The greatest feminine writer who’s ever lived was a man, according to Angela Carter

New Statesman has an article on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

Though you couldn’t exactly call Henry James macho, an element of repression, an almost masculinist sense of etiquette, was crucial to his aesthetics, and Dostoevsky was found wanting for similar reasons to George Sand, George Eliot, and Mrs Oliphant. Dostoevsky’s novels, with their exclusively male heroes consumed in acts of bearded brooding, may seem an unlikely cause for feminist revisionism. But when Angela Carter was asked to identify her favourite woman writer, she cursed herself for naming Emily Brontë (“who’s pure butch”) because, as she told a friend, “if one is talking about these qualities of sensitivity, vulnerability and perception traditionally ascribed by male critics to female novelists”, Dostoevsky was “the greatest feminine writer who’s ever lived”. (Leo Robson)

Linda's Book Bag features the release in paperback of A Secret Sisterhood: The Hidden Friendships of Austen, Brontë, Eliot and Woolf by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney.

A Secret Sisterhood is a must read for any fan of Austen, Bronte, Eliot and Woolf, but equally for anyone interested in history, society and literature. The bibliography and footnotes make for fascinating reading and again, it took me ages to read the book because I found myself following up some of these independently. A passing reference to Roger Fry had me looking up his paintings, for example. I think A Secret Sisterhood is a book to be savoured and returned to frequently over the years.

Anne Brontë in York on AnneBrontë.org.