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Title: A Secret Sisterhood

Subtitle: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf

Author: Emma Claire Sweeney, Emily Midorikawa

Narrator: Elizabeth Sastre

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-17-17

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

Male literary friendships are the stuff of legend; think Byron and Shelley, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. But the world's best-loved female authors are usually mythologized as solitary eccentrics or isolated geniuses. Coauthors and real-life friends Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney prove this wrong, thanks to their discovery of a wealth of surprising collaborations: the friendship between Jane Austen and one of the family servants, playwright Anne Sharp; the daring feminist author Mary Taylor, who shaped the work of Charlotte Bronte; the transatlantic friendship of the seemingly aloof George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe; and Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, most often portrayed as bitter foes but who, in fact, enjoyed a complex friendship fired by an underlying erotic charge.

Through letters and diaries that have never been published before, A Secret Sisterhood resurrects these forgotten stories of female friendships. They were sometimes scandalous and volatile, sometimes supportive and inspiring, but always - until now - tantalizingly consigned to the shadows.

Members Reviews:

A look at the friendships of Austen, Bronte, Elliot and Wooff with other literary women and the influence on life and work

I was a little disappointed when I got this because I thought the book was about a literary friendship of Austen, Bronte, Eliot and Woolf! Of course, on reflection, that didn't even make sense. This book is about these four famous women and a close female friend of each. However, if like me, you were looking to read about the friendships of famous women writers, half of these sections still fit the bill--George Elliot's friendship with Harriet Beecher Stowe and Virginia Woolf's close friendship with Katherine Mansfield. Unsurprisingly, all of the friendships are "literary", as Anne Sharp (Jane Austen's friend who also had been a family employee) was a struggling playwright and Mary Taylor (the friend who pushed Charlotte Bronte to get her work out there) was an aspiring writer.

As the forward by Margaret Atwood points out, it was hard for women writers to be taken seriously, to have the opportunity to build an audience for their work and they were often resented by male writers once they did achieve success. So it wasn't surprising that friendships would be an important source of support between literary women struggling to succeed in a male dominated field (two published under names that did not reveal their true gender) . These are literary "sisters", but just like real-life sisters, their relationships are complicated--supportive at times, competitive at times, caring but sometimes self-centered and selfish, ultimately beneficial to both. As the authors observe, much has been made of the friendships of male writers -- it is easy to think of so many in England and the U.S. throughout literature--but women's relationships with other women have largely been ignored.