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Join us for a wonderfully funny and poignant conversation about life, death, and motherhood with award-winning writer Hilma Wolitzer. Her short stories, most of them originally appearing in magazines in the 1960s and 1970s, were re-discovered by her daughter, bestselling author Meg Wolitzer, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and published last summer in a new collection earning great critical acclaim. Today A Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket has received rave reviews from authors like Elizabeth Strout, Lauren Groff, and Tayari Jones and was named an NPR Best Book of the Year and a New York Times  Editors’ Choice. 

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In today’s mini episode, we’re focusing on one of Ukraine’s best-known poets and playwrights, Laryssa Kosach, who wrote under the pen name Lesya Ukrainka. Her play The Forest Song is a masterpiece of Ukrainian drama. 

Discussed in this episode: 

The Forest Song by Lesya Ukrainka

Looking for Trouble by Virginia Cowles

Lost Ladies of Lit episode on Virginia Cowles’ Looking for Trouble 

Invisible Battalion (2017 documentary)

“Ukraine Isn’t Part of Little Russia” (KCRW) 

Executed Renaissance

Dead Poets Society (1989 film)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006 film)

“Contra Spem Spero” by Lesya Ukrainka

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Abolitionist, suffragist, and writer Frances Harper was widely acclaimed in her day and one of the first African-American women to be published in the United States. Her novel Iola Leroy is an eye-opening look at what it was like for Black Americans in the midst of, and in the decades following, the Civil War. Joining us in conversation is award-winning author, professor, and literary historian Dr. Koritha Mitchell, who edited and wrote the introduction to the 2018 Broadview Press edition. 

Discussed in this episode: 

Iola Leroy by Frances Harper 

Living with Lynching by Dr. Koritha Mitchell 

“The Two Offers” by Frances Harper

From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African-American Culture by Dr. Koritha Mitchell 

Carla Peterson (University of Maryland English Department) 

“Forest Leaves” by Frances Harper

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

Frederick Douglass

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Susan B. Anthony 

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Plantation Fiction 

Thomas Nelson Page

Joel Chandler Harris

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Passing by Nella Larson

Passing (2021 film) 

Ahmaud Arbery

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Martin Luther King Jr. 

Rosa Parks

Harriet Tubman

 "The Slave Mother: a Tale of Ohio” by Frances Harper

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In this week’s mini, we’re discussing the life and work of literary critic Gillian Beer whose classic scholarly publication from 1983, Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth Century Fiction, should be essential reading for anyone who loves 19th century literature. 

Discussed in this episode: 

Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth Century Fiction by Gillian Beer

How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton 

“Gillian Beer: ‘I’m a Historical Remnant from the Great Days of Free Education” by Claire Armistead (The Guardian)

Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen

Oscar Wilde

St. Anne’s College at Oxford

John Beer

Girton College at Cambridge

Lost Ladies of Lit episode on Rosamond Lehmann and Dusty Answer with Lucy Scholes

The Lost Daughter (2021 film) 

Meredith: A Change of Masks by Gillian Beer

The Ordeal of Richard Feverel by George Meredith 

The Romance by Gillian Beer

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Clare Hall at Cambridge 

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Arguing with the Past by Gillian Beer

Thomas Hardy 

Henry James

Stations Without Signs by Gillian Beer

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf 

Virginia Woolf: The Common Ground by Gillian Beer

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Alice in Space: The Sideways Victorian World of Lewis Carroll by Gillian Beer

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Catbird’s Leigh Plessner joins us to discuss the 1931 novella Sundays and its fascinating author, French socialite Daisy Fellowes. Heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune, Fellowes was the Paris editor of the American Harper’s Bazaar and muse to the likes of Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Salvador Dali. Karl Lagerfeld reportedly once called her “the chicest woman I ever laid eyes on.” 

Discussed in this episode: 

Sundays by Daisy Fellowes

Leigh Plessner

Catbird

Coco Chanel 

Rachel Tashjia

Isaac Singer

Isabel Blanche Singer

Winaretta Singer

Diana Vreeland

Cecil Beaton 

Salvador Dali

Van Cleef and Arpels

Belperron 

Cartier

The Tutti Frutti collection by Cartier

Duff Cooper

Winston Churchill

“The Most Wicked Woman in High Society” (The Daily Mail) 

Heiresses: the Lives of the Million Dollar Babies by Laura Thompson

Nancy Mitford

Lost Ladies of Lit episode on Nancy Mitford with Laura Thompson

Ronald Firbank 

Marcel Vertes

Moulin Rouge (1952 film)

