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Chronicles, confidantes, confessionals. Diaries have historically served all these purposes and more, allowing women to speak out in a world that sometimes preferred they keep mum (just ask Mrs. Samuel Pepys). But where should these very personal recollections end up once the lives they document cease? We explore the options this week with author Betsy Rubiner, whose new book Our Diaries, Ourselves explores the phenomenon of diary-writing and its importance. Along the way, we’ll explore some of the “lost lady” diarists whose private records are worth reading.

Mentioned in this episode:

Lost Ladies of Lit “Become A Patron”

Our Diaries, Ourselves: How Diarists Chronicle Their Lives and Document Our World by Betsy Rubiner

The Diary of Anne Frank

The Diary of Samuel Pepys

James Boswell’s London Journal

 The Extraordinary Work of Ordinary Writing by Jennifer Sinor. 

Anais Nin

Virginia Woolf

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

The American Diary Project

 A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785 to 1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

 The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

The Diary of Anne Lister

“Gentleman Jack”

 Emilie Davis' Civil War: The Diaries of a Free Black Woman in Philadelphia 1863 to 1865 edited by Judith Geisbert 

 Notes from a Colored Girl: The Civil War Pocket Diaries of Emilie Francis Davis by Karsonya Wise Whitehead.

 The Reconstruction Diary of Frances Anne Rollin edited by Jennifer Putzi

 Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution: A History from Below by Jane Kamensky 

 Secret Voices: A Year of Women's Diaries edited by Sarah Gristwood. 

 The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World’s Greatest Diarists edited by Irene and Alan Taylor

 The Diaries of Girls and Women: A Midwestern Sampler edited by Suzanne L. Bunkers.

 A Day at a Time: The Diary Literature of American Women From 1764 to Present edited by Margo Culley

 Revelations: Diaries of Women edited by Mary Jane Moffat and Charlotte Painter

 Life Notes: Personal Writings by Contemporary Black Women edited by Patricia Bell-Scott

 We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the 19th Century edited by Dorothy Sterling

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First surfacing in 1896 at a marketplace in Cairo, scraps of ancient papyrus left scholars gobsmacked by the discovery: a fragmented account of Mary Magdalene in conversation with Jesus and his disciples. The codex’s circuitous path to publication in the mid-20th century is almost as compelling a tale as the gospel itself, which redefines the role of women in early Christianity and features a salvation that’s rooted in individual agency. Religious historian Sarah Parkhouse joins us from the University of Manchester to discuss the reclamation of Mary’s words and historical reputation, as well as how newly unearthed Greek fragments lend credence to this long-lost gnostic text.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Gospel of Mary

Read The Gospel of Mary

Mary Magdalene

Eschatology and the Savior: The ‘Gospel of Mary’ among Early Christian Dialogue Gospels by Sarah Parkhouse

The Gospel of Mary Magdala by Karen L. King

Carl Reinhardt

Irenaeus

The concept of Entanglement in the Gospel of Mary

The Dark Tower by Stephen King

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Oxyrhynchus

Pope Gregory I

The Gospel of Philip

Sophia: The Wisdom of God by Sergei Bulgakov

History of The Acts of Paul and Thecla

Read The Acts of Paul and Thecla

The Girl Who Baptized Herself: How a Lost Scripture About a Saint Named Thecla Reveals the Power of Knowing Our Worth by Meggan Watterson

“Has a Missing Fragment of the Gospel of Mary Been Discovered?” from The Bible and Beyond Podcast

Discussion on Mary Magdalene’s influence on the songs of Tori Amos

Video clip from The Gospel of Mary opera by Mark Adamo

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“Things that go bump in the night…?” Try sleep-deprived mothers, for starters. British author Celia Fremlin recognized the terrors of trying to hold it together while caring for young children, earning her an Edgar Award for her 1959 debut novel The Hours Before Dawn. Having recently published her own suspense-filled novel, returning guest Emily Midorikawa joins us to discuss Fremlin’s ability to cast a dark shadow on domesticity. This page-turning tale of a beleaguered mum facing inner doubts and outward threats will also kick off the first “Lost Ladies of Lit” online reading group, generously hosted by The Sitting Room Library.

Mentioned in this episode:

Reading Group for The Hours Before Dawn hosted by The Sitting Room Library.

The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin

A Tiny Speck of Black and Then Nothing by Emily Midorikawa

Out of the Shadows: Six Visionary Victorian Women in Search of a Public Voice by Emily Midorikawa

A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 85 on Mary Taylor

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 286 on Mary Elizabeth Braddon

The Seven Chars of Chelsea by Celia Fremilin

Appointment With Yesterday by Celia Fremlin

Patricia Highsmith

Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin

The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing

Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

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We're concluding our own "Hot Girl Summer" with the writer Mary MacLane, a defiant and wildly egotistical 19-year-old resident of Butte, Montana, whose confessional diary implored the “kind devil” to deliver her from a life of bourgeois boredom. Professor Cathryn Halverson joins us to discuss MacLane’s life, angst and the reading public’s reaction to her adolescent intensity.

Mentioned in this episode:

I Await the Devil’s Coming/The Story of Mary MacLane by Mary MacLane (Project Gutenberg)

MTV’s “My So-Called Life”

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening

Herbert S. Stone & Co.

