Literary friendships between the greatest voices in literature have been celebrated by readers for as long as we’ve been aware of them. From Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway’s tumultuous friendship to C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien’s lasting friendship that led to the founding of the literary discussion group The Inklings, these friendships have been well documented throughout history. We know about the camaraderie, support, artistic challenge, and (mostly) friendly competition these friendships provided the writers in them. But what do all of these writers have in common?
They’re men.
Though perhaps thought to not exist in any notable respect or thought to be lost to the mists of time, friendships between classic female writers were actually more common than many would first imagine. And yet we don’t talk about them. They’re hardly well known and therefore aren’t celebrated or revered the same way some of the friendships between favorite male writers are. The reasons behind this lack of attention on these female friendships is surely complex. Throughout history, friendships between women were often discouraged by husbands, fathers, and other men in positions of authority over women. Though there were periods when this attitude shifted (Victorian England, for example, when female friendships were encouraged and bordered on romantic), history has largely been unkind to friendships between women. To keep women isolated, to keep them more emotionally reliant on the men in their lives—the reasons are as numerous as they are complex. However, women—and writers among them—kept these friendships hidden and active, finding all the companionship, challenge, and support in each other that men found within their friendships.
Further Reading: Girl Talk: What Science Can Tell Us About Female Friendship
With our last article of Women’s History Month, House of Cadmus is putting a spotlight on some of the friendships that are worth celebrating between female writers and including them in the modern conversation surrounding impactful classic writers.
Jane Austen and Anne Sharp
Though one of the most popular classic novelists of all time, very little detail is known about Jane Austen’s life and it seems that was exactly how she and her family wanted it. Over 25 years after Jane’s death in 1817, Jane’s sister destroyed or censored most of Jane’s letters to her, spreading what remained amongst family as mementoes. Jane’s niece, daughter of her brother Francis, destroyed Jane’s correspondence with him after his death in 1865. With no surviving diaries or notebooks, modern readers who seek to learn more about Jane are mostly out of luck. Though the destruction of letters and nearly all knowledge of Jane’s personality and opinions (besides those that are gleaned and interpreted from her novels) came posthumously, it contributes to the image readers have held of her for centuries: a reclusive, lone female writer.
While much of Jane’s life remains unknown, we know that she was not without a rewarding, lasting friendship with a fellow female writer. Anne Sharp began as Jane’s niece’s governess, a position she held from 1804 to 1806, where the two met and formed a friendship that crossed class lines. Sharp, who worked as a governess, was never able to dedicate herself fully to writing as Jane was. She did, however, enjoy writing plays for her pupils to perform. Jane even took part in one, playing a governess. These women, though from different classes and living vastly different lives, formed a friendship built on mutual admiration and support that lasted until Jane’s death. Anne is said to have been intelligent, sharp, witty, and had an independent spirit that matched Jane’s own.
Jane would send her novels to Anne for her feedback and critiques, such was her trust and confidence in her friend’s knowledge and keen eye. When Jane sent Anne a presentation copy of Emma (of which there were only twelve, most given out to family) and asked for critiques, Anne responded by pointing out a flaw in a subplot and rated the book somewhere between Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. It would seem Pride and Prejudice was Anne’s favorite of her friend’s work, fittingly enough seeing as that Anne might’ve inspired Jane’s choice of title. Pride and Prejudice was originally titled First Impressions; it’s no stretch of the imagination to think Jane could’ve been influenced by the title of one of Anne’s plays, Pride Punished or Innocence Rewarded.
As two women who never married, who were so full of an independent spirit with ideas and opinions and talents of their own, Jane and Anne’s friendship was something unique within literary history. They refused to be anybody but themselves and their friendship transcended class lines along with the often uncrossed lines of literary friendships: professional and amateur. It didn’t matter that Jane was a published author and that Anne only wrote for her own enjoyment. Jane trusted her friend’s intelligence, found support from her, and supported her in turn. Having lasted for around thirteen years until Jane’s death, Jane and Anne’s is a friendship well worth remembering and celebrating.
Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Lamb
While William Wordsworth and Charles Lamb have been celebrated throughout history, their literary sisters are often left unmentioned. Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Lamb both played important roles within their respective brothers’ lives—constant companions and supporters—but they were so much more than footnotes in the lives of their brothers. They were intelligent, talented women and writers. They also happened to be the closest of friends.
Mary Lamb suffered from mental illness (that resulted in her fatally stabbing her mother) and was in and out of mental facilities for most of her life. However, Charles stayed by her side all the while, just as she was by his side during his own difficulties. Mary published poems for children among other things, but her most notable work was her collaboration with Charles on a children’s book called Tales From Shakespeare.
Dorothy Wordsworth was a writer—a diarist, primarily—and poet with no interest in being published, having once written, “I should detest the idea of setting myself up as an author, give Wm. the Pleasure of it.” The interest in the friendship between the Lake Poets and their lifestyle among the landscape of the Lake District often ignores Dorothy’s constant presence or reduces her role to William’s supportive sister, instead of exploring the scope and talent of her work. She wrote privately during her life and her recognition as a writer—and as someone more than just her brother’s sister—came posthumously, but Dorothy was as much a Romantic writer and poet as William. In fact, William often borrowed from Dorothy’s diaries and relied on her detailed descriptions of nature for his own work.
