Devoted Ladies


Book Description

'Keane has a sharp eye, but a compassionate one' GUARDIAN 'I admired many authors. But Molly, I loved' DIANA ATHILL 'Miss Farrell's genius lies in her remorselessness . . . deliciously funny' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW Jessica and Jane have been living together for six months and are devoted friends - or are they? Jessica loves her friend with the cruelty of total possessiveness; Jane is rich, silly, and drinks rather too many brandy-and-sodas. Watching from the sidelines, their friend Sylvester regrets that Jane should be 'loved and bullied and perhaps even murdered by that frightful Jessica', but decides it's none of his business. When the Irish gentleman George Playfair meets Jane, however, he thinks otherwise and entices her to Ireland where the battle for her devotion begins.




Devoted Ladies


Book Description

Jessica and Jane have been living together for six months. They are devoted friends--or are they? Jessica loves her friend with the cruelty of total possessiveness. Jane is rich, silly, and drinks rather too many brandy-and-sodas. Watching from the sidelines, Sylvester regrets that she should be loved and bullied and perhaps even murdered by that frightful Jessica, but decides it is none of his business. When the Irish gentleman George Playfair meets Jane, however, he thinks otherwise--he entices Jane to Ireland where the battle for her devotion begins. A studied satire of art deco decadence and louche behavior, "Devoted Ladies" is a sharp and glittering satire on female love.




Awfully Devoted Women


Book Description

The lives of many lesbians prior to 1965 remain cloaked in mystery. Historians have turned the spotlight on upper-middle-class “romantic friends” and on working-class butch and femme women, but the lives of the lower-middle-class majority remain in the shadows. Awfully Devoted Women offers a portrait of middle-class lesbianism in the decades before the gay rights movement in English Canada. This intimate study of the lives of women who were forced to love in secret not only challenges the idea that lesbian relationships in the past were asexual, it also reveals the courage it took to explore desire in an era when women were supposed to know little about sexuality.







The Service of Ladies


Book Description

Ulrich von Liechtenstein's extraordinary account of his adventures as a knight-errant is one of the most vivid images of chivalric life. Ulrich von Liechtenstein's extraordinary account of his adventures as a knight-errant is one of the most vivid images of chivalric life to have come down to us. His knightly autobiography was written in the mid-thirteenth century, and gives an account of the "journey of Venus" which he undertook in 1226 in honour of his lady, in which he claimed to have broken 307 spears in jousts against all comers in the space of a month. Some of it is obviously quietlyexaggerated, written for his friends' entertainment many years later, and he is not above a sly dig at the conventions of courtly love, but he completely accepts its basic ideas. It is full of lively episodes and good stories, aswell as verses in honour of his lady; if the tale has been polished up for effect, it is nonetheless a thoroughly entertaining account of how a knight saw his ideal career in the jousting field. If the name is unexpectedly familiar to modern readers, it is because it was borrowed by the hero of the film A Knight's Tale; Ulrich would have certainly approved of his exploits. Introduction by KELLY DEVRIES.




The Single Woman, Modernity, and Literary Culture


Book Description

This book situates the single woman within the evolving landscape of modernity, examining how she negotiated rural and urban worlds, explored domestic and bohemian roles, and traversed public and private spheres. In the modern era, the single woman was both celebrated and derided for refusing to conform to societal expectations regarding femininity and sexuality. The different versions of single women presented in cultural narratives of this period—including the old maid, odd woman, New Woman, spinster, and flapper—were all sexually suspicious. The single woman, however, was really an amorphous figure who defied straightforward categorization. Emma Sterry explores depictions of such single women in transatlantic women’s fiction of the 1920s to 1940s. Including a diverse selection of renowned and forgotten writers, such as Djuna Barnes, Rosamond Lehmann, Ngaio Marsh, and Eliot Bliss, this book argues that the single woman embodies the tensions between tradition and progress in both middlebrow and modernist literary culture.













Women's Work in the Civil War (Abridged, Annotated)


Book Description

They were young, they were old, they were mothers, sisters, wives, widows, and neighbors. They were ladies of high social position, farmer's wives, and school teachers. Shells and bullets flew through the very tents and hospitals in which they worked. They worked with African-American soldiers, freed slaves, and rebel soldiers. They not only gave up their time and exhausted themselves serving others, many lost their lives to the same diseases that killed the soldiers for whom they were caring. They even fought as soldiers. They were the Union women of the American Civil War and their role in support of the cause was vastly broader and more essential than most people realize. Here are the stories of some of the prominent and the not-so-prominent. Clara Barton, Dorothea Dix, and Emily Parsons are only three of the many women profiled in this work written right after the Civil War. Without their leadership and tireless efforts, the outcome of the war would have been very different. For less than you'd spend on gas going to the library, this long out-of-print volume is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE by clicking the cover above or download a sample.