The Monthly Digest: September 2020

In August LARB marked the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, by running a number of articles that looked at the legacy of women authors, artists, and activists of yesterday and today. Below are pieces on Alice Duer Miller’s 1915 book of poems Are Women People?, Louise Brooks’s discarded plans for Thirteen Women in Films, and Selina Todd’s biography of Shelagh Delaney, “a paragon of [...] the second-wave feminism of the 1970s”; on the careers of George Eliot and Edith Wharton; on the gendered politics of artistic “rediscovery”; on intersectional feminist approaches to justice for those who experience and cause sexual harm; and more — including an essay from the latest issue of the LARB Quarterly Journal on the role of Black women in the struggle against racism. Our commitment to uplifting women’s voice is, of course, long-standing and lasting, and September will see us publish just as many powerful stories by and about women as we did in August. — LARB Editorial

Medicine and Activism in George Eliot’s “Quarry for Middlemarch”
How one of the greatest English novels emerged from research into a disease outbreak.
Joani EtskovitzAug 29, 2020
- Fiction
What You Need To Do
Shayla Lawson on the pivotal role of Black women in contemporary politics
Shayla LawsonAug 26, 2020
- Politics
Makeshift Refuges: Edith Wharton’s Home-Building
Throughout her life and her work, Edith Wharton struggled to find a secure and lasting sanctuary.
Sophie HaigneyAug 24, 2020
- Fiction
A Plea for Isabella
Lucas Barron explores the contradictions inherent in “Columbus’ Last Appeal to Queen Isabella” and its removal from the California State Capitol.
Lucas BarronAug 23, 2020
A Progenitor of Second-Wave Feminism: On Selina Todd’s “Tastes of Honey”
Simon Lee reviews Selina Todd’s biography on British playwright Shelagh Delaney.
Simon LeeAug 21, 2020
The Politics of Rediscovery
By always relegating work by women artists to the zone of the neglected or forgotten, we risk only understanding them in this way.
Katie da Cunha LewinAug 17, 2020
Alice Duer Miller’s Evergreen Question in “Are Women People?”
Kathleen Rooney considers “Are Women People?” by Alice Duer Miller.
Kathleen RooneyAug 17, 2020
- Poetry
- Politics
Double Lives: On Louise Brooks’s “Thirteen Women in Films”
Maya Cantu puts actress Louise Brooks’s unpublished manuscript “Thirteen Women in Films” in conversation with the recent documentary “Silent and Forgotten.”
Maya CantuAug 15, 2020
An Experimental Biography: John Schad’s “Paris Bride: A Modernist Life”
Is John Schad’s family archive as fictitious as, say, Clarissa Dalloway? And does it matter?
Gerri KimberAug 15, 2020
- Biography & Autobiography
- Literary Criticism
A Better World Is Not a Place, but a Practice: A Conversation with Judith Levine and Erica R. Meiners
Rethinking the legal regime of sex offenses.
M. BunaAug 7, 2020
- Law
- Politics
The Deafening Choir of Oncoming Fate: On Jan Eliasberg’s “Hannah’s War”
M. G. Lord reviews "Hannah's War," the debut novel from Jan Eliasberg.
M. G. LordAug 7, 2020
- Fiction