Trashionista

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Stella Gibbons

Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm often appears on top ten lists and it also features in my teetering to-be-read pile.

It's a parody of the pessimisitic rural novel (typified by Thomas Hardy), and features a feisty, melodramatic family called the Starkadders. It was made into a film (for TV) in both 1968 and1995. The later version was adapted by Malcolm Bradbury and starred Kate Beckinsale, Joanna Lumley, Stephen Fry and Ian McKellen.

Stella was born in 1902 and had a turbulent upbringing. Her father, Telford, was a doctor but also a drunk, depressive, and given to violent outbursts and dramatic scenes.  When she was eleven her father threatened to commit suicide, begging the young Stella to stop him. She would later put this (and much else) into her autobiographical novel Enderbury Heath.

Stella completed a diploma in Journalism at London University, wrote prose parodies and published poetry. Her first job was with a news service called the British United Press and then with the London Evening Standard.

In 1930, she started at the Lady magazine where she reportedly wrote Cold Comfort Farm in spare quiet moments and on the train to and from work. She had already published a poetry collection, The Mountain Beast, and counted Virginia Woolf as an admirer. She also met her future husband - actor and opera singer Allan Bourne Webb - whom she married in 1933. They had a daughter together, Laura.

The success of Cold Comfort Farm prompted her to leave the Lady and write full time. Something she continued throughout the rest of her life.

She published her last novel in 1970 but continued to write for her own pleasure. When she died, in 1989, Stella bequethed her unpublished work, including two more novels, to her grandsons.

Partial Bibliography

The Mountain Beast (poetry)
Cold Comfort Farm
The Priestess (poetry)
Endbury Heath
The Untidy Gnome
Miss Linsey and Pa
Roaring Tower and Other Stories (short stories)
The Lowland Venus (poetry)
Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm (short stories)
The Bachelor
Westwood
The Matchmaker
Conference at Cold Comfort Farm
Beside the Pearly Water (short stories)
The Charmers
Starlight
The Snow Woman
The Woods in Winter

Related posts: Thursday Trailblazer archives

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Grace Metalious

Born in 1924, Grace is most famous for writing Peyton Place (1956). The book sold millions worldwide and remained on the New York Times bestseller list. It was also made into a successful film starring Lana Turner and Lee Philips.

Peyton Place explores the dark secrets of the residents of a small New England town, and was denounced by critics as 'trash'.

She went on to write a further three novels, although none (unsuprisingly) enjoyed the same level of success.

Grace was criticised in the day for writing a racy, popular book - sound at all familar? In reply, she famously said, "If I'm a lousy writer, then an awful lot of people have lousy taste."

Grace was born in New Hampshire into a poor family with an absent father, but began writing at a young age. She married in her teens and became a housewife and mother, but despite financial hardship, never stopped writing.

Sadly, she died of alcholism in 1964.

Bibliography:

 

Peyton Place
Return to Peyton Place
The Tight White Collar
No Adam in Eden

Related posts: Thursday Trailblazer archive

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Erica Jong

Erica Jong wowed the literary scene with her debut novel, Fear of Flying, in 1973.  With a strong female protagonist - the  unforgettable Isadora Wing - and frank, relationship-centred content, there is no doubt that published today, it would've had a pink cover...

Henry Miller said: "This book will make literary history...because of it women are going to find their own voice and give us great sagas of sex, life, joy and adventure."

I remember reading Fear Of Flying as a teenager and being blown away by Isadora. Yes, she was confused and filled with internal struggle, but she was smart and funny, too. She was striving for balance in her life, and for a way to get what she wanted and needed (both in her relationships and creative work) - and she didn't apologise for her sexuality.

Erica followed Fear of Flying with How To Save Your Own Life (which picks up Isadora's story three years later), six other novels, poetry, a chidren's book, a memoir and non-fiction work on Henry Miller, Witches, feminism and writing.

Erica is a graduate of Barnard College and Columbia University, where she studied 18th Century English Literature. She also attended Columbia's graduate writing program. She has taught literature and writing all over the world.

