystopias, and fantasy, and muses on their roots in the age-old human impulse to imagine new worlds. She shares the evolution of her personal fascination with this branch of literature, from her days as a child inventing a race of flying superhero rabbits, to her graduate study of the Victorian ancestors of SF to her appreciations of such influential writers as Marge Piercy, Rider Haggard, Ursula K. LeGuin, Kazuo Ishiguro, Aldous Huxley, and Jonathan Swift. As humorous and charming as it is insightful and provocative, In Other Worlds brilliantly illuminates “the wilder storms on the wilder seas of invention.”

House of Light by Mary Oliver

2012-03-28T00:30:00-05:00

House of Light
Written by Mary Oliver

eBook | Beacon Press | Poetry; Poetry - Single Author - American; Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors | $15.00 | 978-0-8070-9539-3 (0-8070-9539-7)

Winner of a 1991 Christopher Award

Winner of the 1991 Boston Globe Lawrence L. Winship Book Award

This collection of poems by Mary Oliver once again invites the reader to step across the threshold of ordinary life into a world of natural and spiritual luminosity.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

The Annotated Emma by David M. Shapard

2012-03-20T00:30:00-05:00

The Annotated Emma
Written by Jane Austen and David M. Shapard

Trade Paperback, 928 pages | Anchor | Fiction - Literary; Fiction - Classics; Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors | $17.95 | 978-0-307-39077-6 (0-307-39077-2)

From the editor of the popular Annotated Pride and Prejudice comes an annotated edition of Jane Austen’s Emma that makes her beloved tale of an endearingly inept matchmaker an even more satisfying read. Here is the complete text of the novel with more than 2,200 annotations on facing pages, including:

-Explanations of historical context
-Citations from Austen’s life, letters, and other writings
-Definitions and clarifications
-Literary comments and analysis
-Maps of places in the novel
-An introduction, bibliography, and detailed chronology of events
-Nearly 200 informative illustrations

Filled with fascinating information about everything from the social status of spinsters and illegitimate children to the shopping habits of fashionable ladies to English attitudes toward gypsies, David M. Shapard’s Annotated Emma brings Austen’s world into richer focus.

The Annotated Emma by David M. Shapard

2012-03-20T00:30:00-05:00

The Annotated Emma
Written by Jane Austen and David M. Shapard

eBook, 700 pages | Anchor | Fiction - Literary; Fiction - Classics; Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors | $11.99 | 978-0-307-95024-6 (0-307-95024-7)

In Other Worlds by Margaret Atwood

2011-10-11T00:30:00-05:00

In Other Worlds SF and the Human Imagination
Written by Margaret Atwood

Hardcover, 272 pages | Nan A. Talese | Literary Criticism & Collections - Science Fiction; Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors; Science - Biotechnology | $24.95 | 978-0-385-53396-6 (0-385-53396-9)

At a time when speculative fiction seems less and less far-fetched, Margaret Atwood lends her distinctive voice and singular point of view to the genre in a series of essays that brilliantly illuminates the essential truths about the modern world. This is an exploration of her relationship with the literary form we have come to know as "science fiction,” a relationship that has been lifelong, stretching from her days as a child reader in the 1940s, through her time as a graduate student at Harvard, where she worked on the Victorian ancestor of the form, and continuing as a writer and reviewer. This book brings together her three heretofore unpublished Ellmann Lectures from 2010: "Flying Rabbits," which begins with Atwood's early rabbit superhero creations, and goes on to speculate about masks, capes, weakling alter egos, and Things with Wings; "Burning Bushes," which follows her into Victorian otherlands and beyond; and "Dire Cartographies," which investigates Utopias and Dystopias. In Other Worlds also includes some of Atwood's key reviews and thoughts about the form. Among those writers discussed are Marge Piercy, Rider Haggard, Ursula Le Guin, Ishiguro, Bryher, Huxley, and Jonathan Swift. She elucidates the differences (as she sees them) between "science fiction" proper, and "speculative fiction," as well as between "sword and sorcery/fantasy" and "slipstream fiction." For all readers who have loved The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake, and The Year of the Flood, In Other Worlds is a must.

