The Talent Code of British Women Novelists

1. Virago Press republishes this month a scholar classic: A Literature of Their Own by Elaine Showalter:

A Literature of Their Own
British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing
Elaine Showalter
ISBN: 1844084965
ISBN-13: 9781844084968
Publication Date: 07 May 2009
Pages: 384 (198 x 126)
Format: Paperback

When first published in 1982, A LITERATURE OF THEIR OWN quickly set the stage for the creative explosion of feminist literary studies that transformed the field in the 1980s. Launching a major new area for literary investigation, the book uncovered the long but neglected tradition of women writers and the development of their fiction from the 1800s onwards. It includes assessments of famous writers such as the Brontes, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Margaret Drabble and Doris Lessing, but also presents critical appraisals of Mary Braddon, Rhoda Broughton and Sarah Grand - to name but a few of those prolific and successful Victorian novelists - once household names, now largely forgotten. This edition, revised and expanded in 1997, contains an introductory chapter surveying the book's reception as well as a postscript chapter celebrating the legacy of feminism and feminist criticism in the efflorescence of contemporary British fiction by women.

2. And a newly published psychology book, The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle:

The Talent Code
Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How
Written by Daniel Coyle
Bantam Books
* Format: Hardcover, 256 pages
* On Sale: April 28, 2009
* Price: $25.00
* ISBN: 978-0-553-80684-7 (0-553-80684-X)

What is the secret of talent? How do we unlock it? In this groundbreaking work, journalist and New York Times bestselling author Daniel Coyle provides parents, teachers, coaches, businesspeople—and everyone else—with tools they can use to maximize potential in themselves and others.
Whether you’re coaching soccer or teaching a child to play the piano, writing a novel or trying to improve your golf swing, this revolutionary book shows you how to grow talent by tapping into a newly discovered brain mechanism.
Drawing on cutting-edge neurology and firsthand research gathered on journeys to nine of the world’s talent hotbeds—from the baseball fields of the Caribbean to a classical-music academy in upstate New York—Coyle identifies the three key elements that will allow you to develop your gifts and optimize your performance in sports, art, music, math, or just about anything.

Chapter 3 is titled The Brontës, the Z-Boys and the Renaissance.

The author is interviewed in The Alaska Dispatch by Andromeda Romano-Lax who is quite impressed by the Brontë reference:

I admire that you write in multiple genres, and I appreciate your mention of the Bronte sisters. Do you have any personal literary insights regarding getting better as a writer that you'd like to share?

Categories: Books, Scholar