An intelligently illuminating biography and cultural history.
An eminent British historical biographer tells the story of how a mistreated wife and writer helped bring about reform to laws governing married women’s personal and economic rights.
In 19th-century Britain, when women like famed writer Caroline Norton (1808-1877) married, they automatically lost the rights to all their assets—including those they earned—as well as the legal rights to future children. Men owned everything and everyone, both literally and figuratively. Norton came to know these hardships intimately over her long, colorful life. The granddaughter of celebrated playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Caroline quickly earned a reputation for both her beauty and her wit. At 19, still in mourning over the death of her first love, she married George Norton, who became her lifelong nemesis. His cruelty manifested early on in the marriage, and he “took to kicking his wife, pushing and shoving her, when she displeased him in some way. These attacks would be accompanied by an admonishment generally referring to her lack of respect for her husband.” Rather than let herself become a victim, Caroline flourished in her other pursuits as the hostess of a salon that included such luminaries as Lord Melbourne, the young Queen Victoria’s political mentor. When Caroline finally left her husband in 1836, he charged her with adultery and took their children with him. Though she was in a precarious financial position, Caroline used her political connections, influence, and pen to champion the Infant Custody Act of 1839, which granted women custody of their children up to age 7. Over the next two decades, Caroline continued the fight for legal rights for women, engaging in battles for the right to divorce and laying the groundwork for legislation to protect women’s property rights. This engagingly written, rigorously researched book will appeal to both feminist historians and readers who enjoy well-crafted portraits of historical figures who deserve more attention.
An intelligently illuminating biography and cultural history.Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63936-157-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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