Erica has been married four times. Her third marriage (to the novelist Jonathan Fast) produced a daughter, Molly Jong-Fast (who is also a novelist).

Novels:
Fear of Flying
How to Save Your Own Life
Fanny, Being the True History of Fanny Hackabout-Jones
Parachutes & Kisses
Sylock's Daughter (formerly titled Serenissima)
Any Woman's Blues
Inventing Memory
Sappho's Leap

Related posts: Best women authors of all time | Chick lit is a feminist issue

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Mary Stewart

I thoroughly enjoyed Mary Stewart's Nine Coaches Waiting (romantic suspense in an beautiful setting) so I thought I'd find out a bit more about the author.

Author of twenty novels, a volume of poetry and three books for children, Mary Stewart has been named as one of the founders of the romantic suspense genre.

And it's a good thing I said a 'bit more' as I wasn't very successful on hunting down many biographical details.

Mary Stewart was born in 1916 in County Durham, England, but she has lived in Scotland for many years.

She was a lecturer in English Language and Literature at Durham University until her marriage to Sir Frederick Stewart.

In addition to her romantic suspense novels (which were set in stunning locations in Scotland, the Greek islands, Spain, France and Austria), Mary wrote a series of novels based on Authurian legend. The books were a mix of historical and fantasy fiction and focused on Merlin.

Select bibliography:

The Merlin Series:

The Crystal Cave (1970)
The Hollow Hills (1973)
The Last Enchantment (1979)
The Wicked Day (1983)
The Prince and the Pilgrim (1995)

Other novels:

Madam, Will You Talk?
Nine Coaches Waiting
My Brother Michael
The Ivy Tree
The Moon-Spinners
This Rough Magic

Related posts: Thursday Trailblazer archive
   

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Martha Gellhorn

Martha Gellhorn is considered to be one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century.

Born in 1908, Gellhorn was ahead of her time. While women's rights were being fought, and the idea of a female journalist - let alone a female war reporter - was unusual to say the least, Gellhorn forged an admirable career that spans sixty-years.

In addition to extensive journalism, Gellhorn published novels,novellas, short stories, and collections of her travel writing.

She was the third wife of Ernest Hemingway, although when Hemingway sent her a telegram: 'Are you a war correspondent or my wife in bed?' She cut the ties between them and carried on with her adventures.

Aged 81, Gellhorn travelled to Panama to write about the US invasion. Aged 89, suffering from cancer and almost blind, Martha commited suicide with poison. In death, as in life, she commanded things on her own terms.

For more on Gellhorn's extraordinary life, I recommend Caroline Moorehead's marvellous biography.

Related posts: Thursday Trailblazer archive

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott is probably best known for Little Women, her semi-autobiographical novel. Jo March, the heroine of the story, has captured generations of hearts and minds with her feisty, strong personality.

Alcott  was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832. She and her three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth and May spent their childhood in Boston and in Concord, Massachusetts.

Like Jo March, young Louisa was a tomboy. She also loved reading, writing and putting on plays with her sisters.

The family were poor, and Louisa took a series of different jobs to help out. She continued writing, though, and when she was just 22, her first book Flower Fables was published.

As well as the extremely popular Little Women, with its follow-ups, Good Wives, Good Men and Jo's Boys, Louisa wrote racy 'pot-boilers' under the pseudonym A. M. Barnard. I had no idea!

I also didn't realise that Louisa published over 30 books and collections of stories in her lifetime. Louisa died from mercury-poisoning (she had been exposed during her nursing service in the American Civil War) aged 55.

Did you know? Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist. She supported women's suffrage and was the first woman to register to vote in Concord, Massachusetts.

The Alcott's family home, Orchard House, is open for guided tours. Or you can take a virtual look around.

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Truman Capote

Yes, I know he's not a woman! But he's still a Trailblazer, and he created Holly Golightly so even though he was WRONG about Audrey Hepburn (he hated her as Holly and wanted Marilyn Monroe in the part) I forgive him.

