341 Constance and Henry - The Story of "Miss Grief"

The History of Literature

Jacke Wilson

Arts, History, Books

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2021

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the immediate aftermath of her death at the age of 53, Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840-1894) was considered one of the greatest writers of her day, but her reputation soon faded. A hundred years later, she was little more than a footnote in her friend Henry James's biography, until scholars began to rediscover her life and works. In this episode, Jacke takes a look at one of her most famous short stories, "Miss Grief," in which an aspiring writer of artistic ambition seeks out the opinion and assistance of a more established author. The story, written after Woolson had tried unsuccessfully to meet James for the first time, is often viewed as anticipatory of the relationship that she and James went on to have. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. New!!! Looking for an easy to way to buy Jacke a coffee? Now you can at paypal.me/jackewilson. Your generosity is much appreciated! The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature. *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The History of Literature podcast is a member of the Podglomerate Network and LitHub radio.
0:07.6	Hello.
0:10.8	In some ways they were an unlikely pair.
0:13.6	He was successful and standoffish.
0:16.4	She was eager to meet him, but had a point in her life where sadness threatened to overtake
0:21.4	her.
0:22.4	It had overtaken her mother, who had lost six daughters to illness before dying herself.
0:28.2	This Phenomore Wilson had lost many of her loved ones, including her beloved father,
0:33.6	those six sisters, and her brother would soon die from suicide after a long bout with mental
0:39.4	illness.
0:41.0	During the Civil War she worked in a hospital and saw great suffering, and had become engaged
0:46.0	to a union soldier named Zef, but after the war Zef didn't return home quickly.
0:52.8	She stayed in the South for a while, and then he moved to Hawaii and married a sugar
0:57.4	iris.
0:59.5	Constance started to grow deaf, a disease that ran in her family, and in her forties she
1:04.9	moved to Europe for good, although she once said that she was very ill-suited for living
1:10.2	without a home as she needed to take a lot of possessions with her wherever she went.
1:15.8	She was an early advocate of what we might call slow travel today, staying in one city
1:21.1	for months at a time, living in hotels, and absorbing the local culture in small doses.
1:29.3	And she was a great writer.
1:31.6	Her novels and stories were widely read, sometimes critics put her in a box of daintiness, ah-ha,
1:37.9	they said a woman writer, and these are womanly stories, feminine, weak, watery.
	...

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