The Best 19th-c. Woman Writer You Don't Know But Should

Constance Fenimore Woolson

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Hello from Sicily! I hope you are enjoying the summer as much as I am.

Do you know the writer Constance Fenimore Woolson? I hope so! But I also know that many have still not heard of her. I spent the past two weeks co-leading a group around Italy (Venice, Florence, Rome, and Sorrento) to follow in her footsteps, so I thought I would share her story with you and try to convince you to read at least one of her stories. (My co-leader was Etta Madden, of “All Things Italy” here on Substack.)

There is Woolson on the right and our group on the left, in front of the view of Florence she loved from her villa on Bellosguardo.

If you have heard of Woolson before, it’s likely that you know the two things most people know about her: that she was a friend of the “Master,” Henry James, and that she committed suicide in Venice. Sadly, you have probably also heard the erroneous story that she killed herself because of unrequited love for James. (There is not a shred of evidence for this.) People are rarely aware that Woolson was a famous author in her own right, or that she was respected by critics and viewed as a successor to George Eliot and a peer of James and William Dean Howells.

Woolson has become known as a tragic heroine in a story not of her own making, rather than what she really was: a marvelous maker of stories herself.

Reviving Woolson’s Reputation

It was my mission for nearly a decade to make Woolson better known as a writer (not simply as James’s tragic friend). I was able to write her biography and edit a collection of her stories for Norton, which were reviewed on the cover of the New York Times Book Review and chosen as one of ten best books of 2016 by the Chicago Tribune. I also edited a volume of her stories for the Library of America, inducting her into the literary canon and ensuring that she will never go out of print again.

The resulting reviews of Woolson’s writing have been tremendous. Amy Gentry wrote, “Her short stories demonstrate irony, force and feeling that occasionally surpass the stories of Edith Wharton and Howells, rivaling ‘the Master’ himself even as they take aim directly at his privilege and presumptions.” For Cynthia Ozick, Woolson’s stories about female artists—such as “‘Miss Grief’” and “The Street of the Hyacinth”—should be read not as “stories of female grievance” but “in the realm of sublime craft,” as “pre-eminent meditations on the elusive nature of art itself.” 

Woolson’s stories are remarkably modern, despite having been written over a hundred years ago. She participated in the realist movement of her day, drawing her scenes and characters from life. But she challenged some of realism’s tenets, most notably that of the objective observer who only examines the surface of things.

Woolson’s writing can be compared to George Eliot’s. They both asked readers to notice people on the margins of society who tend to be overlooked or misunderstood. They also both avoided sentimentality and associations with the popular women’s writing of their day. Woolson once wrote that she had “such a horror of ‘pretty,’ ‘sweet’ writing that I should almost prefer a style that was ugly and bitter, provided it was also strong.” The result was a decidedly unsentimental and modern style.

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Woolson’s Literary Career

Constance Fenimore Woolson grew up in Cleveland and was taught to revere the written word early on. She didn’t start publishing until the age of twenty-nine, when she had to begin providing for herself and her mother after her father died. Because she shared a middle name with her famous great-uncle, James Fenimore Cooper, she quickly gained the ear of editors at Harper’s and elsewhere.

My favorite portrait of Woolson, from her teens, because you can actually see her face! She hated being photographed and often turned away from the camera.

By the time her first collection, Castle Nowhere: Lake-Country Sketches, was published in 1876, she was widely known as one of America’s most promising writers. Many critics applauded her efforts to write in a less sentimental style. Others, however, criticized her stark realism and unwillingness to give her stories predictable happy endings.

After moving South with her invalid mother in 1873, Woolson began writing about the Reconstruction South. In stories she collected in Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches (1880), she portrayed the resentment of white Southerners toward Northerners who flocked to the South in search of economic opportunity or healthier climates, often with little regard for the suffering the war had wrought. James praised in these stories “a remarkable minuteness of observation and tenderness of feeling on the part of one who evidently did not glance and pass, but lingered and analyzed.”