The author of Breakfast at Tiffany's of course, he also wrote other novels, short stories, plays and a musical but his best work is probably In Cold Blood, the meticulously-researched (sometimes a bit too closely, perhaps!) work of 'faction', which inspired hundreds of writers to turn their pens to narrative non-fiction. The book is compelling, stark, brutal and perfectly evocative of the horrible murders it describes. It lives with the reader for a long time.

On a lighter note, Capote was a legendarily fabulous party host and gossip, and lifelong friend of Harper Lee, who used him as the basis for the character of Dill Harris in To Kill A Mockingbird. He was also openly gay in an era were being honest about homosexuality was much rarer than it is today.

Unfortunately in his later years, Truman descended into depression and alcoholism, dying at just 59, but his great works live on.

Thursday Trailblazer archives.

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou is one of the American greats. Her first book of autobiography, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings presents a vivid, shocking but also hopeful portrait of life as a black girl in the American deep South of the 1930s. Her five other works of memoir are just as compelling.

The author of many books including some wonderful poetry, Angelou is a distinguished literary professor and was chosen to be Bill Clinton's inauguration poet, only the second poet ever to read at a President's inauguration. She's been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and The National Book Award and is great pals with and mentor to Oprah Winfrey. She's even won a Grammy! (For a spoken-word album of her poetry, but still...)

She has to be one of the best examples of someone overcoming great obstacles to achieve her dreams: abandoned at a young age by her parents, she was later sexually abused and became mute for several years after the man who raped her was beaten to death. She spent time homeless, became a single mother at 16 and worked as a singer, a prostitute and a madam as she tried to support herself and her son. Her life was never straightforward, but her optimism was rewarded with the publication of Caged Bird in 1969.

[Image: Santa Clara University; some addictional info from Wikipedia]

Trailblazer archives.

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Helen Fielding

Of course. Couldn't really leave her out seeing as she started all this chick lit lark! (Maybe).

Whether you think Helen Fielding, Jane Austen, Nora Ephron, Gail Parent or even Janet Evanovich invented the genre, what's pretty clear is that Helen Fielding helped make it what it is today. Her newspaper columns detailing the life and loves of one Miss Bridget Jones made both her and Bridge cultural icons and had publishers on both sides of the pond jumping on the chick lit bandwagon. It has to be the best-known and most-loved chick lit novel of all time, ever. (And it's the number one choice for fave chick lit novel in our author interviews!)

Fielding's inspired lots of modern-day writers and even many years later her best-known book is still a touching and brilliantly witty read. Bridget Jones's Diary is everything a chick lit book should be: funny, satirical and entertaining with a main character we can relate to.

And that's what makes Helen Fielding a Trailblazer.

Thursday Trailblazer archives.

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Jackie Collins

Bit of a departure this week because Diane's laid up with a migraine so I'm subbing for her!

We haven't featured Jackie Collins much here at Trashionista and we really should. Drop Dead Beautiful is her 25th book and she's got 400 million books in print worldwide. I haven't read any for a long time, I must admit, but she's a member of the elite club of books-I-read-in-one-sitting, which I'm sure she's just thrilled about. Anyway, here's Jackie on Wall Street Journal online talking about why she's just so marvellous.

[via Galleycat]

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Dodie Smith

I've been meaning to "do" Dodie for some time, and as it's cult classic week on Trashionista, what better time to honour the author of one of the first, and most fabulous YA/crossover novels: I Capture The Castle. A favourite of many modern authors (as Rachel Johnson will testify), ICTC is the charming, funny and sometimes emotionally raw tale of Cassandra, a romantic 17-year old who can't wait for her first love... but who finds things don't always work out the way you expect.

