2. We Went, We Saw, We Concord

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AMY: Hey! Welcome to our first “Lost Ladies of Lit” mini episode.

KIM: Woohoo!

AMY: I know, it feels pretty good to be doing this. Last week was our kick-off. This sort of germinated at the beginning of the pandemic probably, around April, that we had this idea, and now it’s coming to fruition.

KIM: Yep.

AMY: Really fun. So we kicked off last week telling you guys all about Monica Dickens and her novel, Mariana, which, Kim, thank you for lending me that book back in April because it was [while] staring at that cover that the idea just sort of hit me. You had always wanted to do a podcast, but I wasn’t necessarily on board, and then for some reason, just having that book — and you had lent me a couple other books with women authors that I’d never heard of — and I started thinking, “That’s the topic! That’s what we talk about on a podcast!”

KIM: It’s one of the things that happens with us in our creative life since Day 1 when we started working together on projects. We just know when we know.

AMY: Yeah. And we feel passionate about it, and we are having so much fun with it.

KIM: And we never even questioned it. It was like, “Oh yeah. Of course that’s what we’ll do.”

AMY: So we really hope that you guys check that novel out, and if you need any further convincing, just know that it’s really only a fraction of the length of one of her great grandfather’s classics. So, you can polish off Mariana in just a couple of days. And it’s a really cute book.

KIM: It also feels really good as a read, I think, right now. It’s nice to have an escapist, cozy novel, which is what that is. You’ll feel good when you read it. 

AMY: Yeah. Especially going into fall. I think it was termed a “hot water bottle novel” right?

KIM: That’s exactly right. Yep. Yep.

AMY: So, Kim, let’s talk about what we’re doing today.

KIM: This week we’re kicking off our “Lost Ladies of Lit” mini episodes, and that’s what you’re listening to right now. Every other week we’re going to publish a shorter episode. It’s going to be bite-sized, basically. We’re going to be sharing tidbits on what we’re reading, a little bit about our creative life, snippets of things we think that you all would be interested in, from lost arts to lost letters. So we’re really excited about adding this to our overall podcasting project.

AMY: Sort of like the little taste, you know.

KIM: Exactly.

AMY: The little “palate cleanser” before we move on to our next “lost lady” in the list.

KIM: I love that. That’s perfect.

AMY: So at the end of this episode, we will be announcing the next author and title in our series. That will be exciting because if you want to, then you can read ahead and be ready to roll when we’re discussing our next author. But speaking of, in the meantime, Kim, what else are you reading this week?

KIM: I don’t know how I’m having any extra time to read, but I am carving it out a little bit, and I’m reading Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it.

AMY: Yeah, I have. 

KIM: You have? Okay. It’s basically a Wolf Hall meets Lincoln In the Bardo, and it’s this fictionalized story of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet. He died when he was 11, unfortunately, but it’s the period leading up to his death and it’s a lot about Shakespeare’s wife and her origin story. It’s very fictionalized. That’s sort of what makes me say Wolf Hall, because Wolf Hall is, you know, we don’t know a lot about the characters in Wolf Hall, so the writer takes a lot of license with Wolf Hall, and it’s the same with Hamnet. It’s basically, you don’t need to know much about Shakespeare at all to really get into this book. It’s really dreamy and beautiful, and William Shakespeare is in it, but he’s actually not the primary character at all so far. It’s really his wife, who is strong and dynamic and she’s kind of witchy. I’m about halfway through, yeah, and she’s the main protagonist of the novel. Also, it involves a plague, too, so reading about a plague today feels really different than say if I had read this book maybe seven or eight months ago. Anyway, I highly recommend it. So far, I really love it.

AMY: You and I love a good Shakespeare retelling. I mean, that’s basically what we do with our books. So we went down that rabbit hole ourselves. 

KIM: Yep. 

AMY: Well, I told you last week that I am slogging through Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa which is like 1,500 pages, so it’s the book that never ends. I have to do it in dribs and drabs. It can’t be my main novel.

KIM: No, it’s your “Covid project novel.”

AMY: Exactly. That’s what it is. But at the same time, so my kids are of the age where we like to read books together, so we just started this book which I think could be… she could potentially fall under a “lost lady.” The author is Esther Forbes and the book is Johnny Tremain which was really a popular book in the forties and fifties. I think Disney wound up doing a movie in the 1950s. It won the Newbery medal in 1944. It actually came up recently at the Democratic National Convention because Michael Bloomberg, in his speech, was talking about the America he wanted to see and, like, patriotism, and he referred to his “favorite book when he was a kid,” which was Johnny Tremain. So me and the kids are reading that right now.

KIM: How have I not heard of that book before you?

