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Shop nowThe Heroine’s Bookshelf
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Learn moreThe literary canon is filled with intelligent, feisty, never-say-die heroines, and legendary female authors. Like today’s women, they too placed a premium on personality, spirituality, career, sisterhood, and family. When their backs were against the wall, characters like Scarlett O’Hara, Jo March, Jane Eyre, and Elizabeth Bennet fought back—sometimes with words, sometimes with gritty actions. Their commonsense decisions resonate even more powerfully in a world where women are forced to return to the basics, paring down and shoring up their resources for what lies ahead.
In this compelling book of beloved heroines and the remarkable writers who created them, Erin Blakemore explores how the pluck and dignity of literary characters such as Scout Finch and Jo March can inspire women today. She divides these legendary characters into chapters that pair each with their central quality—Anne Shirley is associated with irrepressible “Happiness,” while Scarlett O’Hara personifies “Fight.” Each chapter includes insights into the authors’ lives, revealing how their own strengths informed their timeless characters. From Zora Neale Hurston to Colette, Laura Ingalls Wilder to Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen to Alice Walker, here are some of the most cherished authors and characters in literature.
Erin Blakemore learned to drool over Darcy and cry over Little Women in suburban San Diego, California. These days her inner heroine loves roller derby, running her own business, and hiking in her adopted hometown of Boulder, Colorado.
Tavia Gilbert is an acclaimed narrator of more than four hundred full-cast and multivoice audiobooks. She is the winner of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration and numerous Earphones Awards. She is also a producer, singer, photographer, and a writer, as well as the cofounder of a feminist publishing company, Animal Mineral.
Reviews
“If you’re stumped for your next pleasure book and want to submerse yourself in a literary past sprinkled with powerful, independent women like Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott, Blakemore’s book provides the perfect portal.”
“An inspiring look at literature’s greatest and most enduring female characters—such as Jo March, Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennet, Laura Ingalls and others—and their authors, who have helped shape the inner lives of generations of women, teasing out universal tenets of strength and survival, and gleaning the wisdom and solace they offer to help women navigate these challenging times and find their inner heroine.”
“Marketing consultant Blakemore finds that in moments of struggle and stress she revisits her favorite childhood women authors and their plucky heroines for respite, escape, and perspective.”
“In this literary love letter to the heroines and authors of twelve works of classic children’s and adult literature, freelance writer Blakemore makes the case that women today can find much inspiration in these characters, e.g., Mary of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden and Janie of Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Among the characteristics she highlights are faith, dignity, compassion, and ambition—not just in the characters she surveys but in the legendary writers who created them, whose personal lives she also examines…An enjoyable bonus to each chapter are suggestions of additional fictional heroines to discover. For women’s studies collections and for lovers of literature.”
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