Description
by Gabi Reigh
A fascinating anthology of poetry and prose by leading feminist writers of the 20th century on the topic of women’s freedom and the idea of the ‘New Woman’. This international collection offers over 20 literary gems by favourite and newly rediscovered women writers.
Selected and introduced by Gabi Reigh who gives context to the selected contributions from women writers who were expressing their hopes for freedom and autonomy during the early part of the twentieth century.
Includes stories and poems by well-known authors writing in English such as Virginia Woolf, Radclyffe Hall, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, and Katherine Mansfield as well as many new translations of international women’s writing from the same period. These include writers such as Antonia Pozzi, Maria Messina, Fani Popova Mutafova, Magda Isanos, Gabriela Mistral, Carmen de Burgos, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, May Ziadeh, Yenta Serdatzky and others.
The Author and Editor
Gabi Reigh was born in Romania and moved to the UK in her teens. Her translations and fiction have been published in Modern Poetry in Translation, World Literature Today and The Fortnightly Review. She has won the Stephen Spender prize for poetry in translation and was shortlisted for the Tom-Gallon Society of Authors short story award. She is currently engaged in a translation project called Interbellum Series focusing on works from the Romanian interwar period, including the poetry of Lucian Blaga. Gabi’s translation of ‘The Town with Acacia Trees’ by Mihail Sebastian was awarded an English Pen Translates Award in 2019 and was published by Aurora Metro in September 2019. Her translation of Sebastian’s ‘Women’ was published in 2020 and her translation of Sebastian’s hit play’ A Star of my own’ was published in 2021 , all by Aurora Metro Books. In 2022 her translation of ‘The Illuminated Burrow: A Sanatorium Journal’ by Max Blecher was published by Twisted Spoon Press in the UK.
List of authors and works included:
A Woman by Fani Popova-Mutafova (translated by Petya Pavlova)
Thoughts by Myra Viola Wilds
The Little Governess by Katherine Mansfield
Villa Myosotis by Sorana Gurian (translated by Gabi Reigh)
The Mark on the Wall by Virginia Woolf
Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself [extract] by Radclyffe Hall
I sit and sew by Alice Dunbar Nelson
First Steps [extract] by Dorka Talmon (translated by Mira Glover)
Coming Home by Maria Messina (translated by Juliette Neil)
Vegetal Reverie by Magda Isanos (translated by Gabi Reigh)
The Iceberg by Zelda Fitzgerald
The Russian Princess by Carmen de Burgos (translated by Slava Faybysh)
Bring to Me All… by Marina Tsvetaeva (translated by Nina Kossman)
Autres Temps by Edith Wharton
Unheard by Yente Serdatsky (translated by Dalia Wolfson)
Fog by Gabriela Mistral (translated by Stuart Cooke)
Natalia [extract] by Fausta Cialente (translated by Laura Shanahan)
What makes this century worse? by Anna Akhmatova (translated by Olga Livshin)
Broken by Nataliya Kobrynska (translated by Hanna Leliv & Slava Faybysh)
Sunset by Antonia Pozzi (translated by Sonia di Placido)
Once Upon A Time by Ling Shuhua (translated by Leilei Chen)
Their Religions and our Marriages: Herland [extract] by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Goodbye Lebanon by May Ziadeh (translated by Rose DeMaris)
Reviews of other works by authors included in this anthology:
Maria Messina:
“Messina’s raw and psychologically deft tales render these women’s lives with pathos and dignity […] Absorbing and culturally rich, these stories should help secure Messina’s place in Italian letters.”
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“Twenty years ago, critic Harold Bloom wrote to the young poet Nina Kossman to tell her that her “intensely eloquent” translations of the poet Marina Tsvetaeva manage to “capture the doom-eager splendor of a superbly gifted poet.” W.S. Merwin wrote that these are “direct, strong, audible translations,” adding, “I hear Tsvetaeva’s voice, more of it, and in a new pitch, which makes something clear in her poems that I had only guessed at before.”
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“She has been the first among our modern writers to acknowledge the fact that there is a larger nationality in the common language of Spanish America, and has thus become one of the preachers of Americanism for the countries of Spanish blood, with an unequivocal note of warning against the tremendous power of absorption latent in its Anglo-Saxon neighbor. In the broadest sense, the lyrics of Gabriela Mistral find their outward expression in a forceful rhetoricism. But in art, form is the one and only thing by which the individual can stamp his seal on the common parcel; [..] And even at that, the expression of Gabriela Mistral being anteclassic, almost primitive, the ultimate explanation of her power upon Spanish-American thought can be found only in the simple and yet rare formula: originality is no more than sincerity, the heroic nakedness of the soul.”
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Fausta Cialente:
“The novel holds historical appeal as a portrait of life in a culturally divided Trieste in the late 1800s, and the evolution of the new Italian nation over a century. However, the themes and experiences throughout have a universal relevance and contemporary relatability for readers who have lived in another country, struggled to build a career (particularly as women), or experienced personal loss or marital breakdown – in other words, anyone and everyone.”
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Reviews of works translated by Gabi Reimay
“Sebastian gives a remarkably sensitive, candid portrayal of the coming of age of a girl seen through the eyes of a suitor. The author’s sensitivity to the emotions of his heroine Adriana is captured vividly in this translation in such passages as “every kiss was a wound, in which their lips, their breath, their teeth, the tips of their tongues drowned, warm and wet, and parted slowly, with a final hesitation, leaving on each mouth a blurred, faded smile.” – Dennis Deletant, Ion Ratiu Visiting Professor of Romanian Studies, Georgetown University, Washington DC
“Reigh handily preserves Sebastian’s supple, languid syntax, shaping each sentence to accentuate his exquisite lyricism, as when the couple remains unable to yield entirely to their desire “to be held in such a way that it obliterated everything apart from the ecstasy of the flesh. An endearingly wistful story of young love.” – Kirkus Reviews
“In The Town with Acacia Trees, Mihail Sebastian writes with the sensibility of a master jeweller. He crafts with precision and delicacy his characters’ intricate souls. Sebastian’s profound humanism, his utopian universalism, is as refreshing and urgent in today’s climate of rising nationalisms as it was in the interwar period. Gabi Reigh’s riveting translation matches Sebastian’s writing like a glove.” –Alex Boican, PhD in Romanian Literature
