Lost Ladies of Lit

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From bushwhacking through the Congo to smoking opium in Shanghai, Emily “Mickey” Hahn turned her need for adventure into captivating copy for The New Yorker, which published her vivid, first-person dispatches over the span of 60 years. Hahn also wrote more than 50 books and became a household name in America following her bestselling 1944 memoir China to Me. Author Julia Cooke joins us to discuss how Mickey’s unapologetic ambitions – (“Nobody told me not to go,” she once quipped) – shaped a brand of voice-driven reporting decades before the “new journalists” of the 1960s got credit for the style.
Mentioned in this episode:
Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing and the World by Julia Cooke
Come Fly The World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women on Pan Am by Julia Cooke
No Hurry to Get Home by Emily Hahn
Congo Solo: Misadventures Two Degrees North by Emily Hahn
China To Me: A Partial Biography by Emily Hahn
Mr. Pan by Emily Hahn
The Soong Sisters by Emily Hahn
A Degree of Prudery: A Biography of Fanny Burney by Emily Hahn
Mabel: A Biography of Mabel Dodge Luhan by Emiy Hahn
Affair by Emily Hahn
Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 30 on Martha Gellhorn
Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 232 on Katharine S. White

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Chronicles, confidantes, confessionals. Diaries have historically served all these purposes and more, allowing women to speak out in a world that sometimes preferred they keep mum (just ask Mrs. Samuel Pepys). But where should these very personal recollections end up once the lives they document cease? We explore the options this week with author Betsy Rubiner, whose new book Our Diaries, Ourselves explores the phenomenon of diary-writing and its importance. Along the way, we’ll explore some of the “lost lady” diarists whose private records are worth reading.
Mentioned in this episode:
Lost Ladies of Lit “Become A Patron”
Our Diaries, Ourselves: How Diarists Chronicle Their Lives and Document Our World by Betsy Rubiner
The Diary of Anne Frank
The Diary of Samuel Pepys
James Boswell’s London Journal
 The Extraordinary Work of Ordinary Writing by Jennifer Sinor. 
Anais Nin
Virginia Woolf
Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
The American Diary Project
 A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785 to 1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
 The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
The Diary of Anne Lister
“Gentleman Jack”
 Emilie Davis' Civil War: The Diaries of a Free Black Woman in Philadelphia 1863 to 1865 edited by Judith Geisbert 
 Notes from a Colored Girl: The Civil War Pocket Diaries of Emilie Francis Davis by Karsonya Wise Whitehead.
 The Reconstruction Diary of Frances Anne Rollin edited by Jennifer Putzi
 Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution: A History from Below by Jane Kamensky 
 Secret Voices: A Year of Women's Diaries edited by Sarah Gristwood. 
 The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World’s Greatest Diarists edited by Irene and Alan Taylor
 The Diaries of Girls and Women: A Midwestern Sampler edited by Suzanne L. Bunkers.
 A Day at a Time: The Diary Literature of American Women From 1764 to Present edited by Margo Culley
 Revelations: Diaries of Women edited by Mary Jane Moffat and Charlotte Painter
 Life Notes: Personal Writings by Contemporary Black Women edited by Patricia Bell-Scott
 We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the 19th Century edited by Dorothy Sterling

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First surfacing in 1896 at a marketplace in Cairo, scraps of ancient papyrus left scholars gobsmacked by the discovery: a fragmented account of Mary Magdalene in conversation with Jesus and his disciples. The codex’s circuitous path to publication in the mid-20th century is almost as compelling a tale as the gospel itself, which redefines the role of women in early Christianity and features a salvation that’s rooted in individual agency. Religious historian Sarah Parkhouse joins us from the University of Manchester to discuss the reclamation of Mary’s words and historical reputation, as well as how newly unearthed Greek fragments lend credence to this long-lost gnostic text.
Mentioned in this episode:
The Gospel of Mary
Read The Gospel of Mary
Mary Magdalene
Eschatology and the Savior: The ‘Gospel of Mary’ among Early Christian Dialogue Gospels by Sarah Parkhouse
The Gospel of Mary Magdala by Karen L. King
Carl Reinhardt
Irenaeus
The concept of Entanglement in the Gospel of Mary
The Dark Tower by Stephen King
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Oxyrhynchus
Pope Gregory I
The Gospel of Philip
Sophia: The Wisdom of God by Sergei Bulgakov
History of The Acts of Paul and Thecla
Read The Acts of Paul and Thecla
The Girl Who Baptized Herself: How a Lost Scripture About a Saint Named Thecla Reveals the Power of Knowing Our Worth by Meggan Watterson
“Has a Missing Fragment of the Gospel of Mary Been Discovered?” from The Bible and Beyond Podcast
Discussion on Mary Magdalene’s influence on the songs of Tori Amos
Video clip from The Gospel of Mary opera by Mark Adamo

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“Things that go bump in the night…?” Try sleep-deprived mothers, for starters. British author Celia Fremlin recognized the terrors of trying to hold it together while caring for young children, earning her an Edgar Award for her 1959 debut novel The Hours Before Dawn. Having recently published her own suspense-filled novel, returning guest Emily Midorikawa joins us to discuss Fremlin’s ability to cast a dark shadow on domesticity. This page-turning tale of a beleaguered mum facing inner doubts and outward threats will also kick off the first “Lost Ladies of Lit” online reading group, generously hosted by The Sitting Room Library.
Mentioned in this episode:
Reading Group for The Hours Before Dawn hosted by The Sitting Room Library.
The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin
A Tiny Speck of Black and Then Nothing by Emily Midorikawa
Out of the Shadows: Six Visionary Victorian Women in Search of a Public Voice by Emily Midorikawa
A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney
Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 85 on Mary Taylor
Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 286 on Mary Elizabeth Braddon
The Seven Chars of Chelsea by Celia Fremilin
Appointment With Yesterday by Celia Fremlin
Patricia Highsmith
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing
Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder
The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

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We're concluding our own "Hot Girl Summer" with the writer Mary MacLane, a defiant and wildly egotistical 19-year-old resident of Butte, Montana, whose confessional diary implored the “kind devil” to deliver her from a life of bourgeois boredom. Professor Cathryn Halverson joins us to discuss MacLane’s life, angst and the reading public’s reaction to her adolescent intensity.
Mentioned in this episode:
I Await the Devil’s Coming/The Story of Mary MacLane by Mary MacLane (Project Gutenberg)
MTV’s “My So-Called Life”
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening
Herbert S. Stone & Co.
Marie Bashkirtseff
The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff: I am the Most Interesting Woman of All Volume I and Lust for Glory Volume II
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
“Men Who Have Made Love to Me” 
I, Mary MacLane by Mary MacLane
Faraway Women and the Atlantic Monthly by Cathryn Halverson
Maverick Autobiographies: Women Writers and the American West by Cathryn Halverson
Playing House in the American West: Western Women’s Life Narratives by Cathryn Halverson

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