About the Book
After a life of reading and writing, what does it feel like to be deprived of both, to be thrown back only on what's in your head? The literary snippets that emerge into Todd's consciousness during a month of radiation are sometimes apt, often ludicrous. They draw her back into childhood in Wales, Bermuda, Ceylon when literature functioned as friend and escape, to her unquiet past in sixties Ghana, then America at the dawn of the rights movements.
Her father, nearing 100, is caught in the same 'hospital-land' both learn the selfishness of sickness and both respond by telling stories.
About the Author :
Janet Todd, novelist (A Man of Genus, 2016) and internationally renowned scholar, was President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, and a Professor at Douglass College, Rutgers, NJ and at the University of Florida. An expert on women's writing and feminism and founder of the journal, Women's Writing, she has published biographies and critical work on many authors, including Jane Austen, the Shelley Circle, Mary Wollstonecraft and Aphra Behn (Aphra Behn: A Secret Life, 2017). Now an Honorary Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge and Professor Emerita at the University of Aberdeen, she lives in Cambridge and Venice, and is completing her third novel, Don't You Know There's a War On? (forthcoming, 2019).
Review :
"Todd has a good ear for tone and a deep understanding .... The Secret Life of Aphra Behn is an astonishingly thorough book" Emma Donoghue
"A rip-roaring read" Michele Roberts, The Sunday Times
"Genuinely original" Antonia Fraser, The Times
"Fascinating scholarship ...Todd succeeds in conveying Behn's vivacious character and the mores of the time" New York Times
"Thorough and stimulating.....clear readable prose.... a fascinating study of the public face of Behn, of its shifting masks and modes" Maureen Duffy, Literary Review
"Janet Todd is one of the foremost feminist literary historians writing in this country. She has devoted her literary career to recovering the lives and works of women writers overlooked and disparaged by generations of male literary scholars" Lisa Jardine, Independent on Sunday
"Janet Todd guides us with unfailing buoyancy and a wit all her own through the intricacies of Restoration theatre and politics.....[Behn's] epitaph seems to suggest her wit is buried with her. Not at all; it is 7now wondrously resurrected," Michael Foot, Evening Standard
"Janet Todd's brilliant biography of Aphra Behn ..... weaves a story together ...with precision, verve and confidence. Witty and pugnacious, Todd's book is as much a window on the public cacophony of the era as it is a portrait of a playwright." Melanie McGrath, Independent
"Janet Todd, a feminist scholar, has done a great deal of ground-breaking scholarship on women writers of the 'long eighteenth century'. The book is certainly accessible for the lay historian--it reads quickly and lightly...Even Todd's throwaway lines are steeped in learning and observation. Todd has documented so ably the daring attempt of a woman to write, both for her daily bread and for immortal fame." Ruth Perry, Ann Fetter Friedlaender Professor of the Humanities, MacVicar Fellow, MIT, Women's Review of Books
Praise for Janet Todd
Death and the Maidens: Fanny Wollstonecraft and the Shelley Circle (London: Profile Books; New York: 9781582433394 Counterpoint, 2007)
US reviews
Entertainment Weekly, "A juicy portrait, reconstructed ... with insight and wit"
Kirkus: "An engaging account of the pain of anonymity in the presence of selfish genius"
Starred PW: "[With] Terrific insight ... Todd's soundly and generously reimagining of women's lives {...} is a splendid work."
Caroline Franklin, TLS: "Painstaking reconstruction ... Janet Todd's book is pacily plotted and so carefully researched in all its details that she is able to shed fascinating light even on a relatively well-known story. This is a book which, while accessible enough for the general reader, will also be welcomed by specialists for a wealth of insights into one of literature's most famous dynasties."
Hilary Spurling, Observer: "Todd confronts more frankly than anyone has done before the fact that Shelley spent virtually his entire adult life trying to lure young girls away from the protection of their families."
Frances Wilson, Literary Review "Brilliant, utterly convincing"
Lorraine Fletcher, The Independent, "Todd has a good title for her reversal of Romantic hagiography; she uncovers what the cult of genius hides."
Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life (9780231121859 Columbia 2000, 9780231121842 pb 2002)
Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times: "Mary's life offers much scope for Todd's enjoyably satirical style, shrewdness, humour and compassion."
Rosemary Ashton, Times Literary Supplement: "Janet Todd tells the story of Mary Wollstonecraft's extraordinary life with calm judiciousness, an excellent sense of the social, intellectual and economic spheres in which her subject lived and wrote, and a good eye for small but telling details."
Mike Davies Chartist Nov/Dec 2000: "Todd's biography unfolds a passionate and creative life..."
Harriet Devine Jump: RES 2002: "Janet Todd conveys admirably not only her contradictoriness and her often infuriating lack of self-knowledge, but also her energy and her brilliance."
Kathryn Hughes, Literary Review: "The great strength of Janet Todd's biography lies in her willingness to unpick the feminist frame on which earlier lives of Wollstonecraft were stretched to fit."
Kris Lawson, Rain Taxi: "Todd's biography succeeds admirably. Wollstonecraft emerges as a genuine person who struggles to maintain her principles throughout her lifetime is instructive and inspiring even now."
Kirkus Review: "Intelligent and well-formed study."
Susanna Rustin, Financial Times: "Her biographer does honour to Wollstonecraft the thinker....This is an unsentimental and clearly argued biography, which offers many acute psychological insights."
Carlen Arnett, Ruminator Review: "In Janet Todd's new biography, Mary Wollstonecraft comes to life on the page as never before...Todd is an extraordinary researcher and sophisticated critic, this new biography conjures a vivid sense of Wollstonecraft as a revolutionary and as a woman, and offers precise insights into the progress of one writer's life."
Ruth Scurr, Times: "Janet Todd's new biography brilliantly captures the absurdity in Wollstonecraft while defending the view that her life was both important and revolutionary. Like Virginia Woolf, Todd interprets this life as a daring experiment. Wollstonecraft is all but resurrected in Janet Todd's distinguished book: brave, reckless and wide open to life. Virginia Woolf claimed for Wollstonecraft a special kind of immortality. Janet Todd has strengthened the case."
Rebel Daughters (9780670911165 Viking 2003, 9780141004891 Penguin, 2004)
Times Literary Supplement Nora Crook: "Todd is very good at untangling the web of allegiances and enmities of the Irish Ascendancy. Todd keeps her potentially sprawling narrative under control, without drawing the reins too tight or sacrificing informative and vivid social detail. Rebel Daughters is scrupulously researched... an excellent introduction to the ramifications of late eighteenth-century Irish politics."
Women's Friendship in Literature (Columbia 9780231045629 and pb 9780231045636)
Ronald Rosbottom, Comp Lit: "A thorough and intelligent study ...Todd reads the novels she has chosen imaginatively and effectively. Hers is not a skewed reading: the friendships have been recognized and discussed by dozens of critics before her. What she succeeds in doing is to show how the depiction of women's friendship in fiction betrays an ideological bias that itself helped define the modern novel." Ros Ballaster, Times Literary Supplement
"Todd's own editorial intervention is as inconspicuous as Behn's authorial presence in her plays."
Catherine Decker, Times: "With Todd's edition, readers can enter both Behn's world and the sophisticated world of twentieth-century studies."
Catherine Gallagher, Times Literary Supplement, "Out of the rich but disparate materials Todd has created a readable story."
