Sister Novelists - Review of Book by Devoney Looser
Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Jane Austen and the Brontës by Devoney Looser. I wonder whether the blurb on this book was written by the publishers (Bloomsbury), or by the author. Nowadays publishers usually ask the author to write it. It claims:-"Before the Brontë sisters picked up their pens, or Jane Austen's heroines Elizabeth and Jane Bennet became household names, the literary world was celebrating a different pair of sisters: Jane and Anna Maria Porter. The Porters -- exact contemporaries of Jane Austen -- were brilliant, attractive, self-made single women of polite reputation who between them published 26 books and achieved global fame. They socialized among the rich and famous, tried to hide their family's considerable debt, and fell dramatically in and out of love. Their moving letters to each other confess every detail. Because the celebrity sisters expected their renown to live on, they preserved their papers, and the...