Of course it's The Hundred and One Dalmatians for which Dodie became famous (and she apparently got very cross if people spelt 'dalmatian' wrongly so I checked I'd got it right!) but she yearned to be a more 'serious' writer than her best-known works would suggest. She was a huge fan of Henry James and championed many modern novelists she admired, among them a young Julian Barnes. Smith also wrote plays (best known is Dear Octopus) and was passionate about the theatre. But her talent was for more lighthearted (but very well-constructed) fiction - and there's nothing wrong with that!

In her personal life, she was a survivor: a bit of a loner, she would escape to her school's library and find company in books. Orphaned by the age of 18, she struggled at first to support herself, but clearly she survived in the end, although struggled for money in her later years, after the death of her husband Alec Beesley with whom she had a very loving (if, it is thought, purely platonic) relationship for many years.

Read this: I Capture The Castle. Plus, if you're interested in learning more about this unconventional and opinionated writer, I highly recommend Valerie Grove's wonderfully entertaining biography Dear Dodie, which is easy-to-read yet very well researched.

Trailblazer archives.

[Picture via BBC]

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: You tell us!

Yep, call it a cop-out or call it (more accurately of course) gauging mass opinion, this week I'm asking you, the reader to tell us: who's your favourite Trailblazer? By Trailblazer, we mean someone who did something new and exciting, left their mark on the literary world. I've got lots of ideas for future weeks but this week, I want to hear from you.

It could be a chick lit author, a "classics" type, or even a man(!)... or it could be someone we've already featured (scroll down to see them all). It could even be a few people!

Tell us who your Trailblazer is...

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Judy Blume

Continuing with both the Judy Blume theme and the kids's writers theme of the last week or so, it's about time we honoured Judy Blume as a true Trailblazer. A revolutionary author for children and teenagers, Blume began tackling subjects no-one wants to talk to their parents about as far back as the early 1970s.

Taking on such taboos as religion, periods, masturbation, sex, bullying and even the Holocaust, Blume had all teenagers' concerns covered and managed to write books which covered serious topics in a reassuring way whilst making the plot and characters more important than the 'message'.

Her iconic book Forever, an honest (somewhat explicit) novel about a couple's first sexual relationship, taught generations of girls and boys what to expect from their 'first time' without either scaring kids off or glorifying sex... quite a feat. Her books are well-written and always go beyond the topics they cover to create realistic people with feelings young adults can relate to. It's that, rather than any sensational reading material, that keeps generations coming back to Blume.

Unfortunately, some adults can't see beyond depictions of subjects they're uncomfortable with, and Blume's books are often banned from school and even public libraries. But her readers appreciate her, as do The National Book award people: in 2004 they gave her Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

Trailblazer archives.

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Nora Ephron

Back in the early '80s, before anyone else thought to put together food-themed semi-fictional novels, Nora Ephron brought out the irresistible Heartburn, about a betrayed pregnant wife who cooks to stay sane. It's very funny, even over twenty years later.

Nora was always something of a pioneer: she was an early feminist and wrote on this and other hard-hitting topics for Esquire magazine as well as writing lighter articles on a range of subjects, which later were turned into essay collections including Crazy Salad and Scribble, Scribble.

She's also fiercely funny and clever, the screenwriter of my favourite film When Harry Met Sally, mother of two boys, an excellent non-fiction writer and blogger and a big player in Hollywood. What more could you ask for in a Trailblazer?

Read this: Heartburn.

Watch this: When Harry Met Sally.

Don't mention this: Bewitched.

Trailblazer archives.

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Bernice Rubens

Bernice Rubens was a class act, even if the same couldn't always be said for her characters! (See the suicidal woman whose life is turned around by her diary in A Five Year Sentence for an example).

Rubens died in 2004, aged 76, having just completed her autobiography (great timing! - see, classy). Like Marian Keyes, she began writing at the age of 30 (having worked as a teacher and then a film-maker first) but then threw herself into it, writing twenty four novels plus her memoir, When I Grow Up. She won the Booker Prize in 1970 for her book The Elected Member, which established her as one of the best writers of her generation.

