Emily Dickinson | Guy Portman's Blog

4 Female Writers’ Writing Styles

Apr 17 2015

Every author, myself included, has his/her own distinctive writing style. Earlier this year I dedicated a blog post to 4 famous male writers’ writing styles.

This week’s blog post is dedicated to 4 famous female writers’ writing styles:

Virginia Woolf

(January 25th 1882 – March 28th 1941)

Notable works: To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway, A Room of One’s Own

Novelist and critic Virginia Woolf was an influential interwar writer and one of the foremost modernists of the 20th Century. Woolf embraced an experimental stream of consciousness writing style, in which the subjective impressions of her protagonists formed the narrative. This writing device is in evidence in her novel Mrs Dalloway, in which Woolf parallels a single day in the lives of two people, adeptly portraying their internal emotions. This was a marked shift from the rigid objectivism of 19th Century fiction. Her rhetorical, informal personal style, effective use of metaphors, similes and symbolism continue to endear her to readers to this day.

George Eliot

(22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880)

Notable works: The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda

Mary Ann Evans was an author who used the male pen name George Eliot in order that she be taken seriously by the literary establishment. Her most famous novel, Middlemarch, is widely regarded as one of the greatest English language novels ever written. Her writing style incorporated an unusual style of phrasing, deep psychological insights, sophisticated character portraits, religious themes, highly original use of metaphors, comical elements and realism. Eliot also had a distinctive narrative voice, which some have criticised her for, because it often disrupts the action and casts judgement on the given event, as it is taking place.

Emily Dickinson

(10th December 1830 – 15th May 1886)

The reclusive Emily Dickinson was a prolific American poet, who penned over 1700 poems. Dickinson’s early poetry was fairly conventional, but her writing style became increasingly innovative and idiosyncratic. Her lineation, punctuation, capitalisation and extensive use of dashes were highly unusual. Most of Dickinson’s poems were written in short stanzas, the majority being quatrains, whilst other stanzas employed triplets and pairs of couplets as well as partial rhyming schemes. She also experimented with Iambic rhythms. The flexible and innovative structures of her poems, the conciseness of her language and the blending of different themes, such as the homely and exalted, in addition to her use of metaphors were in stark contrast to the rigid conventions of her era.

Jane Austen

(16th December 1775 – 18th July 1817)

Notable works: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Persuasion

Jane Austen employed an elegant, experimental and innovative writing style. In contrast to other early 19th Century authors, Jane Austen’s novels have considerably more dialogue and much less description and narrative. She adroitly utilised indirect speech, burlesque, parody and realism to critique the portrayal of women in 18th Century literature, in addition to the perceived role of women during her own era. But it is her constant, imaginative use of irony that she is probably best known for. Austen utilised irony to highlight the social hypocrisy of her time, particularly with regards to marriage and social divisions.

6 Famous Reclusive Authors

Oct 31 2014

Writing is a solitary activity that appeals to many people with an introverted nature, myself included. Some authors take their introversion to the extreme and become recluses.

This week’s blog post is dedicated to 6 famous reclusive authors:

Emily Dickinson

(10th December 1830 – 15th May 1886)

Emily Dickinson was a prolific American poet, who penned over 1700 poems. However she had fewer than a dozen poems published during her lifetime, and it was only after her demise when younger sister Lavinia discovered her poetry that the world discovered her remarkable talents. Undoubtedly the primary reason for Dickinson’s lack of acclaim during her lifetime was her reclusive habits, which by the late 1860s’ entailed her rarely leaving the house, and speaking to visitors from the other side of her closed front door.

Thomas Pynchon

(Born: 8th May 1937)

Thomas Pynchon is an American fiction and non-fiction writer. His best known novels are The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) and Gravity’s Rainbow (1973). Gravity’s Rainbow won the 1974 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Pynchon is a notoriously private man, who refuses to give interviews and has rarely been photographed. The author did however allow his voice to be used for his two brief appearances in The Simpsons, in which he wears a paper bag over his head to hide his identity. His latest book, Bleeding Edge, was published in 2013.

