I'm going to go with the predictable first off and rec Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. I also found that Michael Cunningham's The Hours was a really interesting companion piece, and crystalised some things about Mrs Dalloway in my mind, and made me want to go back to the original book and look at it from other angles, so I'll throw that one in with it as well.
Next, I have a sort of odd half-rec, which is Swedish author Victoria Benedictsson. It's not a real rec because I haven't properly read her yet (I have, however, tracked down one of the few English copies of her most famous book, Money, which inhabit the Swedish library system, and it's on its way to me), so I'll have to get back to you on what I actually think of her. This might sound a bit weird. What I want to say about her, though, is that she was writing in the late 1800s and frankly discussed female sexuality and also apparently wrote about women who were people and also had a lot of critical things to say about the social conventions of the time. People tell me she's also a damn good writer. I do hope they're right and I'm pretty keen to find out. (She was also a contemporary of Ibsen and Strindberg, and apparently influenced them quite a bit, but is far less talked about outside of feminist circles. She was dismissed at the time as writing too much about women and women's issues and I think that problem actually hasn't gone away.)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-05-03 08:41 am (UTC)Next, I have a sort of odd half-rec, which is Swedish author Victoria Benedictsson. It's not a real rec because I haven't properly read her yet (I have, however, tracked down one of the few English copies of her most famous book, Money, which inhabit the Swedish library system, and it's on its way to me), so I'll have to get back to you on what I actually think of her. This might sound a bit weird. What I want to say about her, though, is that she was writing in the late 1800s and frankly discussed female sexuality and also apparently wrote about women who were people and also had a lot of critical things to say about the social conventions of the time. People tell me she's also a damn good writer. I do hope they're right and I'm pretty keen to find out. (She was also a contemporary of Ibsen and Strindberg, and apparently influenced them quite a bit, but is far less talked about outside of feminist circles. She was dismissed at the time as writing too much about women and women's issues and I think that problem actually hasn't gone away.)