Sunday check-in...

29 January 2023: Long Sunday shift at the office but I made some decent progress. Finished my Southworth entry (actually quite a bit of fun to work on) and shifted onto starting research for the general entry on Lydia Maria Child. 

On the non-work front, I had a good, long phone call with Vogel. Took my walk after I got home, as the sun started to go down. Now I'm watching Tár (so far, interesting and tense!) and thinking about dinner. Also working my way through the next book club selection (I Capture the Castle) and feel that pull to get back to it. That, combined with a new episode of The Last of Us, promises a pretty good Sunday evening, all things considered. 

"who being satisfied, say nothing..."

23 January 2023: "When Robert Bonner told E.D.E.N. Southworth in 1878 that he had received letters from readers of the New York Ledger complaining that her fiction contained too many 'unimportant details,' Southworth could not hide her irritation, replying that there were 'half a million readers who being satisfied, say nothing' but that those who did complain probably did so because 'they are in a hurry to get to the secret mystery of the plot" (Kelley 220).

Love this little bit of snark from Southworth, who realizes that people are more likely to share complaints than compliments, even 140+ years ago.

Work Cited

Kelley, Mary. Public Woman, Private Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America. U of North Carolina P, 2017. 

On to Southworth...

16 January 2023: You know, when I have time to work on these darn book entries, they go kind of quickly. Interesting. Anyway, feeling good because I finished my Rebecca Harding Davis entry today and can now focus more fully on E.D.E.N. Southworth. On we go! 

Manifesting Capitola Vibes...

1 January 2023: "Now, had Capitola run there is little doubt but that, in the blindness of his fury, he would have caught and beat her then and there. But Cap saw him coming, drew up her tiny form, folded her arms and looked him directly in the face. This stopped him; but, like a mettlesome old horse suddenly pulled up in full career, he stamped and reared and plunged with fury, and foamed and spluttered and stuttered before he could get words out" (Southworth 258).

I have never read E.D.E.N. Southworth's The Hidden Hand before, but I am reading now for the book and my goodness, it is fun and so silly, but in great ways. And I am going to do my best to channel Capitola when obstacles come my way in 2023. 

Work Cited

Southworth, E.D.E.N. The Hidden Hand. 1888. Oxford UP, 1997.