Harper Lee

(Born: 28th April 1926)

The American novelist is best known for her one and only published book, the 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee is also recognized for having assisted her friend Truman Capote in writing his seminal work, In Cold Blood. Harper Lee’s reclusive behaviour has entailed refusing to give speeches, and all but disappearing from public life for four decades. The Monroeville, Alabama resident surprised many, when at the age of seventy-nine she did an interview for the New York Times.

Cormac McCarthy

(Born: 20th July 1933)

Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist, screenwriter and playwright who has written 10 novels. His accolades include winning the Pulitzer Prize for The Road (2006) and the U.S. National Book Awards for All the Pretty Horses (1992).

The New Mexico resident is a notorious recluse, who once failed to show for a banquet given in his honour. As McCarthy never gave interviews the public were not even aware what the author looked like. In 2007 the author made an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show, in addition to showing up at the Academy Awards to see the film adaptation of his book, No Country For Old Men, win Best Picture. He has not been seen in public since.

J.D. Salinger

(1st January 1919 – 27th January 2010)

The reclusive J.D. Salinger was an American author, whose seminal work The Catcher in the Rye (1951) spent thirty weeks on the New York Bestseller List, and went on to sell over ten million copies worldwide. To this day the book continues to sell around a quarter of a million copies a year.

Two years after The Catcher in the Rye’s publication Salinger withdrew completely from public life. For the next half a century the author ignored journalists and fans alike, and from 1965 no longer offered his works for publication.

Marcel Proust

(10th July 1871 – 18th November 1922)

French novelist, essayist and critic Marcel Proust is widely considered to be one of the best authors of all time. His most famous work, À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past), was published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927.

Proust was a society figure in his younger years, but following his father and mother’s death, and his own increasing poor health, he withdrew from public life and stayed at home. The last three years of his life were spent in his soundproofed room, sleeping during the day and working at night on his seminal work, À la recherche du temps perdu.

Posthumously Famous Authors III

Aug 16 2013

The following blog post is dedicated to two authors, who became famous after their deaths.

Emily Dickinson

(December 10th 1830 – May 15th 1886)

Born in Amherst, Massachusetts to a wealthy family, Emily Dickinson went on to become a prolific poet with over 1700 poems to her name. During her lifetime Dickinson had fewer than a dozen poems published, and it was only after her death that she became famous.

The very private nature of the poet is undoubtedly one reason for Dickinson’s lack of acclaim during her lifetime. By the late 1860s’ her reclusive habits included rarely leaving the house and even speaking to visitors from the other side of the door.

It was only after her demise when younger sister Lavinia discovered her poetry that family and associates realised just how prolific a poet she had been. The first collection of Dickinson’s poetry was published in 1890, though it was heavily edited. Between 1914 and 1918 nearly a dozen new editions were published and then in 1955 a completed collection of her poetry, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, was released. Interest in the poet’s work was to only increase with the passage of time. In 1981 The Manuscript of Emily Dickinson was published and then in 2001 her biography.

Today Emily Dickinson is remembered as an iconic poet and one of the most acclaimed American female writers of all time. Her poetry is studied in schools throughout the country and there was even a stamp to commemorate her in 1971.

Death and immortality are reoccurring themes in Dickinson’s poetry and it can be argued that she achieved the latter with her posthumous fame and place in the hearts of her nation’s readers.

Karl Stig-Erland ‘Stieg’ Larsson

(August 15th 1954 – November 9th 2004)

Notable works: Millennium Series

Larsson was known during his lifetime as a renowned journalist and an independent researcher. However at the time of his death, aged fifty in Stockholm of a heart-attack, after climbing the seven flights of stairs to his office, as the lift was not working, Larsson’s Millennium Series were unpublished manuscripts sitting in his house.

The first, published in Sweden in 2005, received The Glass Key Award for the best Nordic crime novel that same year. The book was published in The United Kingdom in 2008 under its English language title, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The second part of the series, published in Sweden in 2006 is known in the English speaking world as The Girl Who Played with Fire. The following year the final instalment was released, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest.

The trilogy saw the author achieve incredible success and posthumous fame. In 2008 Larsson was the second highest selling author in the world and in 2010, USA Today’s author of the year. The Millennium Series has gone on to be adapted for film and television. Hollywood sequels to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, starring Daniel Craig, are in production, and will likely see interest in the series increase yet further. To date about sixty million copies of the Millennium Series have been sold worldwide.

Click here to read Part II.