A Secret Sisterhood

Male literary friendships are the stuff of legend; think Byron and Shelley, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. But the world’s best-loved female authors are usually portrayed as isolated eccentrics. Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney have, however, uncovered a wealth of hidden yet startling collaborations. A Secret Sisterhood looks at the friendships between Jane Austen and one of her household servants, playwright Anne Sharp; the daring feminist author Mary Taylor who shaped the work of the Bronte sisters; Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, most often portrayed as bitter foes, but in fact enjoyed a complex friendship fired by an underlying erotic charge. Through letters and diaries which have never been published before, the book will resurrect these hitherto forgotten stories of female friendships that were sometimes illicit, scandalous and volatile; sometimes supportive, radical or inspiring; but always, until now, tantalisingly consigned to the shadows. The book came out of the author’s own friendship; they began their own blog called Something Rhymed which charts female friendships and has been covered in the media and promoted by Margaret Atwood, Sheila Hancock and Kate Mosse.

Emma Claire Sweeney has lectured at City University, New York University in London, the Open University and the University of Cambridge. Her work has won Arts Council, Royal Literary Fund and Escalator Awards, and has been shortlisted for several others, including the Asham, Wasafiri and Fish. She writes for newspapers and magazines such as theGuardian, the Independent on Sunday, The Times, and Mslexia . Her debut novel Owl Song at Dawn was published by Legend Press in July 2016 to great acclaim. Emily Midorikawa lectures at City University and at New York University’s London campus. She has taught at the University of Cambridge and the Open University, as well as writing for the Daily Telegraph, the Independent on Sunday, The Times,Aesthetica and Mslexia. Her memoir ‘The Memory Album’ appeared in Tangled Roots, an Arts Council-sponsored collection that celebrates the stories of mixed-race families. Emily is the winner of the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize 2015, and was longlisted for the Mslexia Novel Competition. She was a runner-up in the SI Leeds Literary Prize, judged by Margaret Busby, and the Yeovil Literary Prize, judged by Tracy Chevalier.