"he turned and ran several steps under the pressure of the shock..."

17 May 2023: Really love this opening to Emily Satterwhite's article, particularly the last lines: "On 4 March 1885, Atlantic Monthly editor Thomas Bailey Aldrich was shocked to discover that long-time contributor M. N. Murfree was not, as he had assumed, a man but the 'delicate looking lady' standing before him in his Boston offices. The Boston Herald’s account of the meeting claimed that Aldrich 'would have been better prepared' to learn that the popular local-color writer was 'A Strapping Six-foot Tennessean' than Mary Noailles Murfree (1850–1922), a youthful-looking woman who walked with a slight limp. The Herald reported that Aldrich 'could hardly have been more astounded had the roof fallen in, and he turned and ran several steps under the pressure of the shock'" (Satterwhite 49).

Work Cited

Satterwhite, Emily. “Reading Craddock, Reading Murfree: Local Color, Authenticity, and Geographies of Reception.” American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography, vol. 78, no. 1, Mar. 2006, pp. 59–88. EBSCOhost.