Winifred Holtby, Susan Glaspell, and essays – welcome to episode 99!
Sorry for an unintended long break, but we’re back and Rachel even has a new mic – hopefully has helped with the sound issues, though there may be some teething problems while we get used to it. (I do my best but I am certainly not a professional editor!)
Don’t forget – we would love your questions for episode 100. Do send questions to teaorbooks@gmail.com, on anything you’d like to know about – from books to podcasting to tea to anything else.
In this episode, in the first half we talk about essays – and it is surprising that we haven’t done it before. In the second half, we compare two Persephone books – Winifred Holtby’s The Crowded Street and Susan Glaspell’s Brook Evans.
We’d love to hear from you – and please do review and rate the podcast, which you can find on iTunes, Spotify, or your podcast app of choice. And you can find us on Patreon too.
The books and authors we mention in this episode are:
Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L Sayers
Osebol: Voices from a Swedish Village by Marit Kapla
Akenfield by Ronald Blythe
Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker
The Poor Man by Stella Benson
Princes in the Land by Joanna Cannan
Murder Included by Joanna Cannan
When I Was A Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson
Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
If I May by A.A. Milne
Once a Week by A.A. Milne
Delight by J.B. Priestley
Personal Pleasures by Rose Macaulay
Forty-One False Starts by Janet Malcolm
Edith Wharton
The Silent Woman by Janet Malcolm
Notes From No-Man’s Land by Eula Biss
Having and Being Had by Eula Biss
Fran Lebowitz
Gloria Steinem
Your Silence Will Not Protect You by Audre Lorde
The Wreckage of My Presence by Casey Wilson
Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver
Heartburn by Nora Ephron
I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron
E.V. Lucas
George Orwell
Max Beerbohm
Notes to Self by Emilie Pine
Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins
Thank Heaven Fasting by E.M. Delafield
Fidelity by Susan Glaspell
Alas, Poor Lady by Rachel Ferguson
South Riding by Winifred Holtby
National Provincial by Lettice Cooper
Thank you very much for the sound improvement! So much clearer now, super!
Oh good, I am so glad!
The mike definitely seems to have improved the sound – excellent!
Personally I’m a huge fan of essays, although it does depend on the voice of the author – I think any essay’s success depends on how you gel with the writing and the writer, but when some I really do! Frankly, for example, with Virginia Woolf you can’t go wrong.
Huge fan of “Murder must Advertise” – one of Sayers’ best, I think, and of course drew on her own experiences!
Oh my gosh, how did I not mention Virginia?? I am ashamed of myself!
Great episode – sound a lot improved. I just read Magpie Lane and found it so-so (guessed the ending almost half way through). Did you notice how one of the major characters was called Mariah in the book yet had her name as plain old Maria on paperback cover? It drove me mad, as small things like that are wont to.
Yes, the end was so infuriatingly obvious to me! I mean, who else was even in the novel? And how irritating about Maria[h]. I had that recently with a blurb and An[n]a.
From this list, I have only read Kingsolver. I highly recommend this one by Umberto Eco:
https://wordsandpeace.com/2017/12/21/book-review-chronicles-of-a-liquid-society/
and by Salman Rushdie https://wordsandpeace.com/2021/07/21/book-review-languages-of-truth/