She was simply a great writer, with the capacity to create memorable if often odd characters and fascinating scenarios. She was also rather opinionated, laying into Martin Amis for writing a novel about the Holocaust that she found inappropriate. She described her writing as "Better than most, not as good as some." And she was probably right.

Read this: Madame Sousatzka (which appears to be shamefully out of print).

SUGGEST A TRAILBLAZER! Who would you like to see here next Thursday? Leave a comment and let us know - or if you're shy email us instead.

Trailblazer archives.

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Lorrie Moore

This week's Trailblazer is a real personal favourite. J'adore Lorrie Moore.

Lorrie Moore was writing intelligent, witty, poignant and insightful short stories (and one novel) about life, love and relationships as far back as the early '80s She satirised things like America's self-help culture before most of us even knew it existed. She's smart, savvy, always ahead of the curve - and a brilliant writer, too. If I could write like anyone, it would be Lorrie Moore. (She's one of Nick Hornby's favourites too, so I'm in good company).

Moore's first book, the story collection Self-Help, was published when she was twenty-six. As well as her books, she has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review and in the anthology The Best American Short Stories. She now teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which may be why she hasn't published a book for nine years (since Birds of America) - a situation I hope is remedied soon. 

Read this: Self-Help, or Who Will Run The Frog Hospital?

What do you think - and who's your favourite trailblazer?

Trailblazer archives.

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Mary McCarthy

Mary McCarthy survived a tough early life to become a successful writer: she was orphaned age six and raised by her paternal grandparents, who were abusive. She was later taken in by her mother's parents, and had a happier time with them, crediting her grandfather with the shaping of her liberal political beliefs. Highly educated (at Vassar) and an atheist (after casting off her Catholic heritage) she had a sharp mind, and a lot of opinions: so becoming a critic was her ideal job and she wrote for a range of publications including Partisan Review.

But she is best known for her books, especially her ground-breaking novel The Group, which follows the lives of eight Vassar graduates and which Cosmo called "Juicy, shocking, witty, and almost continually brilliant."  (A chick lit precursor, perhaps?)

Like Dorothy Parker, McCarthy's fiction often had an autobiographical slant, and she indeed wrote a book of memoir: Memories of a Catholic Girlhood.

Fascinated by McCarthy's legendary literary feud with her rival writer Lillian Hellman (said McCarthy once, "Every word that woman writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'."), Nora Ephron wrote a play, Imaginary Friends about the pair.

Like Ephron, McCarthy married multiple times: four, in fact. She died in 1989. [Some additional info via Wikipedia.org and Amazon.com]

Read this: The Group

Trailblazer archives.

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch has become best known now for her descent into Alzheimer's disease and the portrayal of her by Kate Winslet and Judi Dench in the 2002 film Iris. But there was a lot more to this superbly-talented writer than a sad decline into disease.

Murdoch had a brilliant brain: in his book Iris, her husband John Bayley describes her working process. She would lock herself in her study, hard at work on her novel, for weeks on end. Then she'd emerge, relieved. She'd finished the novel now, she'd tell him... she just had to write it all down. Ironically, she had a marvellous memory and could store complex plots in her head before setting it all down on paper.  She studied at Oxford, where she met her husband and several other lovers (whether any of those relationships continued into her marriage is a matter of some - prurient - speculation).

She wrote plays and poetry too, but is best known for her novels: she wrote twenty-six between 1954 and 1995, winning the Booker Prize in 1978 (for The Sea, The Sea).

Born in 1919, she died in 1999. Murdoch's literary legacy will live on, though - many consider her one of the most significant British writers of the twentieth century, and anyone wanting to become a novelist could do a lot worse than to read and absorb her words and study (and enjoy) her storytelling technique - it's close to flawless. Hugely erudite, her books are influenced by everything from metaphyscics to the Bible... but they're also easy to read and understand even if you don't get all the references. And they will make you think.

Read this: Under The Net.

Thursday Trailblazer archives.

