Author Archive: Eleanor Fitzsimons
THE LIFE AND LOVES OF E. NESBIT
Edith Nesbit is considered the inventor of the children’s adventure story and her brilliant children’s books influenced bestselling authors including C.S. Lewis, P. L. Travers, J.K. Rowling, and Jacqueline Wilson, to name but a few. But who was the person behind the best loved classics The Railway Children and Five Children and It? Eleanor Fitzsimons, acclaimed biographer and […]
Reaching Back and Recovering Women’s Voices
My passion is bringing women back from the past. I wrote Wilde’s Women when I realised that (male, for the most part) biographers had largely ignored the brilliant women who helped make Oscar Wilde the man he was. That’s why, last Saturday, 26 November, having spent two intensive days sitting in a lecture theatre in […]
Behind Every Great Man: Lady Jane Wilde
When Lady Jane Wilde (1821-1896) learned that her son Oscar’s latest play had the provisional title ‘A Good Woman’, she wrote to express her disapproval: ‘I do not like it- “A Good Woman”. It is mawkish. No one cares for a good woman. “A Noble Woman” would be better,’ she insisted. Oscar renamed his play […]
In Search of Wilde’s Women
If you were asked to name a man you would not readily associate with women, Oscar Wilde might spring to mind. Due to the relentless focus on his sexuality and the magnitude of the injustice perpetrated against him, Wilde’s life is often examined in terms of his relationships with men. Yet, as I discovered when […]
Creativity in Pregnancy
Pregnancy changes us. Hormones flood our bodies and we have no option but to slow down and refocus. Much has been written, often based on anecdotal experience, about the effects of pregnancy on a woman’s behaviour; from welling up at the story of a lost cat being reunited with its owner to retching at the […]
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