Woolson’s most popular novel was her first, Anne (1882), the coming-of-age story of an unconventional woman who grows up on Mackinac Island, then is thrust into the world by her father’s death, much as Woolson was. It was so successful that Harper & Brothers gave her an exclusive contract to publish all of her writings thereafter, a remarkable feat for which James envied her. In fact, her novel sold nearly ten times as many as James’s The Portrait of a Lady, published about the same time.

Even before Anne was published, Woolson had traveled to Europe, where she would live a peripatetic, independent life, mostly in England, Italy, and Switzerland. The longest she stayed in one spot was in a villa on the hill of Bellosguardo outside of Florence, where she lived from 1886 to 1889. On our trip, we saw the villa from the outside and were lucky enough to be invited in to see the Villa Castellani up the road where she stayed briefly and where James had also stayed.

Wooslon wrote four more novels while she was abroad, all set in the United States: For the Major (1883), East Angels (1886), Jupiter Lights (1889), and Horace Chase (1895). Her great theme was the hidden emotional lives of women, which she revealed slowly and often devastatingly. Raised to conceal their feelings behind a placid surface of propriety, women of the genteel classes, such as herself, suffered both physically and emotionally, a theme she explored in “Dorothy” and other stories. As she once told a friend, she always told the truth in her fiction, although she never could in real life.

Woolson’s Death

When Woolson jumped or fell from her window in Venice in January 1894, she had been suffering from depression as well as various physical ailments that convinced her she would never be able to write another novel. Unwilling to depend on others, she was ready for death and may have decided to take her own life — no note or will was ever found to confirm the suspicions of James and others that she had.

Casa Semitecolo in Venice

On my recent trip to Venice, I was able for the first time to see inside the Casa Semitecolo, where Constance lived. Our group saw the windows that overlook the narrow street behind the house, and it was clear to me for the first time that without a doubt she took her own life. The window (which has not been altered) was too high to fall out of. It was a very sad, moving moment for me to look out of the window and see how far down (four stories) she fell. She lived only an hour afterwards and was buried in the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome, which our group also visited.

The Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome is such a peaceful place. Well worth visiting.

In fact, she had threatened the nurse caring for her with haunting if she didn’t ensure she was buried in Rome. This is where Keats and Shelly and a host of other Anglo expats are buried, as well as the fictional Daisy Miller, from James’s most famous story. I believe she wanted to be buried there so that she would be remembered. Her grave sits near Shelley’s, and although she is not nearly as famous, I was delighted that the staff knew who she was and where her grave was located.

After Woolson’s death, her reputation rapidly faded. Despite a series of obituaries that hailed her as America’s foremost female writer, she was left out of the literary canon formed at the turn of the twentieth century. She wasn’t alone: as the canon took shape, it was all male, eclipsing the contributions of women writers. (I wrote about this in my first book, Writing for Immortality: Women and the Emergence of High Literary Culture in America.)

Where to Go Next

My favorite Woolson stories are “St. Clair Flats,” “Sister St. Luke,” “Miss Grief,” “At the Chateau of Corinne,” and “In Sloane Street.” (The last three are about women writers!) If you are interested in her Italy stories, check out “A Florentine Experiment” and “The Front Yard.”

Her novels are looong, but East Angels is generally considered her best. Anne is an incredible coming-of-age story that my students felt deserves to be read alongside Jane Eyre. And For the Major, a short novella, is an intriguing and beautifully written story. These are all available online and in various reprint editions.

And of course there are the biography, the Norton collection of her stories, and the Library of America volume.

Now it’s your turn—Tell me, did you know about Woolson already? If so, how? Have you read any of her stories? Have I inspired you to give them a try?

Lastly, if you’re interested in future trips in Italy about women writers, let me know. My co-leader, Etta Madden, and I are compiling a contact list.

Some more pictures of from the trip:

Until next Saturday!