Reclaim Her Name

Evening Standard speaks about Reclaim Her Name, a Women’s Prize for Fiction project, with founder Kate Mosse.

“I think there’s still a sense that men's writing is universal, and women's writing is for women.”
Gender bias in writing is a historical issue. Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë famously published some of their work as Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, while Mary Ann Evans used the male pseudonym of George Eliot for her work, Middlemarch.
To celebrate the Prize’s 25th year, long-time sponsor Baileys came up with the idea of a new project: Reclaim Her Name. This sees 25 novels by women, previously published under a male pseudonym, published for the first time with the female author’s name on the jacket. [...]
There are many reasons why historic and women authors choose to take on male pseudonyms. Charlotte Brontë once said: ‘Authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality’. As well as prejudice, Mosse adds that choosing a male pseudonym can sometimes be about safety. (Laura Hampson) 

 What we wonder is why the Brontës started being published under their real names after the death of Charlotte Brontë and other writers like George Eliot continue being published under pseudonyms.
Hindustan Times features the Ten-minute Book Club launched by the University of Oxford.

Called the ‘Ten-Minute Book Club’, the initiative by academics from the English faculty will see extracts from prominent books released every week until October, starting this week. The first selection is from W.E.B.Du Bois’ 1903 book, ‘The Souls of Black Folk’.
The list of authors includes nineteenth century Bengali poet and translator Toru Dutt, Mary Prince, Geoffrey Chaucer and Patience Agbabi, Olaudah Equiano, Katherine Mansfield, Elizabeth Keckley, James Joyce, Mary Shelley and Charlotte Brontë.
The readings are intended to be enjoyed alone or to spark discussion with family, friends, colleagues or anyone else. The selection is a mixture of classic well-known literature and outstanding works which deserve more prominence, mostly from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (Prasun Sonwalkar)

The Film Magazine reviews the film adaptation of How to Build a Girl.

On Johanna’s bedroom wall hang countless photographs and posters of her favourite writers and inspirations, which often animate when Johanna requires some advice. Played by numerous iconic British comedy stars and TV personalities – there’s Martin Sheen as Sigmund Freud, Mel and Sue as Charlotte and Emily Brontë and Alexie Sayle as Karl Marx, to name but a few – the characters bicker with one another while they offer Johanna comically outdated advice on anything from orgasms and boys to success and kindness, each conversation as ludicrous as the next. (Leoni Horton)

Tor.com announces that Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia will be a Hulu show.

 As the title suggests, Moreno-Garcia’s novel is a gothic horror, with echoes of Dracula, The Yellow Wallpaper, and Jane Eyre. (Andrew Liptak)

Dagens Nyheter (Sweden) discusses 'post-colonial classic' Wide Sargasso Sea.

Brontë Babe Blog posts about There Was No Possibility of Taking a Walk That Day: A Collection of Poems from the 2020 COVID-19 Lockdown.