Women Writers from Lightholder Books

The Land Surveyor's Daughter by Ellen Gilchrist. 1979 Lost Roads, first edition, 46 pages. Gilchrist is a Southern author who won the National Book Award for her story collection Victory Over Japan. Her work is steeped in the Southern tradition, witty and wise. Land Surveyor's Daughter was her first book, a collection of poetry, with a small print run. Condition: Good,… Read more about this item

Tell Sally by Magda Szabo. 1963 Corvina Press, no edition stated, 286 pages. Szabo was a Hungarian writer who has experienced a renaissance with the NYRB reissue of her novel The Door. She won awards for her poetry in the forties, but one an award was revoked when she was declared an enemy by the new communist government, and she… Read more about this item

Sanctified Church by Zora Neale Hurston. 1983 Turtle Island, later printing, 107 pages. Hurston was an author and anthropologist and key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. She is best known for her novel Their Eyes Are Watching God. She documented Black folklore of the south and voodoo practices of the Caribbean, as well as wrote plays and short stories. She… Read more about this item

An Academic Question by Barbara Pym. 1986 Dutton, first American edition, 182 pages. Pym was an English novelist, forever forgotten and rediscovered. In a retrospective in the New York Times: "However remote her themes may seem — a churn of parish politics and petty romances — beneath the gentle surfaces of her novels is a slow-building comedy, salt wit… Read more about this item

The Land Surveyor's Daughter by Ellen Gilchrist. 1979 Lost Roads, first edition, 46 pages. Gilchrist is a Southern author who won the National Book Award for her story collection Victory Over Japan. Her work is steeped in the Southern tradition, witty and wise. Land Surveyor's Daughter was her first book, a collection of poetry, with a small print run. Condition: Good,… Read more about this item

A Cadre School Life: Six Chapters by Yang Jiang. Translation by Geremie Barme with the assistance of Bennett Lee. 1984 Joint Publishing, first U.S. edition, 91 pages. Jiang was a scholar and translator, most notably of the definitive translation of Don Quixote in China, which at the time landed her in Henan to be "reformed through labor" during the Cultural… Read more about this item

The Nine Guardians by Rosario Castellanos. Translated by Irene Nicholson. 1992 Readers International reprint (c/r 1957), 272 pages. Castellanos was a feminist poet, essayist, and novelist who wrote confessional fiction and criticized male literary figures of the time. According to an essay in the Paris Review: "As a child, Castellanos was cared for by a Mayan woman, Rufina, in whose… Read more about this item

The Soldier from Virginia by Marjorie Bowen. 1912 D. Appleton Company, first U.S. edition, 357 pages. Bowen was a prolific British author with many pseudonyms who published historical and gothic romances, this one about George Washington. According to christopherfowler.co.uk "Bowen's first novel, 'The Viper Of Milan', set in fourteenth century Italy, was published to acclaim when she was just twenty… Read more about this item

The Crazy Ladies by Joyce Elbert. 1969 New American Library, first edition, 438 pages. Elbert, who died in 2009, had a slight resurgence recently with the release of a book of eight essays. In an article for the Star Tribune, Kathleen Rooney starts her review of A Tale of Five Cities : "A contemporary of Jacqueline Susann, credited by Cosmopolitan… Read more about this item

To Bedlam and Part Way Back by Anne Sexton. 1960 Houghton Mifflin, ninth printing, 67 pages. Pulitzer Prize-winner Sexton was a poet who's most well-known poems dealt with mental illness, death, and relationships with her family. She died by suicide at the age of 45. To Bedlam was her first book. According to the New York Times in reviewing a… Read more about this item

Sweet Desserts by Lucy Ellmann. 1989 Viking, first U.S. edition, 145 pages. Ellman most recently has had success and acclaim with her beast of a novel Ducks, Newburyport, a stream of consciousness, nearly single-sentence novel on the banalities of motherhood told in more than a thousand pages, shortlisting her for the Booker Prize. Sweet Desserts was Ellman's debut and won… Read more about this item

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. 1864 Tauchnitz (this edition printed after 1877 as Emma is on ad card), 340 pages. Marbled boards and endpapers, gilt pages, leather bound. A classic in beautiful presentation. Condition: Good+, pages have warping and browning "He was not handsome, and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing."

Vera by Elizabeth von Arnim (Author of Elizabeth and Her Gardens). 1921 Doubleday, first U.S. edition. Cousin of Katherine Mansfield, von Arnim was a literary success in her time, writing more than twenty books. Her first marriage made her a Countess, and this novel is based on that disastrous relationship. Condition: Acceptable. No DJ, wear and soiling to boards, head of… Read more about this item

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. 2008 Random House, first edition, 270 pages. Strout's third novel of interwoven stories that take place in rustic Maine won the Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into one of my personal favorite mini-series. Condition: VG, remainder mark, bump to board "Autumn now, November, and so many years later that when Henry runs a comb through his hair… Read more about this item

Confessions of Love by Uno Chiyo. 1990 Peter Owen, first UK edition (c/r 1935),157 pages. Chiyo was a Japanese author, magazine founder, and kimono designer who shocked Japanese society with her public love affairs and short bobbed haircut. Later in life she was recognized as a legend and her novels recognized as masterpieces. Confessions was her debut novel and depicts… Read more about this item

Cliffs of Fall and other stories by Shirley Hazzard. 1963 first U.S. edition, 192 pages. Hazzard was an Australian-American author and essayist best known for her novels Transit of Venus and the Great Fire. Cliffs was her debut, a short-story collection in which all but one of the stories was published in the New Yorker (she was one of the… Read more about this item

An Excursion to the Sky by Grozdana Olujic. 1961 Dutton, first U.S. edition, 156 pages. Olujic was a Serbian author of novels, essays, fairy tales, and children's books. Excursion was her debut novel, published when she was twenty-four years old and inspired comparisons to Francoise Sagan (but make it bleak) and criticism from the "socialist realism" school of thought. Condition: Jacket… Read more about this item

Necessities of Life by Adrienne Rich. 1966 Knopf, first paperback printing, 79 pages. According to Rich's obituary in the New York Times: "Adrienne Rich, a poet of towering reputation and towering rage, whose work — distinguished by an unswerving progressive vision and a dazzling, empathic ferocity — brought the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse… Read more about this item

Green Song by Edith Sitwell. 1946 View Editions, first U.S. edition, 49 pages. Sitwell was a British critic and poet, known for her lavish costumes, which became the butt of many jokes, and for her wit and support of other writers. The Green Song was published in the middle of her career. Condition: Jacket acceptable with chips and tears, book in… Read more about this item

Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. Undated (I believe 1940s), Thomas Nelson, 345/216 pages. Includes illustration on first page, bound in leather and gilt pages. Two novels, including a favorite, by one of the greats. Condition: Good. Some wearing away of the leather, discoloring on end papers. "No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would… Read more about this item