In Other Worlds by Margaret Atwood

2011-10-11T00:30:00-05:00

In Other Worlds SF and the Human Imagination
Written by Margaret Atwood

eBook, 208 pages | Anchor | Literary Criticism & Collections - Science Fiction; Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors; Science - Biotechnology | $11.99 | 978-0-385-53397-3 (0-385-53397-7)

Note: The electronic version of this title contains over thirty additional, illuminating eBook-exclusive illustrations by the author.

From the Hardcover edition.

In Other Worlds by Susan Denaker

2011-10-11T00:30:00-05:00

In Other Worlds SF and the Human Imagination
Written by Margaret Atwood
Read by Margaret Atwood and Susan Denaker

Unabridged Audiobook Download | Random House Audio | Literary Criticism & Collections - Science Fiction; Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors; Science - Biotechnology | $20.00 | 978-0-307-94394-1 (0-307-94394-1)

From the Hardcover edition.

Seduction and Betrayal by Joan Didion

2011-07-13T00:30:00-05:00

Seduction and Betrayal Women and Literature
Written by Elizabeth Hardwick
Introduction by Joan Didion

eBook, 224 pages | NYRB Classics | Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors; Literary Criticism & Collections - Feminist Criticism | $12.95 | 978-1-59017-437-1 (1-59017-437-2)

The novelist and essayist Elizabeth Hardwick is one of contemporary America’s most brilliant writers, and Seduction and Betrayal, in which she considers the careers of women writers as well as the larger question of the presence of women in literature, is her most passionate and concentrated work of criticism. A gallery of unforgettable portraits—of Virginia Woolf and Zelda Fitzgerald, Dorothy Wordsworth and Jane Carlyle—as well as a provocative reading of such works as Wuthering Heights, Hedda Gabler, and the poems of Sylvia Plath, Seduction and Betrayal is a virtuoso performance, a major writer’s reckoning with the relations between men and women, women and writing, writing and life.

When Memory Speaks by Jill Ker Conway

2011-06-08T00:30:00-05:00

When Memory Speaks Exploring the Art of Autobiography
Written by Jill Ker Conway

eBook, 224 pages | Vintage | Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors | $9.99 | 978-0-307-79723-0 (0-307-79723-6)

J ill Ker Conway, one of our most admired autobiographers--author of The Road from Coorain and True North--looks astutely and with feeling into the modern memoir: the forms and styles it assumes, and the strikingly different ways in which men and women respectively tend to understand and present their lives.
In a narrative rich with evocations of memoirists over the centuries--from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and George Sand to W. E. B. Du Bois, Virginia Woolf, Frank McCourt and Katharine Graham--the author suggests why it is that we are so drawn to the reading of autobiography, and she illuminates the cultural assumptions behind the ways in which we talk about ourselves.
Conway traces the narrative patterns typically found in autobiographies by men to the tale of the classical Greek hero and his epic journey of adventure. She shows how this configuration evolved, in memoirs, into the passionate romantic struggling against the conventions of society, into the frontier hero battling the wilderness, into self-made men overcoming economic obstacles to create an invention or a fortune--or, more recently, into a quest for meaning, for an understandable past, for an ethnic identity.
In contrast, she sees the designs that women commonly employ for their memoirs as evolving from the writings of the mystics--such as Dame Julian of Norwich or St. Teresa of Avila--about their relationship with an all-powerful God. As against the male autobiographer's expectation of power over his fate, we see the woman memoirist again and again believing that she lacks command of her destiny, and tending to censor her own story.
Throughout, Conway underlines the memoir's magic quality of allowing us to enter another human being's life and mind--and how this experience enlarges and instructs our own lives.

Evidence by Mary Oliver

2010-09-14T00:30:00-05:00

Evidence Poems
Written by Mary Oliver

Trade Paperback, 88 pages | Beacon Press | Poetry; Poetry - Single Author - American; Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors | $14.00 | 978-0-8070-6905-9 (0-8070-6905-1)

Never afraid to shed the pretense of academic poetry, never shy of letting the power of an image lie in unadorned language, Mary Oliver offers us poems of arresting beauty that reflect on the power of love and the great gifts of the natural world. Inspired by the familiar lines from William Wordsworth, “To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears,” she uncovers the evidence presented to us daily by nature, in rivers and stones, willows and field corn, the mockingbird’s “embellishments,” or the last hours of darkness.

