Customer Reviews

Keynotes and Discords (Late Victorian & Early Modernist Women Writers)

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This new edition of George Egerton's (pseudonym for Mary Chavelita Dunne) 1880's two collections of short stories, here produced in one volume, should be celebrated as an important literary achievement. Manchester Press and the text's editor Sally Ledger have taken a brave step in re-publishing Egerton's emotional, dreamy short stories which often end with a strongly tragical punch to the reader's "mental stomach". George Egerton should already be on the syllabus of A'levels and university courses throughout the English-speaking world. She is not but perhaps this book will achieve something more important: getting George Egerton back in the minds of the reading public. She is daring, fresh and, at times and in certain stories, unputdownable.

I came across Egerton - chevalita - via the modernist writer, Hamsun (she translated his first book Hunger). These stories carry some of his stylistic influence and have the commonality of being introspective and surprising. She doesn't adopt the stream of consciousness but she opens herself up and examines herself in these stories. In the day that was rare amoung male writers (the unconscious life of the mind) - in a female writer it was doubly noteable. An interesting book; one that will reward the time you give it.