Author Description

This essential collection, the first of its kind, draws together twenty-six stories by vital women writers. Here are stories written by the famous and by those whose names are less well known; recluses and extroverts; the rich and the impoverished; novelists and poets; heterosexuals, bisexuals, and lesbians. Many were American and English expatriates caught up in the artistic revolt of Paris between 1890 and 1940; others, who ventured forth in imagination only, drew on. Its innovative spirit. Many refuted traditional concepts of gender and sexuality; all challenged restrictive definitions of femininity. Colette, H.D., Susan Glaspell, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, Katherine Mansfield, Anais Nin, Dorothy Richardson, Jean Rhys, and May Sinclair number among this period's host of accomplished women writers. A woman becomes obsessed by a life-size doll and rescues the memory of its original model from neglect; another keeps. An array of Parisian gowns under lock and key rather than join the masquerade of fashion; two housewives use their attention to domestic detail to detect--and shield--a murderer. Here are writers who cast aside conventions. Rebellious, talented, provocative, they parade their tales of those who take life on their own terms--you know, that kind of woman.