The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women, by Mo Moulton. Hachette Book Group, 2019

Dorothy Sayers and her college circle of women friends were a high achieving group. Sayers is the best known of them as the author of the Lord Peter Whimsy mysteries, but she was not the only one to achieve a great deal- and the Whimsy stories were by no means her only writing. One of the group, a historian, discovered a cache of Tudor era letters, which she translated into modern English and published over the course of 40 years. One was in a long term lesbian love triangle. One became a birth control advocate, a parenting expert (she wrote much on those subjects), and midwife.

They met at Oxford, where they were a group of some of the few women to be admitted in that time. At the time, a few women were allowed to attend, but they could not receive degrees. This came later (in 1920); some of the group were given retroactive degrees. Sayers wrote an essay titled “Are Women Human?”, which, it seems, women really weren’t in those days. The MAS was a female equivalent of The Inklings; a university group of writers and scholars with common interests.

This group biography covers the women’s lives from Oxford to their deaths. It’s extremely well researched (the notes and bibliography take up almost 60 pages) and detailed. It’s not fast reading, but I found it fascinating.

Royal Witches: Witchcraft and the Nobility in Fifteenth-Century England, by Gemma Hollman. Pegasus Books, 2020

In the 15^th century, if there was a rich woman whose wealth you craved, you accused her of witchcraft. Powerful woman in the way of your advancement? Accuse her of witchcraft. Powerful man who you want brought down? Accuse his wife of witchcraft. None of these women were witches, although one did admit to seeking out a wise woman for a charm to help her conceive. What they were, were powerful, rich women who stood in the way of powerful men. Witchcraft was an easy accusation to make, since it’s impossible to prove one didn’t do it.

Joan of Navarre, Eleanor Cobham, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, and Elizabeth Woodville are the women this book examines. The author gives the first two each a section of their own; Jacquetta and Elizabeth, being mother and daughter, share the last half of the book. I have to admit; Woodville was the only one I was familiar with. I had never even heard of Cobham. Turns out that they were fairly important to the War of the Roses and how it turned out, yet historians have ignored them.

I found parts of the book riveting, and others lost me. Part of the problem is the fact that so many people had the same names- Henry, Richard, Joan, Elizabeth- that I would have trouble keeping them all straight in my mind. The writing was uneven, too; parts seemed like they could have used a good editor to smooth them out. The strange part, however, is that the book is basically biographies of the four women, and of the men they were attached to, rather than concentrating on the witchcraft aspect. The witchcraft trials are a very small percentage of the book. I give the book four stars.

A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf, by Emily Midorikawa & Emma Clare Sweeney. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017

 

“A Secret Sisterhood” examines the relationships that early female writers had with friends. Most that is written about Austen and Charlotte Bronte shows them working in isolation (aside from the Bronte siblings); in fact they both had active friendships with other women both through correspondence and face to face, where they talked about their work. Eliot and Woolf have less of a reputation for loneliness, but still aren’t considered to be extroverts. But they, too, had their special friends with whom they could talk shop.

Jane Austen was friends with her brother’s nanny (which was not looked upon well), who was a playwright when not wrangling kids; author Mary Taylor helped Charlotte Bronte; the outcast George Eliot (outcast for cohabiting with a married man for years) had a long correspondence with Harriet Beecher Stowe; and Virginia Woolf had a relationship both friendly and very competitive with author Katherine Mansfield. These friendships helped sustain the writers in their solitary work (even with people around them, a writer works alone) and provided sounding boards for their new writings.

The authors, themselves friends since the beginnings of their writing careers and who first found success at almost the same time as each other, have done meticulous research and found previously unread documents on or by their subjects. It’s an interesting read, so see how these friendships affected their writing. Much has been made of the friendships of certain male authors- Byron and Shelley, Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins- and now at last we have the feminine side of that coin – and a foreword by Margaret Atwood. Four and a half stars. 

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The Girls in the Picture, by Melanie Benjamin. Delacourt Press, 2018

 

In 1914, Frances Marion, a twice divorced artist, was living in Los Angeles, drawing for an advertising company. Then she met Mary Pickford, then one silent film star among many others, and both their lives changed. Frances became a script writer and director, working mainly with Mary, and Mary became the top female star in the world. Not only did the two women’s talents mesh, they became best friends, inseparable at work and at home. Eventually, they would both win two Academy Awards. But people change. Mary met Douglas Fairbanks and they fell in love, becoming the king and queen of Hollywood. They built Pickfair, a dream mansion, and hosted not must Hollywood royalty but real live royalty. Frances married Fred Thomson, a soldier, athlete, and former minister, and while they were rich, they lived much more sedately. And Mary changed, with her fame and wealth going to her head.

The story alternates between Frances’s and Mary’s points of view; Frances in first person and Mary in third. The author has a real way with describing emotion that grabs me. Frances stays likeable all through the book, but at times, Mary is not. She has a lot of stress on her; from the time she was a small child, she was supporting her mother and two siblings. She also had a public that wanted her to continue playing children when she was well into her 30s (she was tiny) and got upset when she cut her famous curls off for a stylish bob. She thought about business constantly, running through the ledgers of United Artists every day. It’s understandable that she might succumb to stress in unpleasant ways.

I loved this book despite the sadness within. It’s about love and a lifetime of friendship, and two women who became huge forces in Hollywood when Hollywood was just beginning. In a business that quickly became male dominated, they didn’t give up their power or succumb to the casting couch. I have a love for old Hollywood tales, and this is my favorite so far. Five stars out of five. 

Darla, I'm putting this one aside for you! :-D

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The Pinks: The First Women Detectives, Operatives, and Spies With the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, by Chris Enss. Twodot, 2017

In 1856, barely six years after starting his eponymous agency, Allan Pinkerton hired the first woman operative, Kate Warne. She basically walked into his office and told him that he needed her; turns out, he did. Several of the chapters are about her cases; some feature other ‘Pinks’, while some are about female spies who were not on the payroll. One was even a spy for the Confederacy side during the Civil War, whereas the Pinkerton company was working for the Union government. The stories are less of detecting than of spying; the female operatives were able to strike up friendships with the wives of rebel higher ups and even get themselves invited to stay in their homes. Apparently, at that time, no one expected a woman to be anything but a pretty face with no brain. They were able to overhear rebel plans and even be taken to observe the latest in Confederacy weaponry, including the Merrimack. My favorite section was the one where Warne escorted a disguised Lincoln to his inauguration – he had to go through the heart of rebel sentiment.

We don’t get to find out anything about the agents other than the bare bones; the stories are told in plain language with no frills. Each chapter is quite short; some are filled out with facts about the Civil War, for instance, there is a section all about the Monitor and the Merrimack and the experiments with early submarines.

I actually would have expected it to be in the Young Adult section of a library. Inspiring stories for girls with a side of making historical facts go down easily. Three stars out of five. 

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