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Originally drafted in 1939, the Prohibition-era gangster novel The Girl by Meridel Le Sueur remained unpublished for nearly 40 years. Le Sueur used the intervening decades to transform her work into a powerful narrative, focusing on the lives of marginalized women in Depression-era America. Joining us is Dr. Rosemary Hennessy, a Professor of English at Rice University, whose most recent book, In the Company of Radical Women Writers, rediscovers the political commitments and passionate advocacy of seven writers, including Le Sueur. 

Mentioned in this episode:

Meridel Le Sueur

The Girl by Meridel Le Sueur

“Women on the Breadlines” by Meridel Le Sueur

“The Dread Road” by Meridel Le Seur

“Annunciation” by Meridel Le Sueur

“Women Know a Lot of Things” by Meridel Le Sueur

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Women Talking novel by Miriam Toews

Women Talking film by Sarah Polley

Kansas City by Robert Altman

Badlands by Terrance Malick

“Getaway Car” by Taylor Swift

“My People are My Home” film by Meridel Le Sueur

Lost Ladies of Lit episode No. 106 on Dirty Helen Cromwell’s Good Time Party Girl

John Crawford and West End Press

Workers Alliance

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What if we told you that there was an ingenious retelling of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights set in post-war Japan that also has shades of Middlemarch and The Great Gatsby? Minae Mizumura’s A True Novel, first published in 2002, checks all those boxes and more. Joining us to discuss A True Novel is Lavanya Krishnan, co-founder of the literary book subscription Boxwalla. (This episode originally aired in 2023).

Discussed in this episode: 

A True Novel by Minae Mizumura 

Lavanya Krishnan, Boxwalla

Alexander Chee

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Middlemarch by George Eliot

 “Why I Write What I Write” by Minae Mizumura

Writing Routines with Minae Mizumura

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Light and Darkness, Continued by Minae Mizumura

An I Novel from Left to Right by Minae Mizumura

A Heart So White by Javier Marías 

Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

The Diary of an Invasion by Andrey Kurkov

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov

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Woman yearns for child, adopts orangutan instead. Disaster ensues. That's the premise of Gertrude Trevelyan's wonderfully bizarre 1932 novel, Appius and Virginia. We're joined in this encore episode by guest Brad Bigelow, whose obsession with obscure books was celebrated in the 2016 New Yorker profile “The Custodian of Forgotten Books.” 

Discussed in this episode: 

Appius and Virginia by G.E. Trevelyan

Every Which Way But Loose (1978 Film)

Black Mirror

The Twilight Zone

NeglectedBooks.com

“The Custodian of Forgotten Books” (The New Yorker)

His Monkey Wife by John Collier

Dorothy Richardson

May Sinclaire

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Room by Emma Donohue

Bear by Marian Engel

Oxford’s Lady Margaret Hall

Newdigate Prize

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf 

Hot-House by G.E. Trevelyan

“If She Was a Bloke, She’d Still Be In Print” (The Guardian)

Virginia Faulkner

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode 41 on Edith Lewis with Melissa Homestead

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Else Jerusalem’s Red House Alley is a riveting exposé of the sex industry in fin-de-siècle Vienna. A bestseller upon its 1909 publication, the novel was banned by the Nazis in 1933 (along with its 1928 film adaptation) and fell into obscurity. Boiler House Press published the first full English translation of this landmark work last year, and translator Stephanie Gorrell Ortega joins us to discuss Jerusalem’s richly-drawn account of brothel workers (based on accounts from real prostitutes). We also draw comparisons with this year’s Academy Award-winning “Best Picture,” Anora. 

Mentioned in this episode:

Red House Alley by Else Jerusalem

Life and photos of Else Jerusalem

Anora

The Diary of a Lost Girl by Margarite Böhme

The DIary of a Lost Girl film

Young Vienna movement

Rebellion in the Brothel documentary about the Regina Riehl trial

Celestina Truxa

Felix Salten

Hermann Bahr

Arthur Schnitzler

Karl Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Pretty Baby

David Copperfield

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 106 on Dirty Helen Cromwell

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 197 on Helen Tracy Lowe Porter

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When Edna O’Brien published her debut novel The Country Girls in 1960, she was branded a “Jezebel” in her native Ireland—but that didn’t stop her from completing a poignant trilogy about a pair of friends coming of age in a world for which village life and convent school failed to prepare them. Despite initial backlash to her sexually frank depiction of young women’s lives and desires, O’Brien’s writing brought her acclaim and celebrity status—Vanity Fair dubbed her “the playgirl of the western world.” Novelist Edan Lepucki joins us to discuss the trilogy’s timeless appeal and the complicated-but-endearing friendship of characters Kate Brady and Baba Brennan.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Country Girls trilogy by Edna O’Brien

Edna O’Brien interview on BBC’s “World Book Club”

Time’s Mouth by Edan Lepucki

California by Edan Lepucki

Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki

Mother’s Before by Edan Lepucki

Italics Mine Substack by Edan Lepucki

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 35 on Maud Hart Lovelace

Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management

Ernest Gébler

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry

“Laverne & Shirley”

Beaches film

Th

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If Brigid Brophy’s The King of a Rainy Country had a soundtrack, it might include the soft patter of rain on a garret window, jazz drifting from a smoky cafe, the hum of a Vespa on narrow cobblestone streets … and the obnoxious griping of a few dozen uncultured Americans! As the description suggests, Brophy’s 1956 novel has a little bit of everything  — atmosphere, nostalgia and poignancy mixed with subversive wit and madcap antics. Kim and Amy play “tour guide” examining Brophy’s life and accomplishments, including this wonderfully quirky book, recently reissued by McNally Editions.