I Told You So by Kate Clinton

2010-05-01T00:30:00-05:00

I Told You So
Written by Kate Clinton

Trade Paperback, 208 pages | Beacon Press | Humor - Essays; Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors; Humor | $15.00 | 978-0-8070-4455-1 (0-8070-4455-5)

I Told You So is a hilarious, bittersweet, and politically acute survival guide. In collected columns and routines, Kate Clinton gleefully details personal coping techniques tested over a lifetime. They're perfectly suited for political and cultural upheaval: wildcatting for democracy, curbing your cynicism, and changing the climate. Read them and you'll never be voted off the island.

Many Miles by Mary Oliver

2010-04-01T00:30:00-05:00

Many Miles Mary Oliver Reads Mary Oliver
Written by Mary Oliver

Unabridged Compact Disc | Beacon Press | Poetry; Poetry - Single Author - American; Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors | $19.95 | 978-0-8070-6895-3 (0-8070-6895-0)

Following the success of At Blackwater Pond, this second CD from best-selling poet Mary Oliver contains a selection of thirty-seven previously published poems and four as yet uncollected, read by the poet in her steady, magnetic voice. Oliver recites from the full range of her poetry-from her classic nature writing, to her verses for her mischievous bichon Percy, to her ever-deepening spiritual poems. The CD comes in a handsome full-cloth package that includes a booklet with an introductory essay by the poet on the magical dynamic between speaker and listener, a table of contents, text of the title poem, and a photo of the poet. Many Miles will be a most welcome addition to the collections of her readers.

A Jury of Her Peers by Elaine Showalter

2010-01-12T00:30:00-05:00

A Jury of Her Peers Celebrating American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx
Written by Elaine Showalter

Trade Paperback, 608 pages | Vintage | Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors; Literary Criticism & Collections - American | $16.95 | 978-1-4000-3442-0 (1-4000-3442-6)

An unprecedented literary landmark: the first comprehensive history of American women writers from 1650 to the present.

In a narrative of immense scope and fascination, here are more than 250 female writers, including the famous—Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dorothy Parker, Flannery O’Connor, and Toni Morrison, among others—and the little known, from the early American bestselling novelist Catherine Sedgwick to the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Susan Glaspell. Showalter integrates women’s contributions into our nation’s literary heritage with brilliance and flair, making the case for the unfairly overlooked and putting the overrated firmly in their place.

Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin by Marion Meade

2009-08-11T00:30:00-05:00

Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin Writers Running Wild in the Twenties
Written by Marion Meade

eBook, 304 pages | Nan A. Talese | Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors | $11.99 | 978-0-385-53301-0 (0-385-53301-2)

In her exuberant new work, BOBBED HAIR AND BATHTUB GIN, Marion Meade presents a portrait of four extraordinary writers--Dorothy Parker, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Edna Ferber--whose loves, lives, and literary endeavors embodied the spirit of the 1920s.

Capturing the jazz rhythms and desperate gaiety that defined the era, Meade gives us Parker, Fitzgerald, Millay, and Ferber, traces the intersections of their lives, and describes the men (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edmund Wilson, Harold Ross, and Robert Benchley) who influenced them, loved them, and sometimes betrayed them. Here are the social and literary triumphs (Parker's Round Table witticisms appeared almost daily in the newspapers and Ferber and Millay won Pulitzer Prizes) and inevitably the penances each paid: crumbled love affairs, abortions, depression, lost beauty, nervous breakdowns, and finally, overdoses and even madness.

These literary heroines did what they wanted, said what they thought, living wholly in the moment. They kicked open the door for twentieth-century women writers and set a new model for every woman trying to juggle the serious issues of economic independence, political power, and sexual freedom. Meade recreates the excitement, romance, and promise of the 1920s, a decade celebrated for cultural innovation--the birth of jazz, the beginning of modernism--and social and sexual liberation, bringing to light, as well, the anxiety and despair that lurked beneath the nonstop partying and outrageous behavior.

A vibrant mixture of literary scholarship, social history, and scandal, BOBBED HAIR AND BATHTUB GIN is a rich evocation of a period that will forever intrigue and captivate us.

