Archives: Women writers and journalists

The Tylenol murders

January 15, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: history, podcasting, Women writers and journalists, writers.

Forty years ago, you could walk into a grocery store or drugstore and grab a bottle of Tylenol off the shelf. The only thing that stood between you and the medicine was an unglued carton, screw-on bottle cap, and a small wad of cotton. Today, if you grabbed that same bottle off the shelf, you • Read More »

Harriet Preston Spofford and the first female-authored detective series

January 14, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: Women writers and journalists, writers, writing.

Her work had been published in a variety of newspapers and magazines, but most of them were low circulation periodicals. Harriet wrote incessantly, sometimes as much as 15 hours a day, because the money that she received from her publications barely covered the family’s expenses. In 1859 she wrote a story that she believed was • Read More »

Metta Victoria Fuller Victor and the first American detective novel

January 6, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: Women writers and journalists, writers, writing.

You have probably never heard the unusual name Metta Victoria Fuller Victor, but from now on whenever you hear the name Edgar Allan Poe, you should try to remember Metta’s name. Poe is the undisputed (mostly) father of American detective fiction. He wrote three short stories featuring Inspector Auguste Dupin, and he wrote about detective • Read More »

Constance Garnett and the translator’s dilemma

December 16, 2022 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism, Women writers and journalists, writers, writing.

When we read a book or see a play that has been written in another language and translated into English, what exactly are we reading or hearing? Are they the words of the author or the words of the translator? This is the eternal dilemma of translation. Each language has its own words, phrases, structure, • Read More »

P.D. James: setting is central to her novels

August 13, 2022 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: fiction, journalism, Women writers and journalists, writers, writing.

When author P.D. James began writing her first novel in the mid-1950s, she wrote later, “it never occurred to me to make a start with anything other than a detective story.” James had been reading mystery novels for many years, and she believed that she could write one that would be good enough to find • Read More »

Helen Kirkpatrick covers the before, during, and after of World War II

August 6, 2022 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism, reporters, Women writers and journalists, writers, writing.

When Helen Kirkpatrick finally got a job as the London correspondent for the Chicago Daily News in 1939, she gave herself a seemingly impossible first assignment. She suggested to her editors that she try to get an interview with the duke of Windsor, the former king Edward. The assignment seemed impossible because it was well • Read More »

Caroline Norton and the first challenge to the male dominance of English law

June 18, 2022 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: history, journalism, Women writers and journalists, writers, writing.

“I exist and I suffer; but the law denies my existence.” Caroline Norton, who wrote this dynamite sentence, knew the power of the pen. Indeed, she lived in a time when it was her only weapon, and she used it well. Doing so brought her a measure of personal satisfaction, but it also changed the • Read More »

Edna St. Vincent Millay, the early voice of 20th century feminism

April 2, 2022 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: Women writers and journalists, writers, writing.

When she was 19 years old in 1912, Edna St. Vincent Millay had few prospects. She had just graduated from high school in Maine, but her family did not have enough money to send her to college. Her sister, Norma, worked as a waitress at a local inn that summer, and Edna stayed with her • Read More »

Catherine Parr: the first named published author in English who was female

March 5, 2022 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: books, history, Women writers and journalists, writers, writing.

History remembers the name of Catherine Parr as the sixth wife of Henry VIII’s six wives, the one who survived. In truth, however, she should be remembered for much more than that. Her accomplishments were many and widespread. Catherine Parr was the first female to have a book published in English with her name as • Read More »

Anna Katharine Green, the ‘mother of detective fiction’

January 22, 2022 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism, Women writers and journalists, writers, writing.

With the publication of the stories of the murders in the Rue Morgue, Edgar Allan Poe is deservedly labeled as the “father of modern detective fiction.” Unfortunately, he died too soon to develop that genre. That became the task of others. One of those authors, now long forgotten, was Anna Katharine Green. She is credited • Read More »