AMY: I had heard of it over and over all my life and just never read it. You know what, we were watching “Hamilton” on Disney+ this summer and my kids were really into it, so I was like, “How else can I get them intrigued by the American Revolution? What could we read that would teach them more?” This book is basically set during the American Revolution with Paul Revere and John Hancock... all the historical characters factor into the book. So reading about the American Revolution right now is kind of getting me in the mindset of, Kim, one of our favorite little towns.

KIM: Oh! I know what you’re going to say! Concord, Massachusetts!

AMY: Concord! Yeah! And just what an amazing little literary epicenter it is. You know, I was thinking, for people in the northeast of the country, Concord right now would kind of be a really good socially-distanced day trip people could take, I think.

KIM: Yes. Oh, if I lived on the East Coast, I definitely would be doing that, for sure.

AMY: Yeah, so, for those of you that don’t know about Concord, MA, it’s about a half-hour drive outside of Boston. It’s this little historic town that is almost like this literary epicenter. You wouldn’t believe how many huge names came out of this little town.

KIM: It’s just very charming.

AMY: Yeah. It feels like you’re stepping into a time machine. Kim, I know you’ve been there more recently than I have.

KIM: Yeah, I think it was maybe three years ago, and the first thing I did was head straight for Louisa May Alcott’s house. I took a tour of it. I got the chills. It’s incredible. I mean you’ve been to it, so you know. “Amy’s” sketches are on the wall. So basically, Louisa May Alcott’s sister’s sketches are on the wall.

AMY: Yeah, I don’t think her name’s Amy, but it’s THE Amy.

KIM: Yeah, her name’s not Amy, but quote-unquote “Amy.” The Amy from the book. Yes. and it just gives you the chills. It’s incredible.

AMY: It’s like walking inside the novel. It’s exactly how I pictured Little Women, and I think when they film movie adaptations of Little Women, either they use the house or it’s a recreation. The house is called Orchard… Orchard House.

KIM: Yes. Yep.

AMY: So it’s closed to the public right now, however, they have virtual tours and if you go onto their website, for a $10 donation, which is totally worth it, they have a 15-minute video tour where you can see all the rooms in the house. There’s this cute woman who’s dressed up in period garb who takes you on a tour of the house. So anybody right now can go take a tour of Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House if you wanted. 

KIM: Ooh, I love that idea, and that actually makes me think it would be fun to do like a day where you had lined up a bunch of different virtual tours of authors’ homes across the world. 

AMY: Ooh, let’s set that up! Let’s do it! We can provide that for our listeners!

KIM: We can put it in Stories. Yeah, that would be really fun.

AMY: Basically a stone’s throw from Orchard House… in my head I picture it as being right across the street, I don’t know if it’s that close.

KIM: I think it’s just down the road, if I remember correctly. Not far at all.

AMY: Yes. But take it away, Kim. Who lived there?

KIM: Oh, well, Emerson’s house.

AMY: Yeah.

KIM: I mean you can see it [from Orchard House]. I think it’s definitely walkable. They were neighbors, so it’s basically across the street.

AMY: I never took the tour of Emerson’s house, so I’ve never been inside that one.

KIM: I didn’t either, and I feel like it wasn’t open when I was there. Maybe it has more limited hours or something. 

AMY: And it’s definitely not open right now because I checked, and there’s no virtual tour of that one, but really Orchard House is the one you want to look at. And then really not that far from the Alcotts’ home and Emerson’s home — I mean, maybe a five-minute drive down the road— is Walden Pond of Henry David Thoreau fame. When you go there, it’s a nice walk around the pond, just to be out in nature, but then there’s also a little replica of his tiny house which is exactly on the spot where he had built the little one-room where he lived for however long that was. He was like the original tiny-house hipster.

KIM: Oh, I love it that way. So, Walden Pond also makes an appearance in a recent book Writers and Lovers by Lily King, I don’t know if you read that book. She goes on a date to Walden Pond.

AMY: Oh, no. Interesting. Oh, yeah, and also about the Alcotts, I wanted to mention, too, earlier this year I read March. It’s about the father’s point of view. So going back to Hamnet and telling the story from a different perspective, this is Little Women, basically, as told from the March family patriarch’s point of view.

KIM: Do we need the man’s perspective of it? 

AMY: Well, it’s his back story. So it tells how he became who he became. There’s not a ton of Marmee and the girls. They’re not in it [as much]. It’s when he was off… it takes place during the Civil War.

KIM: Okay. Interesting.

AMY: And he interacts with Thoreau in the book because he lives in Concord. So there’s a little more Concord sprinkled into March as well. I want to say the author is Geraldine Brooks or something, but I might just be pulling that name out of my head.

