California's Daughter: Gertrude Atherton and Her Times

by Emily Wortis Leider

Overview

A Stanford UniversityPress classic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804718202
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	01/01/1991
Edition description:	1
Pages:	428
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.50(d)

Editorial Reviews

"The paradoxical, individualistic, self-reliant, sometimes despicable, controversial 19th-century American writer comes alive in this fascinating biography. . . . The most complete work on Atherton . . . recommended for its thorough presentation of the writer as part of the literary, social, political, and cultural world of the 19th century."—Library Journal

From the Publisher

Now largely forgotten, novelist and short story writer Atherton (1857-1948) at the height of her popularity often was ranked with Edith Wharton. Her typical California heroine--icily beautiful, sensuous, self-reliant, ambitious, nobody's fool--appealed to women seeking an identity based on their own needs and talents. Although she wrote a suffragist novel and advocated women's independence, the San Francisco-born adventurer who lived in London, Berlin, the West Indies and Greece does not make an ideal role model for today's feminists. Snobbery, worship of power, narcissism and hunger for approval were flaws of a novelist whom Gertrude Stein befriended, Ambrose Bierce yearned for, and who believed herself to be a reincarnation of the Greek beauty Aspasia, consort of Pericles. In a colorful, penetrating biography, freelance book critic Leider measures the melodrama of Atherton's life against the contradictory impulses of her art. Photos not seen by PW. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The paradoxical, individualistic, self-reliant, controversial, sometimes despicable, American writer comes alive in this fascinating biography. Atherton (1857-1948), who lived to be 90, produced more than 50 books, as well as other writings. This biography includes the essence and background of these works, revealing Atherton's original ideas for them and her successes and failures as deemed by American and European societies. The most complete work on Atherton, this is a fascinating, worthwhile contribution to American literary history that is highly recommended for its thorough presentation of the writer as part of her literary, social, political, and cultural world.--Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, N.J.

Library Journal