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Janet Evanovich

Yes, the great lady said it herself: she probably did, to a large extent, inspire the invention of chick lit: in the US, at least. So Janet Evanovich is the first living author to be featured in our Thursday Trailblazer series!

She started out writing romance novels, which  were moderately successful. But she really found her voice (and a million-selling career) when she invented Stephanie Plum, bounty hunter extraordinaire. Her first foray into smart, snarky, first-person narration, Stephanie is strong, kicks ass and is never afraid to speak her mind. She also looks fabulous (I'm sure). In short, she's an inspiration: and Janet is too, turning her career into a family business (her daughter, son and husband all work for/with her!) - although she has admitted she barely gets time to breathe...

Her novels are obviously inspired by great authors like Elmore Leonard, but Evanovich's own influence is clear in writers like Jenny Crusie and Lani Diane Rich.

Read this: One For The Money.

What do you think?

And who's your favourite trailblazer? Let us know!

Thursday Trailblazer archives.

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Jane Austen

Did you think we'd pick someone else for Austen Week?! Of course we couldn't...

As romance and chick lit authors have been testifying here all week, Austen is an inspiration to writers everywhere (male writers too, although not that many would like to admit it!) She wrote intelligent, well-plotted satirical novels that are hugely witty and which were often ahead of their time in their political and social themes. She's been called the original chick lit author - and as we all know, that's a huge compliment!

Anyone who wants to know how to write a romantic comedy (with a serious underlying moral) could do a lot worse than to study Miss Austen's six fine novels...

And you you read about why I find her an inspiring person (not just author), over at our new sister site Dollymix.

Read this: The Jane Austen boxed set (I know - cop out! I really couldn't choose...which do you like best?)

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Nancy Mitford

You know those rafts of books currently clogging shelves devoted to upper-class motherhood and how gosh darn hard it is? Nancy Mitford was there first - and ten times funnier. Not that she wrote about being a mother herself (she wasn't one) but she satirised her own eccentric landed gentry family in a series of novels, the best and best-known of which is the fabulous In Pursuit of Love.

Then, just when everyone thought that she was a one-trick pony, she went and wrote a series of well-respected biographies on everyone from Madame de Pompadour to The Sun King. She was a lot more learned than people gave her credit for, and very self-aware. The key to enjoying Mitford's humour is to not take it too seriously - she was a wicked satirist who refused to take life that seriously. She would have made a wonderful chick lit writer (as she would say, "do admit".) And the letters between her and her friends, including Evelyn Waugh, are just fabulous.

Read this: In Pursuit of Love and Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford.

What do you think - and who's your favourite trailblazer?

Thursday Trailblazer archives.

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston isn't as well known as iconic black authors Alice Walker, Toni Morrison or Maya Angelou but it's more than likely her writing influenced all three, among countless others.

After studying a degree in Anthropology (perhaps the ideal area of study for a novelist?!) Hurston used her training to write a study of secret societies in Haiti. She also wrote about African-American folklore and worked as a journalist. But her breakthrough and best known work came in 1937 with her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Perhaps surprisingly, Zora Neale Hurston was a Republican who believed black people living among white people was not necessarily the ideal social model. While I can't really see her point, I do admire the way she forged her own beliefs and her own path through life.

And of course, the fact that her work lives on, with everyone from Zadie Smith to Oprah Winfrey being a fan of her writing.

Read this: Their Eyes Were Watching God (There's also an Oprah-produced film, starring Halle Berry). [DS]

What do you think - and who's your favourite trailblazer?

Trailblazer archives

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Dorothy Parker

To some extent, Dorothy Parker is better known for being a witty raconteur than a great writer - but there's no reason a woman can't be both! (I know I am, ha ha).

She was a notorious gossip columnist for The New Yorker and then a theatre critic, writer of short stories, poet and member of the  infamous Algonquin round table (a group of artistes and witty people who met regularly to gossip around a round table at The Algonquin hotel in New York).

Parker quotes include:

"A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika."

