Name: Writers as Readers
ISBN: 9781527561762

Writers as Readers

by now, there are few parts of the literary ecosystem I like better than the reclamation of lost classics, and for forty years, the UK's Virago Modern Classics has been doing just that for women writers in particular, with a list of authors that's thrillingly packed with masters of fiction. This lovely volume (which we've recently brought in from the UK) collects forty introductions to those editions, and they make a kind of conversation, of writers writing about the writers they love. (In a few cases, a writer who celebrates one author is then celebrated herself: Angela Carter introduces Charlotte Brontë, then Carmen Callil introduces Carter.) I usually try not to read an introduction before I read the book itself, but this is something else entirely: forty doors opening on writers familiar to me (Zora Neale Hurston, Edith Wharton) and unfamiliar (Antonia White, Bessie Head). I could wander these halls for quite some time. —Tom

New Book of the Week , July 23, 2018

New Book About Old Books of the Week
Writers as Readers: A Celebration of Virago Modern Classics
As regular readers may know by now, there are few parts of the literary ecosystem I like better than the reclamation of lost classics, and for forty years, the UK's Virago Modern Classics has been doing just that for women writers in particular, with a list of authors that's thrillingly packed with masters of fiction. This lovely volume (which we've recently brought in from the UK) collects forty introductions to those editions, and they make a kind of conversation, of writers writing about the writers they love. (In a few cases, a writer who celebrates one author is then celebrated herself: Angela Carter introduces Charlotte Brontë, then Carmen Callil introduces Carter.) I usually try not to read an introduction before I read the book itself, but this is something else entirely: forty doors opening on writers familiar to me (Zora Neale Hurston, Edith Wharton) and unfamiliar (Antonia White, Bessie Head). I could wander these halls for quite some time.