Marie Bashkirtseff

The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff: I am the Most Interesting Woman of All Volume I and Lust for Glory Volume II

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume

“Men Who Have Made Love to Me” 

I, Mary MacLane by Mary MacLane

Faraway Women and the Atlantic Monthly by Cathryn Halverson

Maverick Autobiographies: Women Writers and the American West by Cathryn Halverson

Playing House in the American West: Western Women’s Life Narratives by Cathryn Halverson

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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:

Pilgrimage online Reading Group with The Sitting Room library

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 116 on Dorothy Richardson

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 270 on The Sitting Room

Pilgrimage by Dorothy Richardson

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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Our "sweltering summer" series continues this week with a re-play of a truly wild desert-island memoir. When Lucy Irvine answered a classified ad to play Girl Friday to a real-life Robinson Crusoe on a remote tropical island, she embarked on an enthralling—and at times harrowing—year-long adventure. The result was her bestselling 1983 memoir, Castaway, a beautifully-written tale of survival. We’re diving into Irvine’s unforgettable story with special guest Francesca Segal, whose own island-centric novel, Welcome to Glorious Tuga, was recently optioned for TV by See-Saw Films.

Mentioned in this episode:

Castaway by Lucy Irvine

The Lucy Irvine Foundation

Welcome to Glorgious Tuga by Francesca Segal

Runaway and Faraway by Lucy Irvine

The Islander by Gerald Kingsland

The Secret Life of a Schoolgirl by Rosemary Kingsland

Castaway 1986 film trailer starring Amanda Donohoe and Oliver Reed

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

“Alone” on the History Channel

See-Saw Films

One is One by Lucy Irvine

The Innocents by Francesca Segal

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This week we're revisiting an Australian author — and the 1979 film adaptation of her work — which originally captured Kim and Amy’s fancy back in 2024. Published in 1901 and written when author Miles Franklin was only eighteen years old, My Brilliant Career became an instant classic of Australian literature and still delights readers with its feisty heroine, Sybylla Melvin, and its realistic depiction of Australian life and lingo at the turn of the 20th century. In our discussion of the novel and its film adaptation (starring Judy Davis and Sam Neill) we’ll explain why Franklin’s fear of being a literary one-hit-wonder proved unfounded, and why her name today graces one of Australia’s top annual literary prizes.

Mentioned in this episode:

Miles Franklin

My Brilliant Career film

My Brilliant Career novel

Judy Davis

Sam Neill

Director Gillain Armstrong

Oscar and Lucinda

Charlotte Grey

Blackwood’s publishing house

Anne of Green Gables

The Thorn Birds

Brent of Bin Bin

Up the Country by Brent of Bin Bin

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 128 on Margaret Oliphant

Henry Lawson

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Bring the Monkey by Miles Franklin

My Career Goes Bung by Miles Franklin

All That Swagger by Miles Franklin

S.H. Prior Memorial Prize

The Miles Franklin Award

The Stella Prize

Miles Franklin: A Short Biography by Jill Roe

Of Foreign Lands and Peoples by Robert Schumann (soundtrack to film)

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We're celebrating summer with another sultry, almost-suffocating novel from our podcast vaults, one clearly written with William Golding's Lord of the Flies in mind. When Jane White’s gripping and unsettling debut novel Quarry was first published in 1967, a review in The Scotsman called it “the most frightening novel of the year.” Joining us is White’s daughter-in-law, Dr. Helen Hughes, of the University of Surrey, who wrote the afterword to the new Boiler House Press edition of Quarry. 

Mentioned in this episode:

Oxford's summer Lifelong Learning seminar on Josephine Tey

Quarry by Jane White

Norfolk Child by Jane White

The Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Proxy by Jane White

Beatrice, Falling by Jane White

The Neglected Books page on Jane White

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With Counterpoint Press's new editions of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's work (including her Booker-Prize winning novel Heat and Dust and a new short story collection Disinheritance: The Rediscovered Stories) we're inspired to revisit our 2022 episode on this prolific writer of fiction and films. Pivotal to the success of Merchant/Ivory films like A Room With a View and Howard's End, Jhabvala used her experiences as an "initiated outsider" to tell stories brimming with nuance, humor, truth and beauty.

Mentioned in this episode:

Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Disinheritance: The Rediscovered Stories by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Brigitte Hales 

Disenchanted (2022 film)

Merchant Ivory Productions

A Room with a View (1985 film)

Howard’s End (1992 film)

The Householder by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Nissim Ezekiel

The Householder (1963 film)

Heat and Dust (1983 film)

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First published in 1983 after being championed by Toni Morrison, Nettie Jones’s Fish Tales recounts one woman’s trauma-filled, hedonistic quest for personal freedom amidst a “Disco-Era,” drug-fuelled backdrop — one inspired by Jones’s own lived experiences in 1970s Detroit and New York City. Nigerian-American author and Lit Club founder Hannah Eko joins us to discuss the ways power, pleasure and pain converge in Jones’s transgressive work, which was reissued by Farrar Straus and Giroux in 2025

Mentioned in this episode:

Fish Tales by Nettie Jones

Honey is the Knife by Hannah Eko

The Lit Club’s 2026 event calendar

Toni Morrison

Village Well bookstore

Lucumi

Oshun

Charles Abramson

Jean Toomer

Longreads article on Nettie Jones by Michael Gonzalez

Numa Perrier

Zola film

Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerny

Hunter S. Thompson

Anais Nin

Gayl Jones

The Hitachi Magic Wand

Yoruba Art

Lost Ladies of Lit Patreon page

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