Thursday 15th June, 7.30pm in Hungerford Town Hall
Emily Midorikawa & Emma Claire Sweeney explore the hidden friendships between Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot & Virginia Woolf.
A Secret Sisterhood (published June 1st) uncovers the hidden literary friendships of the world’s most respected female authors. Drawing on letters and diaries, some of which have never been published before, this book will reveal Jane Austen’s bond with a family servant, the amateur playwright Anne Sharp; how Charlotte Bronte was inspired by the daring feminist Mary Taylor; the transatlantic relationship between George Eliot and the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe; and the underlying erotic charge that lit the friendship of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield – a pair too often dismissed as bitter foes. In their first book together, Midorikawa and Sweeney resurrect these literary collaborations, which were sometimes illicit, scandalous and volatile; sometimes supportive, radical or inspiring; but always, until now, tantalisingly consigned to the shadows.
Emily Midorikawa lectures at City University and at New York University’s London campus. She has taught at the University of Cambridge and the Open University, as well as writing for the Daily Telegraph, the Independent on Sunday, The Times, Aesthetica and Mslexia. Emily is the winner of the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize 2015.
Emma Claire Sweeney has lectured at City University, New York University in London, the Open University and the University of Cambridge. She writes for newspapers and magazines such as the Guardian, the Independent on Sunday, The Times, and Mslexia. Her debut novel Owl Song at Dawn was published by Legend Press in July 2016 to great acclaim.
Tickets £6 (includes a glass of wine and £5 off the book on the night). Buy from the bookshop in person or on-line.
artsforhungerford.com 