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Authors |
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I'd like to introduce a few of my
favorite authors. Click on the name for more info about each writer.
Once you're on the first page, the one about Corinna, you can click
on at the bottom of the page. If you'd like to find out about my
favorite mystery writers, go to the bottom of this page and click.
Finally, after that page, you'll find my favorite fantasy writers.
Let's start at the beginning, way back in ancient times. But, you say, there were no women writers in those days. Well, not that many, that's true. But you've probably heard of Sappho. Most people have. Maybe you even think you know what she was about. But contrary to what you've heard, there's no way of knowing whether she was a lesbian or not. In those days, 'gay' poetry was all the vogue. Men wrote love poems about lovely young boys. Not all of those men actually had sex with the boys, but the truth is, if a man wrote love poetry to a young woman, the woman's family might kill both her and her admirer. Not a good idea. So the men 'loved' boys. Some aristocratic women were privileged enough to get an education and even fewer were allowed to indulge in the arts. Sappho seems to have been one of them. She was the leader of a religious college for girls. (Or something like that). It's hard to make comparisons with present day society. Anyway, she was in charge of a bunch of teenagers. If she'd written love poetry about a boy, people might have said she was a whore. She'd risk death. So she wrote about the girls. It was called emulation. To write poetry similar to what men wrote. And preferably to be better than the other poets. There's a story told about Sappho, telling how she flung herself off a cliff over unrequited love for a young man. That's not a true story, most likely. It's just a retelling of an old fertility myth. Though in most cases, it was the young paramour who died, a sacrifice to the gods. Only he usually came back to life. Like the plants grow again in spring, after dying in the autumn. |