Between the Sheets: The Literary Liaisons of Nine 20th-Century Women Writers will be published by Overlook Press, New York in March 2010. It will be published by Duckworth Overlook, London in May 2010.
What they have said so far:
Critic, novelist and literary journalist McDowell (The Picnic) takes a scholarly but fascinating look at the love lives of women writers, revealing how writers like Anais Nin, Simone de Beauvoir and Sylvia Plath were affected by their romantic liaisons. Using their letters, journals and diaries, McDowell explores the ambitions and desires of nine writers, often uncovering tell-tale signs of dependence on their male counterparts. McDowell reviews some famous, oft-covered romances—including Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway (the celebrity couple of their day), Nin and Henry Miller, Plath and Ted Hughes—but also finds the relationships between figures like Elizabeth Smart and George Barker, or Rebecca West and H.G. Wells, also rich in power struggles regarding art and sex. Almost every union explored had devastating consequences for the women involved, but fueled some of their best work, begging some big questions: Would they have become writers without their entanglements with these men? And was success in their art ultimately worth the heartbreak? This stirring account lets their devotees decide. (Mar.)
“McDowell culls her information from diaries, letters, and journals, which, in all, makes for a thorough but accessible reading. The information being imparted is not revelatory, but the subtle, argumentative slant of the text is laudable for its elevation of women commonly stereotyped as victims who lived passive lives in relation to the men they loved. Anyone interested in some crisp, literary gossip should take a look at this book.”
"McDowell, a literary journalist in Scotland, has culled incredibly juicy details. With so many affairs and broken hearts, the most surprising thing is that anything got written in the last 100 years." - New York Times Book Review
"It is laudatory that McDowell has set herself against the tenor of much of the critical discourse on the price of female talent...overall this is a welcome addition to the lives of writers in love and lust." -The New Republic
"Between the Sheets explores the messy intersection on art, lust, fame, and power. McDowell mines letters and diaries to give us rare insight into the POV of the female halves of some very celebrated literary couples...Suddenly, these feminist-lit figures seem more real and more grand. We feel the love and heartache that drove them to write" - BUST Magazine
"Lesley McDowell's new book, Between the Sheets: Literary Liaisons of Nine 20th-Century Women Writers, ditches some well-worn biographical tropes and sets out to make an interesting point about female authors: that we often think of their love lives as tragic not because they were, but because they're women." - AOL's Lemondrop.com
"A fresh and revealing look at the mating habits of literary giants. Author Lesley McDowell examines the famously explosive love affairs of great women writers and finds that there was purpose to their passion and method to their madness. Where others see victims, she sees pioneers who were blazing their own literary, emotional, and sexual trails. We feel as if we are meeting Sylvia Plath, Anais Nin, Simone de Beauvoir, and their "sisters" for the very first time."
-Deborah Davis, author of Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X and Gilded
"Lesley McDowell's Between the Sheets brings humor as well as empathy to a scrutiny of women writers' love affairs. Her implicit interest is the source of aesthetic passion, and in her study of Katherine Mansfield, Anais Nin, Simone de Beauvoir, Martha Gellhorn, Sylvia Plath and others, she comes to sometimes surprising insights."
-Linda Wagner-Martin, author of Sylvia Plath: A Biography and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald: An American Woman's Story
"McDowell culls her information from diaries, letters, and journals, which, in all, makes for a thorough but accessible reading. The information being imparted is not revelatory, but the subtle, argumentative slant of the text is laudable for its elevation of women commonly stereotyped as victims who lived passive lives in relation to the men they loved. Anyone interested in some crisp, literary gossip should take a look at this book." - Feminist Review
"Critic, novelist and literary journalist McDowell (The Picnic) takes a scholarly but fascinating look at the love lives of women writers, revealing how writers like Anais Nin, Simone de Beauvoir and Sylvia Plath were affected by their romantic liaisons...Would they have become writers without their entanglements with these men? And was success in their art ultimately worth the heartbreak? This stirring account lets their devotees decide." - Publishers Weekly
Lesley will be appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, August 2010 and speaking about Between the Sheets.