"Brevity is the soul of lingerie"

and, of Katharine Hepburn: "She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B"...

Parker didn't really have a very happy life, marrying a gay man and an alcoholic and spending much of her life trying (not very successfully) to fight off depression. Perhaps that's what made her so bitchy, even to her friends. She had a good heart though and tried to help others: campaigning against the death penalty and Communist witch hunts, among other human rights issues, and helping victims of the Spanish Civil War. She went to Hollywood to be a screenwriter, but hated it, although she penned several films including classic A Star Is Born. her fighting spirit, her wit, and most of all her writing have inspired many women writers of today, including the inimitable Nora Ephron (who was lucky enough to meet her).

Read this: The Portable Dorothy Parker

What do you think? Who's your favourite trailblazer?

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Sylvia Plath

Yes, she was a depressive who killed herself, and I'm not suggesting that action should pave the way for other female authors, but it's a shame the way Sylvia Plath died has come to overshadow her wonderful writing.

I'm sure you'll have heard of her first and only novel, The Bell Jar, the story of one young woman's summer in New York, working as an intern at a magazine, and the mental breakdown that follows... It's not a happy story, but it's well-written and evocative and sadly, many young women can relate to that kind of depression - reading this book they'll know they've not alone. Plath was also a very talented (if often bleak) poet, with her collection Ariel probably her best-known and most-respected work. Her diaries are also published and show more of the inner workings of her mind. Perhaps most surprising is that Plath also wrote a children's book, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams. Let's try to remember her for her writing, and not for how she died...

Read this: The Bell Jar

Who's your favourite trailblazer?

Thursday Trailblazer archives

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Patricia Highsmith

The Talented Mr Ripley. Ripley's Game. Strangers on a Train. All came from the talented and slightly disturbed mind of Ms Patricia Highsmith, award-winning author of a ream of bestselling crime books which transcended 'genre fiction' (Not that genre fiction is a bad thing!)

I had a Patricia Highsmith-filled summer a few years ago (I like a touch of darkness in my summer reading - too much sun is bad for you) and read all her Ripley books, some short stories and a couple of her other novels. It was a wonderful time! Highsmith was such a great writer with a brilliant talent for creating suspense from thin air, and making the reader care about eminently detestable characters (I found myself hoping Tom Ripley would get away with his crimes!)  Her books are much more that whodunits and don't go in for any autopsy description or gore, she's much more interested in psychology and has surely influenced every female (and male) crime writer who followed her.

Highsmith's own life was sometimes the inspiration for her fiction: she wrote a lesbian stalker story, Carol in 1953 (very controversial at the time, so she used a pseudonym) based to some extent on her own experience. It's thought to be the first openly gay novel with a happy ending!

Macabre and dark, Highsmith certainly wasn't a girly girl, but her books aren't heavy or a struggle to read: they capture you and don't let you go.

Read this: The Talented Mr Ripley.

Thursday Trailblazer archives | Crime/mystery archives.

THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: E.M Delafield

When better than International Women's Day to launch a NEW! Trashionista series?! In Thursday Trailblazer,  we'll  focus each week on a female writer who (not surprisingly) blazed a trail, inspired the women writers who followed her and still has an important place in literature and in our hearts...

Today, a writer who for some strange reason isn't very well-known, but should be: E.M Delafield. She was working the Helen Fielding angle before Helen Fielding was even born. In 1930  she wrote the wry and satirical Diary of a Provincial Lady, (which has never been out of print) based on her own experiences as a young wife and mother. Three sequels followed, all about a worn-out  Devon housewife (although she's posh and has 'staff', her household management is poor in every sense of the word) her inattentive husband and raucous children. She may just have invented funny, diary-style fiction by and for women - and the mum-lit genre, too! Witty, intelligent and not above poking fun at herself, she'd doubtless be a bestselling chick-lit author if she'd only hung on another eighty years!

Read this: Diary of a Provincial Lady

Related post: Best women writers of all time (do you agree?)