The Female Short Story - A Chronological History - Volume 5: Marion Hepworth Dixon to Ada Radford
Written by Vernon Lee, Edith Nesbit and Katharine Tynan
Narrated by David Shaw-Parker, Richard Mitchley and Ghizela Rowe
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About this audiobook
Some of our earliest memories are of our mothers telling us bedtime stories. This is not to demote the value of fathers but more to promote the often-overshadowed talents of the gentler sex.
Perhaps ‘gentler’ is a word that we should re-evaluate. In the course of literary history it is men who dominated by opportunity and with their stranglehold on the resources, both financial and technological, who brought their words to a wider audience. Men often placed women on a pedestal from where their talented words would not threaten their own.
In these stories we begin with the original disrupter and renegade author Aphra Behn. A peek at her c.v. shows an astounding capacity and leaves us wondering at just how she did all that.
In those less modern days to be a woman, even ennobled, was to be seen as second class. You literally were chattel and had almost no rights in marriage. As Charlotte Smith famously said your role as wife was little more than ‘legal prostitute’. From such a despicable place these authors have used their talents and ideas and helped redress that situation.
Slowly at first. Privately printed, often anonymously or under the cloak of a male pseudonym their words spread. Their stories admired and, usually, their role still obscured from rightful acknowledgement.
Aided by more advanced technology, the 1700’s began to see a steady stream of female writers until by the 1900’s mass market publishing saw short stories by female authors from all the strata of society being avidly read by everyone. Their names are a rollcall of talent and ‘can do’ spirit and society is richer for their works.
In literature at least women are now acknowledged as equals, true behind the scenes little has changed but if (and to mis-quote Jane Austen) there is one universal truth, it is that ideas change society. These women’s most certainly did and will continue to do so as they easily write across genres, from horror and ghost stories to tender tales of love and making your way in society’s often grueling rut. They will not be silenced, their ideas and passion move emotions, thoughts and perhaps more importantly our ingrained view of what every individual human being is capable of.
It is because of their desire to speak out, their desire to add their talents to the bias around them that we perhaps live in more enlightened, almost equal, times.
Within these stories you will also find very occasional examples of historical prejudice. A few words here and there which in today’s world some may find inappropriate or even offensive. It is not our intention to make anyone uncomfortable but to show that the world in order to change must reconcile itself to the actual truth rather than put it out of sight. Context is everything, both to understand and to illuminate the path forward. The author’s words are set, our reaction to them encourages our change.
01 - The Female Short Story. A Chronological History - An Introduction - Volume 5
02 - The Death Mask by H D Everett writing as Theo Parker
03 - The Story of 'The Spaniards', Hammersmith by Kate and Hesketh Pritchard
04 - A New England Nun by Mary E Wilkins Freeman
05 - A Dream of Wild Bees by Olive Schreiner
06 - The Hired Baby, A Romance of the London Streets by Mary Mackay writing as Marie Corelli
07 - The Runaway by Marion Hepworth-Dixon
08 - Amour Dure by Violet Paget writing as Vernon Lee
09 - My Flirtations by Ella Hepworth Dixon writing as Margaret Wynham
10 - Irremediable by Ella D'Arcy
11 - When the Devil Was Well by Gertrude Ather
Vernon Lee
Vernon Lee (1856-1935) was the pen name of Violet Paget, a British author of supernatural fiction. Born in France to British expatriate parents, Paget spent most of her life in continental Europe. A committed feminist and pacifist, she joined the Union of Democratic Control during the First World War to express her opposition to British militarism. A lesbian, Paget had relationships with Mary Robinson, Amy Levy, and Clementina Anstruther-Thomson throughout her life. Paget, a dedicated follower of Walter Pater’s Aesthetic movement, lived for many years in Florence, where she gained a reputation as a leading scholar of the Italian Renaissance. In addition to her work in art history, Paget was a leading writer of short fiction featuring supernatural figures and themes. Among her best known works are Hauntings (1890), a collection of four chilling tales, and “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady,” a story which appeared in an 1895 issue of The Yellow Book, a controversial periodical that featured the works of Aubrey Beardsley, George Gissing, Henry James, and William Butler Yeats. Although Paget was largely forgotten by the mid-twentieth century, feminist scholars have rekindled attention in her pioneering work as a leading proponent of Aestheticism.
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