Mentioned in this episode:

McNally Editions The King of a Rainy Country by Brigid Brophy

Marginalia article about Brigid Brophy and Iris Murdoch by Maria Popova

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 51 on Rosamond Lehmann

Dusty Answer by Rosamond Lehmann

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 150 on Elizabeth Smart

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 184 on Elizabeth Taylor Vs. Elizabeth Taylor

BBC program “Take it Or Leave It”

In Transit by Brigid Brophy

Hackenfeller’s Ape by Brigid Brophy

The Snowball by Brigid Brophy

Fifty Works of English Literature We Could Do Without by Brigid Brophy, Michael Levey and ??

The Crown Princess and Other Stories by Brigid Brophy

“Spleen” by Beaudelaire

Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

“As You Like It” by William Shakespeare

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Langston Hughes called Jessie Redmon Fauset “the midwife of the Harlem Renaissance” with good reason. As literary editor at The Crisis magazine from 1919 until 1926, Fauset discovered and championed some of the most important Black writers of the early 20th century. Her own novels contributed to The New Negro Movement’s cultural examination of race, class and gender through the lens of women’s experiences. Fauset’s 1928 novel Plum Bun was republished this spring by Quite Literally Books, a new publishing venture that reissues books by American women authors. The founders, Bremond Berry MacDougall and Lisa Endo Cooper, join us to discuss their mission and take a closer look at Fauset’s life and work.

Mentioned in this episode:

Quite Literally Books

Plum Bun by Jessie Redmon Fauset

The Pink House by Nelia Gardner

The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 9 on Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 140 on Zora Neale Hurston

Persephone Books

Virago Books

Cita Press

The Crisis magazine

“What is Racial Passing?” on PBS’s The Origin of Everything

“The Dinner Party That Started the Harlem Renaissance” by Veronica Chambers and Michelle May-Curry

Langston Hughes

Jean Toomer

Arna Bontemps

Countee Cullen

Gwendolyn Bennett

W.E.B. Dubois

Charles Johnson

Alain Locke

Regina Andrews

The Talented Tenth

“The New Negro Movement”

Harlem Rhapsod

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Dastardly villains are no match for Capitola Black, the audacious heroine at the center of E.D.E.N. Southworth’s 1859 bestseller, The Hidden Hand. Readers so admired this literary tomboy’s pluck that Capitola became a popular baby name for decades and inspired the name of a California town. Yet few readers today are familiar with Southworth, one of the highest-earning authors of her day (to whom Louisa May Alcott even gave a subtle nod in Little Women). Rose Neal, author of a brand new biography on Southworth, joins us this week to discuss the writer who gave 19th-century young women permission to imagine lives free from convention and restraint.

Mentioned in this episode:

E.D.E.N. Southworth’s Hidden Hand: The Untold Story of America’s Forgotten Nineteenth-Century Author by Rose Neal

The Hidden Hand by E.D.E.N. Southworth

The Company of Books bookstore 

Retribution by E.D.E.N. Southworth

The Deserted Wife by E.D.E.N. Southworth

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Elizabeth Blackwell

Wide, Wide World by Susan Warner

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

The Saturday Visitor

The National Era

John Greenleaf Whittier

Jane Swisshelm

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

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Little is known about 15th-century Welsh bard Gwerful Mechain, but here’s what we do know: She threw down some slappin’ feminist rhymes in the “rap battle” equivalent of poem exchanges with her male counterparts. Find out what made their repartee so fun and flirtatious, and learn about her most iconic poem, “To the Vagina,” while Amy tries her very best not to blush!

Mentioned in this episode:

“To the Vagina” by Gwerful Mechain (translated by Katie Gramich)

The Works of Gwerful Mechain edited by Katie Gramich (Broadview Press edition)

“To the Penis” by Dafydd ap Gwilym

Ieuan Dyfi

Dafydd Llywelyn

British Library’s “Medieval Women in Their Own Words”

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 164 on Christine de Pizan

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 236 on Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby may be the novel everyone’s talking about this month, but let’s not forget another “Jazz Age” novel that took this country by storm. Ursula Parrott’s Ex-Wife, a tragicomic indictment of early 20th-century romance, brought the author immense fame and wealth at the time of its publication in 1929. Yet by her death in 1957 she was penniless and homeless, a fate she all but predicted in the cautionary commentary of her writing. Our episode on Parrott (with her biographer, Marsha Gordon) originally aired two years ago this week, and we’re marking Spring Break with an encore presentation — including some updates on efforts to make sure Parrott isn’t confined to obscurity again.

Links: 

Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott

Becoming the Ex-Wife by Marsha Gordon

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 

Sigmund Freud

Lost Ladies of Lit episode on Marjorie Hillis with Joanna Scutts

The Divorcee (1930 Film) 

Norma Shearer

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