Media Roundup: Biographies, Memoirs, and Letters About Women in History
In celebration of Women’s History Month, today we are featuring books about women. From collections of letters to biographies to one story about a Manchu princess turned spy, each work highlights the achievement and power of womanhood and the female role in society.
Enter the giveaway for a chance to win one of the following books!
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Media Roundup
Diana Trilling’s life with Columbia University professor and literary critic Lionel Trilling was filled with secrets, struggles, and betrayals, and she endured what she called her “own private hell” as she fought to reconcile competing duties and impulses at home and at work.
In the News
From the CUP Archive
- Read an excerpt from the preface of The Untold Journey
- Read an excerpt from Chapter 7: The Nation Calls
- Read an excerpt from Robins’ discussion of Diana Trilling’s account of the trial of Jean Harris
- Read an excerpt about the publication of “The Other Night at Columbia: A Report from the Academy” by Diana Trilling
The Letters of Sylvia Beach
Sylvia Beach. Edited by Keri Walsh. Foreword by Noël Riley Fitch
In this first collection of her letters, we witness Sylvia Beach’s day-to-day dealings as bookseller and publisher to expatriate Paris.
In the News
From the CUP Archive
- An interview with Keri Walsh, editor of The Letters of Sylvia Beach, and Sylvia Whitman
- An interview with Keri Walsh and Anne Fernald
- Watch Greta Schiller’s 1995 documentary Paris Was a Woman which features Sylvia Beach
- Read Sylvia Beach’s letters to important modernist poets Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams
- Sylvia Beach’s relationship with James Joyce – Keri Walsh’s interview on Writers & Company
Manchu Princess, Japanese Spy
The Story of Kawashima Yoshiko, the Cross-Dressing Spy Who Commanded Her Own Army
Phyllis Birnbaum
Aisin Gioro Xianyu (1907–1948) was the fourteenth daughter of a Manchu prince and a legendary figure in China’s bloody struggle with Japan.
In the News
From the CUP Archive
This extraordinary collection of letters sheds light on one of the most important postwar American poets and on a creative woman’s life from the 1950s onward.
In the News
From the CUP Archive
The Great Flowing River
A Memoir of China, from Manchuria to Taiwan
Chi Pang-yuan. Translated by John Balcom
Heralded as a literary masterpiece and a best-seller in the Chinese-speaking world, The Great Flowing River is a personal account of the history of modern China and Taiwan unlike any other.
In the News
From the CUP Archive
Iris Barry (1895–1969) was a pivotal modern figure and one of the first intellectuals to treat film as an art form, appreciating its far-reaching, transformative power.
In the News
From the CUP Archive
Emperor Wu Zhao and Her Pantheon of Devis, Divinities, and Dynastic Mothers
N. Harry Rothschild
Wu Zhao (624–705), better known as Wu Zetian or Empress Wu, is the only woman to have ruled China as emperor over the course of its 5,000-year history.
In the News
Lois Gordon’s absorbing biography tells the story of a writer, activist, and cultural icon who embodied the dazzling energy and tumultuous spirit of her age, and whom William Carlos Williams once called “one of the major phenomena of history.”
In the News
Winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt award for biography, this remarkable portrait sheds new light on Virginia Woolf’s relationships with her family and friends and how they shaped her work.