Jean Cocteau

Cats in the Isle of Man by Daisy Fellowes

Ludwig Bemelmans 

Bemelmans Bar

Tell Them it was Wonderful by Ludwig Bemelmans

To the One I Love Best by Ludwig Bemelmans

Elsie de Wolfe

Lost Ladies of Lit episode on Marjorie Hillis with Joanna Scutts

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In this week’s mini, we’ll tell you all about fly girls Beryl Markham and Amy Johnson, pioneering aviators from the 1930s whose fascinating exploits deserve to be as well known as those of their more famous fellow aviatrix, Amelia Earhart. Markham was also a writer, and her memoir about her adventures, West with the Night, was highly praised by Ernest Hemingway. 

Discussed in this episode: 

Amelia Earhart

Beryl Markham

Amy Johnson

Ernest Hemingway 

Lost Ladies of Lit episode on Noel Streatfeild’s The Whicharts

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

“The night Prince Harry came to blows over the lover he shared with his brother” (Daily Mail) 

West with the Night by Beryl Markham 

Maxwell Perkins

Circling the Sun by Paula McLain

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

“Queen of the Air: Inside the Mysterious Death of Hero Pilot Amy Johnson” (The Sun) 

Amy Johnson by Constance Babbington Smith

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Did you know that Noel Streatfeild’s 1936 children’s book Ballet Shoes is based on her earlier novel The Whicharts, a tawdrier and not-for-children “shadow twin” that was published five years prior? Find out why it’s our favorite of the two in this week’s episode with our guest, author and bookstagrammer Wendy-Marie Chabot. 

Discussed in this week’s episode: 

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild

The Whicharts by Noel Streatfeild

Little Dancer Aged 14 by Edgar Degas

Marie van Goethem

Wannabe: Confessions of a Failed Bibliophile by Badgwendel 

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Desert Island Discs on Noel Streatfeild

You’ve Got Mail (1998 film) 

Ballet Shoes (2007 TV movie) 

Umbrella Academy (2019- TV series)

Lost Ladies of Lit episode on Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy

The Vicarage series by Noel Streatfeild

At Freddie’s by Penelope Fitzgerald

Lost Ladies of Lit episode on E.M. Delafield’s Diary of a Provincial Lady

Black Swan (2010 film)

Ballet Shoes (1975 TV mini series)

Pride and Prejudice (1995 BBC series)

Six Weeks (1982 film) 

Dancing on My Grave by Gelsey Kirkland

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Inspired by Dorothy B. Hughes’s noir novel Ride the Pink Horse, we’re exploring the fascinating history of merry-go-rounds in life and literature. And speaking of horses, we share feedback from listeners who wrote in regarding Episode 28, A Short History of Riding Saddle. 

Discussed in this episode: 

Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy B. Hughes

Strangers on a Train (1951 film)

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith 

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999 film) 

Carousels in Paris: A Complete Guide

“Beneath the Paint: One Man’s Trip Through an Old Carousel’s Distant Past” (NYTIMES) 

Mary Poppins (1964 film) 

Griffith Park Merry-Go-Round

Los Angeles Zoo Merry-Go-Round

Walt Disney

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

Carousel (1956 film) 

The Music Man (1962 film)

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode 28: A Short History of Riding Side Saddle

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It’s a mystery to us why novelist Dorothy B. Hughes isn’t as well known as her fellow mid-century hardboiled/noir counterparts Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. This week, we’re discussing her 1963 crime novel The Expendable Man, a psychological thriller that had us on the edge of our seat—and even questioning our own instincts. 

Discussed in this episode: 

The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes (NYRB) 

Dashiell Hammett

Raymond Chandler

In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes 

In a Lonely Place (1950 film)

Humphrey Bogart

Dark Certainty by Dorothy B. Hughes

The So Blue Marble by Dorothy B. Hughes

“Queen of Noir: The Mysteries of Dorothy B. Hughes” by Molly Boyle (The New Mexican) 

The Fallen Sparrow by Dorothy B. Hughes

Spellbound (1945 film)

“In a Lonely Place” by The Smithereens

Walter Mosely

Ozark (2017-present TV Series)

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Bedridden from a young age and diagnosed with the catchall term “hysteria,” Henry and William James’s sister, Alice, kept an account of her slow decline toward death in a diary that has made her something of a feminist icon. In this week’s mini, find out how she felt about the Jack the Ripper murders and why her writing wasn’t published until half a century after her death. 

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