Maria Ruiz de Burton was a writer, entrepreneur and businesswoman, and the first Mexican-American woman to publish a novel in English. Born in 1832 in Baja California, Mexico to a prominent Spanish family, Maria Amparo Ruiz was fifteen when the Mexican-American war ended and California became part of the United States. She married the commander of the American forces that invaded Baja shortly after the end of the war, and his career took them all …
Sisters Jane and Anna Maria Porter were wildly popular writers–among the most widely-read writers in Regency England. (Yes, more popular than Jane Austen!) Their novels were on every British bookshelf, their poetry was popular and acclaimed, and Jane Porter’s historical novel The Scottish Chiefs would retain its popularity for nearly 150 years. So how did these bestselling icons of British literature end up nearly penniless and living as “professional houseguests” without a home to call …
Rose Emily Ridge was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1973. After spending her childhood in Australia and New Zealand, she fled an abusive husband for California in 1907. Arriving in America, she promptly changed her name, her age, her nationality and her marital status and launched her new life as Lola Ridge, radical poet, anarchist organizer, and editor of the influential avant-garde magazine Broom. At her popular Greenwich Village salons she welcomed the country’s most …
Nine hundred years ago, the young Hildegard of Bingen was given by her parents to the Catholic Church. She was literally “walled up” in a tiny convent, completely cut off from the outside world. But over the course of her long and varied life, she emerged from the walls to embrace the world. She founded her own convents and traveled across Europe on preaching tours. She spent decades caring for the sick and infirm, resulting …
Four hundred years ago, Margaret Cavendish dared to contemplate the biggest philosophical questions of her day. Brilliant and bold, she wrote 21 books despite being dismissed or mocked by the almost entirely male intellectual community. A famously eccentric dresser, she and her husband hosted high-society parties at their fantastical castle, but she was also paralyzed by bashfulness and dreaded talking to people. She hoped that her intellectual works would lead to eternal fame, but she …
