Bookmark - Frances Hodgson Burnett

Frances Hodgson Burnett
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A Successful Failure - by Cary Glasgow

Ellen Glasgow's sister Cary also wrote a novel titled Successful Failure: An Outline. Published in 1883 it tells the story of a divorced woman. It is unfortunately not available at Google Books or anywhere else online, at least as far as I can tell.

Judge Robert Grant's Home

The New York Times for November 27, 1897 has an article titled Authors at Home: Robert Grant in the Back Bay. Robert Grant was the author of Unleavened Bread, which I mentioned in an earlier post as having been banned by the Boston Public Library. There was apparently a series of Authors at Home articles, as this one is labeled number four. Grant's home was at the corner of Marlboro and Clarendon Streets in Boston, and the article gives a description that makes me want to see it. I wonder if it is still there, and if so, who lives in it.

Appended to the same article is a review, not very complementary, of What Maisie Knew by Henry James.

Good Americans by Constance Cary Harrison

Constance Cary Harrison was a Virginia-born novelist whose books I have enjoyed. She was married to Burton Harrison, who had been secretary to Confederate President Jefferson Davis during the Civil War. After the war, she and her husband lived in New York, although they also had a home at 16th and N Streets in Washington. Their son, Francis Burton Harrison, served for a time as a Congressman from New York.

One of the books banned by the Boston Public Library in 1901 was Mrs. Harrison's Good Americans. I have not read it (yet), but I found a review in the New York Times for October 22, 1898. I'm still looking for more information on the BPL committee which made decisions about which books should be "rejected".

Boston Public Library - Rejected Books 1901

The New York Times for March 2, 1901 has an article listing books "rejected" by the Examining and Reading Committee of the Boston Public Library. This list includes, among many others, Good Americans by Constance Cary Harrison; The Two Magics by Henry James (which contains The Turn of the Screw and The Covering End); The Touchstone by Edith Wharton. Deemed "unsafe" were Voice of the People by Ellen Glasgow, mistakenly named as Helen; and Their Silver Wedding by William Dean Howells.

I found this article by doing a search for reviews of Judge Robert Grant's novel, Unleavened Bread, which the committee has labeled "a very disagreeable and excellent story against women's clubs. . .". Edith Wharton is said to have admired this book, which is available both at the Gutenberg Project and Google Books. I haven't read it yet, but I have converted the Gutenberg version for reading on my Sony PRS-505, and it's next on my list.

I had never heard of the BPL committee and its lists of "rejected" and "unsafe" books. This bears more looking into.

NY Times Review of The Builders

I have begun reading another Ellen Glasgow novel, The Builders, published in 1919. It was reviewed in the New York Times on November 2, 1919 in an article which also reviewed Jeremy by Hugh Walpole, Two Men by Alfred Ollivant, and several other novels, mostly long forgotten.

The Builders promises to be very good. Glasgow, although a relatively obscure novelist in today's world, has given the world throughout the whole of her work a fascinating social chronicle of Virginia.

Bookmarks - George du Maurier Illustrations

From Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

Illustrations by George du Maurier

Cornhill Magazine

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