Now in November (23 page)

Johnson was born June 20, 1910, in Kirkwood, Missouri. She attended Washington University, but did not earn a degree. She wrote
Now In November
while living in her mother's attic in Webster Groves, Missouri. She married Grant G. Cannon, editor in chief of the Farm Quarterly, in 1942. The couple moved to Iowa City, where she taught at the University of Iowa for three years, before they then moved to Hamilton County, Ohio. Johnson stayed in the Cincinnati area until her death from pneumonia on February 27, 1990.

The Feminist Press
is an independent, nonprofit literary publisher that promotes freedom of expression and social justice. Founded in 1970, we began as a crucial publishing component of second wave feminism, reprinting feminist classics by writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and providing much-needed texts for the developing field of women's studies with books by Barbara Ehrenreich and Grace Paley. We publish feminist literature from around the world, by best-selling authors such as Shahrnush Parsipur, Ruth Kluger, and Ama Ata Aidoo; and North American writers of diverse race and class experience, such as Paule Marshall and Rahna Reiko Rizzuto. We have become the vanguard for books on contemporary feminist issues of equality and gender identity, with authors as various as Anita Hill, Justin Vivian Bond, and Ann Jones. We seek out innovative, often surprising books that tell a different story.

See our complete list of books at
feministpress.org
, and join the Friends of FP to receive all our books at a great discount.

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM THE FEMINIST PRESS

A Woman of Genius

Mary Austin

ISBN: 9780935312447

First published in 1912, this novel draws its inspiration directly from Austin's own life and experiences as a talented woman—in the novel, an actress—whose pursuit of a career places her in conflict with the values of a midwestern town. The hero's decision to leave a dull husband to pursue a career, and her rise to fame, are portrayed against the background of the cramping social order of the time.

“Mrs. Austin tells the story brilliantly with a rich, deep knowledge of human nature, and with an individuality in her way of looking at things that affords many a delightful surprise. Her imagination runs on swift, dramatic feet, and ennobles her style every now and then with a seeress-like touch, to which her large outlook upon life and her concern with its deepest meanings give sanction.”

—The New York Times

“
A Woman of Genius
. . . says no to men and conventional marriage and yes to living and productive work. Far from simply promoting female self-determination, however, or celebrating the romantic right of genius to overrun all obstacles, including the human ones, the novel articulates the conflicts of a transitional generation of women who relinquished the perquisites of protected, genteel womanhood for the rewards and responsibilities of the pursuit of public achievement and service to the community. . . .
A Woman of Genius
is, like Austin herself, an overlooked classic of feminism. Olivia Lattimore occupies a pivotal position in the long procession of gifted women in literature.”

—From the afterword by Nancy Porter

These Modern Women

Elaine Showalter

ISBN: 9781558610071

In 1926–27,
The Nation
published these seventeen anonymous essays by “women active in professional and public life.” At that time
The Nation
editors noted that, “Our object is to discover the origin of their modern point of view toward men, marriage, children, and jobs.” In the introduction, Elaine Showalter discusses the issues raised—from alcoholism to celibacy, from mother-daughter relationships to politics—and identifies and examines the lives of the authors, among whom are Crystal Eastman, Mary Austin, and Genevieve Taggard.

“[This is] an exciting book, painful and exhilarating too. . . . What do they have to tell us, these letters from the feminist attic? Why publish them now . . .? For a number of reasons. First, experience is not all that different. These essays record the continuing effort necessary if women are to become the human creatures they want to be.”

—Elizabeth Janeway

“These brief, often bitter-sweet reflections on their lives by a group of 1920s feminists reveal aspects of our struggle from a time that is too readily overlooked. Elaine Showalter's provocative and interesting introduction makes clear that we neglect this period at our peril. In calling our attention to facts we might prefer to ignore, Showalter performs an important service.”

—Alix Kates Shulman

The Unpossessed

Tess Slesinger

eISBN: 9781558616356 | ISBN: 9780935312218

The first depiction of radical chic in fiction, The Unpossessed (1934) follows a group of Greenwich Village intellectuals engaged in founding a magazine. In relating the stories of three couples, the novel raises questions that still torment women and men today: Is marriage a viable institution? Should one bear children in hard times? Does sexuality destroy the possibility of significant political action? And what is the political responsibility of intellectuals?

“It's sophisticated . . . full of cutting observations and over-eager
images, satiric, then ecstatic, alternating social criticism with displays of sexual and intellectual coquetry.”

—Village Voice

“The Unpossessed has a ferocious drive, a wild and unfaltering rhythm, a quality of malice and understanding, a complete grasp of most of the characters concerned in the plot, a terrifically effective denouement, and construction that is impeccable.”

—New York Times

“She has a keen mind and a cutting wit. There is as fine satire of the intellectual near-revolutionists, the empty ‘proletarian' artists as I have seen anywhere. She writes well. At her best, Miss Slesinger has sheer genius.”

—New York Herald Tribune

Life in the Iron Mills and Other Stories

Rebecca Harding Davis

eISBN: 9781558616257 | ISBN: 9780935312393

This 1861 classic of social realism—the first book to be reprinted by the Feminist Press in its series of rediscovered women writers—remains a powerful evocation of what Davis herself called “thwarted, wasted lives . . . mighty hungers . . . and unawakened powers.”
The New York Times Book Review
said of the novella: “You must read this book and let your heart be broken.” With an insightful biographical essay by Tillie Olsen, and with two short stories never before anthologized, this expanded edition is the most complete volume available from this important nineteenth-century writer.

“You must read this book and let your heart be broken.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“You are about to give the life of your reading to a forgotten American classic, Rebecca Harding's Life in the Iron Mills, reprinted here after 124 years from the April 1861 Atlantic Monthly. Without precedent or predecessor, it recorded what no one else recorded; alone in its epoch and for decades to come, saw the significance, the presage, in scorned or unseen native materials—and wrought them into art. Written in
secret and in isolation by a thirty-year-old unmarried woman who lived far from literary circles of any kind, it won instant fame—to sleep in ever deepening neglect in our time.”

—Tillie Olsen

“One of the earliest recognitions in American literature of the existence of the very poor.”

—Michele Murray,
National Observer

“
Life in the Iron Mills
has been described as the ‘Uncle Tom's Cabin of American capitalism,' a work which first acknowledged the dignity and intelligence of working people. . . . It's an American classic that foreshadowed the naturalist technique of later nineteenth-century writers.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

Not So Quiet ...

Helena Zenna Smith

eISBN: 9781558616325 | ISBN: 9780935312829

Praised by the
Chicago Sun-Times
for its “furious, indignant power,” this story offers a rare, funny, bitter, and feminist look at war. First published in London in 1930,
Not So Quiet
... (on the Western Front) describes a group of British women ambulance drivers on the French front lines during World War I, surviving shell fire, cold, and their punishing commandant, “Mrs. Bitch.” The novel takes the guise of an autobiography by Smith, pseudonym for Evadne Price. The novel's power comes from Smith's outrage at the senselessness of war, at her country's complacent patriotism, and her own daily contact with the suffering and the wounded.

“A powerful condemnation of war and the societies that glamorize it.”

—Kirkus

“This intriguing book . . . vividly and impressionistically tells of the author's tour of duty in France. . . . One welcomes its return to print.”

—William Boyd,
New York Times Book Review

“The reader of Not So Quiet . . . today is immediately gripped by its furious, indignant power.”

—Alida Becker,
Chicago Sun-Times