Was having conversation at conference with someone about The Thruster (who is really beyond the age-span when I can call them Thrusting Young Scholar by now).

And okay, networking is good, and making contacts is good, and getting yourself known is good.

But just getting your name and face known is not enough: what reputation is attached to it?

( Read more... )

Resulting from someone on my flist saying something about literary movements the other day, I had a recurrence of my Personal Paranoid Version of Being Eaten by the Cats:

Which is that I have come across just so many examples of women who were influential original figures in literary/artistic movements, fields of scientific endeavour, and movements ( Read more... )

I am thrilled to see this very positive review of Susan Williams' Colour Bar: the Triumph of Seretse Khama and his Nation, as author is a friend of mine. I missed the launch as I was in US at the time - I have really bad luck with her launches, for the one for her previous book I got stuck when the power failed for the entire London underground ( Read more... )

Comment on this entry and I will give you a letter. Write ten words beginning with that letter in your journal, including an explanation what the word means to you and why, and then pass out letters to those who want to play along.

From ruric ( The Letter H )

Jane Smiley on The Tale of Genji

Doris Lessing on Claudine's House

Lionel Shriver on Norah Vincent's A Self-Made Man (I posted re article by Vincent about this enterprise a couple of weeks ago).

Kathryn Hughes finds much to admire in two surveys of 19th century art, Early Victorian Illustrated Books and Artist of Wonderland.

Simon Baron-Cohen on a ( Read more... )

From the Guardian magazine section:

Woman writes about how 'I paid for sex': I found this cringemaking, not because she paid for it, but because, firstly, she made the appointment for the rendezvous at her own home, and secondly:
I spring-cleaned the house, bought candles, cava and coal. I organised a sleepover for my daughter with her grandma; ( Read more... )

Not entirely unknown before, but now I know much more about her (though not as much as I might like*), after reading Pam Hirsch's biography.

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon is not, perhaps, one of the most well-remembered names of Victorian feminist heroines/female achievers. For example, who hasn't heard about her cousin Florence, the Lady with the ( Read more... )

I was recently skimming through a rather old TLS (circulating copy at work) and came across a mention of the 'Jewish villains', in John Buchan's books. This is an assumption that I've come across before, and it makes me wonder whether the persons who produce this knee-jerk characterisation have ever read anything by Buchan. Okay, Blenkiron does a ( Read more... )