KIM: Do you recommend it? Should we read it?

AMY: I do recommend it. I wasn’t sure. I read it after you and I went and saw Little Women in the theater.

KIM: Yep.

AMY: Gosh. Remember movies?

KIM: Yes, I know. That sounds so weird.

AMY: So i was in a Little Women fit and I obviously know Little Women like the back of my hand, so I was like “What else can I read?” So I decided to get that one out, and it’s good. I liked it. It’s different. It’s … different. I always like when someone takes a different perspective on a character.

KIM: Yeah, I’m intrigued, based on your recommendation, anyway.

AMY: So then also in Concord…(again, everything’s a quick drive), you have to go visit Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. I imagine this is open right now.

KIM: Oh! I love Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. I could spend days there. I only had maybe an hour before we were going to dinner, so I went to the Authors’ Ridge where the Alcott family, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau are all buried. Oh my gosh… it’s so beautiful. Being from California, we just don’t have places like that. Oh, so gorgeous.

AMY: No. There’s no old history, really, in California.

KIM: Not that old. No.

AMY: I got chills at the Authors’ Ridge, because I was just like, “I cannot believe they’re all right here. All of them.

KIM: Oh, I felt the same.

AMY: Also, in Concord, not so literary but still worth checking out, there are some Revolutionary War sites. My favorite is the Old North Bridge, which is where the infamous “Shot heard round the world,” (the first shot fired in the American Revolution) took place. I highly recommend taking a tour of the battle sites in that area. You really get to visualize how it all unfolded there.

KIM: And you went to the inn there, right? I remember you telling me about the beautiful old inn.

AMY: It’s called the Colonial Inn. There’s a couple of restaurants. It’s like an old house, or boarding house kind of thing. They have Yankee fare like clam chowder and things like that, but then I saw they also have an afternoon tea, which is right up your and my alleys.

KIM: Oh yeah, we used to go have our brainstorms over afternoon tea. We will do it again one day, after Covid. But I want to go to Concord together as a Lost Ladies of Lit trip! 

AMY: We do need to go sometime together. Maybe when the leaves are changing. Which would be right now. So maybe this time next year, hopefully, when travel will be back on the agenda.

KIM: Yeah, basically we want to go everywhere as soon as we can.

AMY: Yeah, for sure. Oh, speaking of traveling… it’s not really traveling, but I found this thing that I shared with you, Kim, this week, that I thought was cool. Maybe a lot of our listeners already know about it, but I had never seen it before and I keep playing around with it. It’s a web site called Literature-map.com, and it’s this really cool tool for finding new authors, or if you are reading an author and you’re like, “Who does this remind me of?” You basically type in an author’s name and it gives you a graph, kind of, where they plot out all the other authors that are in a similar vein or are somehow connected to that person, or, people might like as well as this author. So it’s funny, because I typed in Monica Dickens, just out of curiosity. I didn’t even know if she would show up because she’s not very well known, but she did come up, and there were a lot of authors around her. I think Howard… I forget what her full name is. Something Howard who wrote The Cazalet Chronicles? 

KIM: Oh, yes. Elizabeth Jane Howard.

AMY: Yes, Elizabeth Jane Howard, she came up. Which, we love her.

KIM: Yep.

AMY: Another name that came up very close, which, they put the authors in proximity to the author’s name in the middle. So an author that popped up very close to hers was E.M. Delafield, which is fascinating because E.M. Delafield is actually the next “lost lady” on our list, and that is totally coincidental. We just happened to choose her.

KIM: Okay, so pausing a moment to just reiterate: We’re announcing, officially, our next book, which is by E.M. Delafield, and it’s called Diary of a Provincial Lady. 

AMY: Yeah, basically it’s a 1930s novel. It’s hilarious, charming and I think it’s still very relatable to modern readers.

KIM: Yeah, in fact, I don’t think it’s off the mark to call it the original Bridget Jones’s Diary.

AMY: Similar format, similar comic stylings, for sure. If you are a sucker for snarky, cynical characters, this is one you’re gonna enjoy. It’s basically a book that I have, for years, turned blue in the face trying to convince people to read, so it makes sense that this is the second one we chose because I just love it.

KIM: Yeah, we had to start a podcast for you to get me to read that book, and I love it now! It’s one of my favorites! I should have listened.

AMY: I know. I think that’s the whole reason we started this podcast. We just get super excited about books and we want to tell people about them, and if there’s just even one person that turns to one of these books and then decides, “Oh my god, I can’t believe I never read this. I love it so much,” our work here is done, basically. That will make us happy.

KIM: Well, we really hope you tune in for it, and that’s all for today. We’ll see you next week on “Lost Ladies of Lit!”