From the Hardcover edition.

I Told You So by Kate Clinton

2009-05-01T00:30:00-05:00

I Told You So
Written by Kate Clinton

Abridged Compact Disc | Beacon Press | Humor - Essays; Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors; Literary Criticism & Collections - Essays | $19.95 | 978-0-8070-4451-3 (0-8070-4451-2)

I Told You So by Kate Clinton

2009-05-01T00:30:00-05:00

I Told You So
Written by Kate Clinton

eBook | Beacon Press | Humor - Essays; Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors; Literary Criticism & Collections - Essays | $15.00 | 978-0-8070-9760-1 (0-8070-9760-8)

Random House New Releases - Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors

My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead

My Life in Middlemarch Written by Rebecca Mead

My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead

My Life in Middlemarch Written by Rebecca Mead

Not Under Forty by Willa Cather

Not Under Forty Written by Willa Cather

Everybody's Autobiography by Gertrude Stein

Everybody's Autobiography Written by Gertrude Stein

In Other Worlds by Margaret Atwood

In Other Worlds SF and the Human ImaginationWritten by Margaret Atwood

House of Light by Mary Oliver

House of Light Written by Mary Oliver

The Annotated Emma by David M. Shapard

The Annotated Emma Written by Jane Austen and David M. Shapard

The Annotated Emma by David M. Shapard

The Annotated Emma Written by Jane Austen and David M. Shapard

In Other Worlds by Margaret Atwood

In Other Worlds SF and the Human ImaginationWritten by Margaret Atwood

In Other Worlds by Margaret Atwood

In Other Worlds SF and the Human ImaginationWritten by Margaret Atwood

In Other Worlds by Susan Denaker

In Other Worlds SF and the Human ImaginationWritten by Margaret Atwood Read by Margaret Atwood and Susan Denaker

Seduction and Betrayal by Joan Didion

Seduction and Betrayal Women and LiteratureWritten by Elizabeth Hardwick Introduction by Joan Didion

When Memory Speaks by Jill Ker Conway

When Memory Speaks Exploring the Art of AutobiographyWritten by Jill Ker Conway

Evidence by Mary Oliver

Evidence PoemsWritten by Mary Oliver

I Told You So by Kate Clinton

I Told You So Written by Kate Clinton

Many Miles by Mary Oliver

Many Miles Mary Oliver Reads Mary OliverWritten by Mary Oliver

A Jury of Her Peers by Elaine Showalter

A Jury of Her Peers Celebrating American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie ProulxWritten by Elaine Showalter

Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin by Marion Meade

Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin Writers Running Wild in the TwentiesWritten by Marion Meade

I Told You So by Kate Clinton

I Told You So Written by Kate Clinton

I Told You So by Kate Clinton

I Told You So Written by Kate Clinton

My Life in Middlemarch
Written by Rebecca Mead

My Life in Middlemarch
Written by Rebecca Mead

Not Under Forty
Written by Willa Cather

Everybody's Autobiography
Written by Gertrude Stein

In Other Worlds SF and the Human Imagination
Written by Margaret Atwood

House of Light
Written by Mary Oliver

The Annotated Emma
Written by Jane Austen and David M. Shapard

The Annotated Emma
Written by Jane Austen and David M. Shapard

In Other Worlds SF and the Human Imagination
Written by Margaret Atwood

In Other Worlds SF and the Human Imagination
Written by Margaret Atwood

In Other Worlds SF and the Human Imagination
Written by Margaret Atwood
Read by Margaret Atwood and Susan Denaker

Seduction and Betrayal Women and Literature
Written by Elizabeth Hardwick
Introduction by Joan Didion

When Memory Speaks Exploring the Art of Autobiography
Written by Jill Ker Conway

Evidence Poems
Written by Mary Oliver

I Told You So
Written by Kate Clinton

Many Miles Mary Oliver Reads Mary Oliver
Written by Mary Oliver

A Jury of Her Peers Celebrating American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx
Written by Elaine Showalter

Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin Writers Running Wild in the Twenties
Written by Marion Meade

I Told You So
Written by Kate Clinton

I Told You So
Written by Kate Clinton