Further Reading: The Grasmere Journals by Dorothy Wordsworth
In 1801, Mary and Charles formed a literary and social group in London. It was at meetings of this literary circle that William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, two of the Lake Poets and friends of Charles, visited. It was also at these meetings that Mary and Dorothy first met. They were fast friends, drawn together by similar interests and roles in their brothers’ lives. In fact, they were quite similar to their brothers, too, doing many of the same things William and Charles are remembered for. Not just their work, but the way they interacted with nature around them and found inspiration there. Mary and Dorothy also wandered the land, hiking up Grasmere mountains and exchanging thoughts on each other’s poetry.
The women remained friends for years, offering each other the support and companionship that, within the friendships of their male counterparts, is still celebrated today. They would visit each other and stay up late talking into the night. Even when Charles, who blamed Dorothy’s late-night conversations with his sister for an onset of Mary’s illness, banned Dorothy from staying the night again, the women stayed close friends. They didn’t let Charles’s disapproval or “orders” impact their friendship and as soon as Mary recovered from her illness, she wrote to Dorothy once again.
Related: The Lake District | Literary Destinations
These two women, remembered largely for their roles in their brothers’ lives, are unique in that it’s not just their friendship that goes largely unremarked upon within literary history, but their work. They had immeasurable impacts on their brothers’ lives and work, but they also are forgotten writers of the Romantic period themselves who deserve recognition for their art as well as their strong, unique literary friendship.
Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin
A more recent literary female friendship is that between poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin, two women with fascinating histories and careers. Anne, suffering from depression after a mental breakdown and a stay in a neuropsychiatric hospital, was encouraged to pick up the pen by her therapist. As Anne said, “My analyst told me to write between our sessions about what I was feeling and thinking and dreaming.” Impressed by her writing, her therapist encouraged Anne to continue her writing. Anne was inspired by the poet I.A. Richards’ description of a sonnet to try her hand at poetry. She clicked with it immediately, writing two to three sonnets a day for a year. It led her to fantastic success. She wrote exceptionally personal confessional poetry that won her numerous awards and made her one of the most popular American poets of the mid-20th century.
At her side for much of the way was Maxine Kumin. Maxine had earned a BA and MA from Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts and would go on to be a professor, a scholar at Radcliffe, and the poetry consultant to the Library of Congress among other impressive positions. She won many awards, several fellowships and held six honorary degrees. In 1957, however, she was studying poetry at the Boston Center for Adult Education and attending writing groups at Boston cafés when she met Anne.
Though they met other notable writers and poets, such as Sylvia Plath, at these writing groups, Anne and Maxine soon stopped frequenting them, finding that they really only required each other for support, companionship, and trusted opinions. The women began meeting up at least twice a week and having regular phone calls. Maxine called them “professional allies” and said Anne “pulled [her] out of [her] shell” and “made [her] see that the cerebral really needed a strong admixture of the visceral.” Maxine also expressed the casual closeness of the friendship, saying, “One of the joys of our relationship was the ease with which we traded dresses back and forth.” This is indicative of the easy intimacy within the friendship, perhaps something close to a sisterhood between these two women. For over seventeen years, Maxine and Anne were each other’s closest, most supportive friend. They dropped everything to help each other—Anne even once canceled plans while on vacation in Rome to stay in her hotel to edit Maxine’s latest book—and spent hours critiquing each other’s work, even giving titles to each other’s collections.
Oddly enough (not odd at all), Maxine and Anne were often pitted against each other as professionals and celebrated female poets of their time and thought to be rivals. They kept their friendship extremely private, letting the rumors continue despite the enduring strength of their friendship. When they both had won prestigious fellowships at Harvard, Anne and Maxine even had a secret second phone line installed in their homes so they’d be able to talk and work together for hours without dealing with their husbands’ disapproval. They’d keep the calls live for hours, leaving to do household chores like laundry or making dinner, then whistle into the phone to let the other know they were ready to resume their conversation. After finally letting the world in on their secret friendship, they shared that they felt their friendship would’ve felt less clandestine if the women’s movement had existed at the beginning of their friendship.
Sadly, Anne Sexton committed suicide at the age of 46 in 1974. Maxine is believed to have been the last person to see Anne alive when they’d had lunch together the day she died. In the forty years she lived after Anne, Maxine wrote numerous essays and eleven poems about her friend and the effect her suicide had on her.
With the most modern friendship within this article, Maxine and Anne’s closeness—meeting up regularly, hours-long phone calls, swapping critiques as well as clothing—is something many of us can relate to a little more closely. Despite the public’s idea of them, they were each other’s biggest supporters, exemplifying the impact and importance of friendship between women.
Further Reading: A Secret Sisterhood by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney
The friendships between Jane Austen and Anne Sharp, Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Lamb, and Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin are only the tip of the iceberg of hidden friendships between female writers of the past. Though they’re not as well known or as celebrated as the friendships of famous male writers, that’s something we can change. Friendships between women are often twisted in media, pitting women against each other and relying on sexist stereotypes to make them seem shallow and short-lived in comparison to male friendships. While female friendships are complex, layered relationships, they deserve to be celebrated and portrayed in a truly realistic way—showing all the love and support they often offer. These women writers are some of the best examples of how women—and our friendships—have always flourished outside the bounds of society’s approval.
Happy Women’s History Month!