Analysis finds proportion of female authors and characters fell after 19th century, with male authors remaining ‘remarkably resistant’ to writing women Women in novels have tended to “feel”, while men “get”; women smile or laugh, while men grin or chuckle. An analysis of more than 100,000 novels spanning more than 200 years shows how gendered even seemingly innocuous words can be – as well as revealing an unexpected decline in the proportion of female novelists from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century.Academics from the universities of Illinois and California at Berkeley used an algorithm to examine 104,000 works of fiction dating from 1780 to 2007, drawn mostly from HathiTrust Digital Library. The algorithm identified both author and character genders. The academics expected to see an increase in the prominence of female characters in literature across the two centuries. Instead, “from the 19th century through the early 1960s we see a story of steady decline,” write Ted Underwood, David Bamman and Sabrina Lee in their paper The Transformation of Gender in English-Language Fiction, which has just been published in the Journal of Cultural Analytics.No one has been willing to advance the dismal suggestion that the whole story from 1800 to 1960 was a story of declineOn average, men remain remarkably resistant to giving women more than a third of the character-space in their stories Related: Pushing back: why it's time for women to rewrite the story Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2018-02-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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‘The Paris Bookseller’ by Kerri Maher and ‘The Diamond Eye’ by Kate Quinn are among several great new works of historical fiction. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-03-02 15:27:34 UTC ]
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‘The War for Gloria’ is a plainspoken tale of a man finding his way the tough way Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-10-04 16:11:35 UTC ]
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Bookshops are playing a "vital" role in the recovery and regeneration of high streets in towns across the UK and Ireland, early findings from a survey have found. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-09-13 12:21:31 UTC ]
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Independent publisher Influx Press is launching a new fiction prize for Black British women, in partnership with lifestyle platform Black Ballad. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-07-27 19:32:32 UTC ]
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Based on a true story, Karin Tanabe’s new book is a mid-20th-century period piece, but oh, how familiar it seems. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-07-15 07:00:00 UTC ]
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“The Every,” a follow-up to his hit book “The Circle,” will be available in independent bookstores in October. The paperback will arrive just six weeks later, but the hardcover will remain exclusive to independent stores. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-06-09 14:00:08 UTC ]
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Lisa Taddeo, whose book "Three Women" broke the mold of immersive journalism, talks about her first novel, "Animal," and the struggle to write and live. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2021-05-27 13:00:06 UTC ]
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Weiner’s 15th novel is a #MeToo story that’s also a broader tale about how women find their way. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-05-27 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Megan Nolan's "Acts of Desperation," about a woman in thrall to an older man, stands out from similar tales with an uncannily self-aware narrator. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2021-03-03 15:00:19 UTC ]
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It’s a truism that historical fiction reveals more about its own age it than the one it portrays. We can’t escape or even perceive our own biases, the reasoning goes, so we end up helplessly projecting them onto a past where they don’t belong. But the past is not a museum, and contemporary... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2021-01-08 12:00:00 UTC ]
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In this episode, New York Times bestselling author Sue Monk Kidd discusses her upcoming novel The Book of Longings, which is from the point of view of Ana, the wife of Jesus. Kidd talks to Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell about how alternate histories... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-04-09 17:30:46 UTC ]
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I often talk about how I created A Phoenix First Must Burn, my anthology of fantasy stories by black women authors, for my younger self, a girl who loved fantasy and science fiction and so desperately wanted to see herself in those worlds. It’s a strange experience to create the thing you wanted... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2020-03-25 11:00:00 UTC ]
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My novel The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida is a story of how a young woman’s unexplained suicide shapes and transforms the lives of those she left behind. It’s a literary mystery with elements of magical realism set in Japan, not unlike my debut novel Rainbirds. Because of these, I am often... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2020-03-09 11:00:00 UTC ]
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At the training college for the Women’s Royal Naval Service (also called the Wrens) in Greenwich, Madge Barnes joined a cohort of other young recruits to learn not only nautical terms and naval traditions, but also, in that nobly stifling British way, the rules of civility and decorum. In the... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-07 09:49:43 UTC ]
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Funny women who write, Helen Lederer decided, needed award recognition. So she started a prize program, Comedy Women in Print. This is its second year. The post The UK’s Comedy Women in Print Prize Adds Graphic Novel Category appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2019-10-25 05:45:30 UTC ]
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Although picture has improved since 2017, research shows that last year only 4% of books for the youngest readers featured a minority ethnic heroIn most children’s books, according to one London primary school pupil, “people are peach”. Another feels there are “no black people” in the stories... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-09-19 11:15:59 UTC ]
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Researchers have used machine-learning (a reading robot!) to read 3.5 million books published between 1900 and 2008, and tally all the adjectives used to describe men and women. Not surprisingly, women in books are beautiful and men are true-hearted! Yup, when positively described, women (or... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-08-28 13:30:07 UTC ]
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Oneworld has scooped another novel from Women’s Prize-winner Tayari Jones, a "compelling story of two half-sisters bound by family secrets". Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-08-18 12:05:38 UTC ]
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The Spanish philosopher and poet George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” As a genre, historical fiction allows us to shuttle back in time to stand in the shoes, clogs, chopines, and go-go boots of people—real and imagined—to consider the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-07-15 11:00:13 UTC ]
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The News Media Alliance today published findings from a new study that analyzes how Google uses and benefits from news. Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2019-06-10 15:10:50 UTC ]
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