Phyllis Rose
Author of Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages
About the Author
Of her approach to biography, Rose has said: "Most people think of a biographer as somebody who accumulates facts about people's lives. . . . But I think of myself as somebody who puts the facts of people's lives into different contexts, or emphasizes shape somehow, and puts facts into new show more structures." A feminist critic, Rose's work has focused primarily on the lives of women. In Women of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf (1978), which was nominated for a National Book Award, Rose explores the relationship among Woolf's writing, recurring bouts of mental illness, and sexuality. Her most popular work to date has been Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages (1983), a highly readable and penetrating study of the marriages of several famous nineteenth-century writers. Her latest biography Jazz Cleopatra (1989), is a compelling study of the jazz singer and performer Josephine Baker. A collection of essays, Never Say Goodby, was published in 1991. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Works by Phyllis Rose
Associated Works
Memoires — Translator, some editions — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Rose, Phyllis Davidoff
- Birthdate
- 1942-10-26
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Radcliffe College (BA ∙ 1964)
Yale University (MA ∙ 1965)
Harvard College (PhD ∙ 1970) - Occupations
- biographer
literary critic
professor of English
essayist - Organizations
- Wesleyan University
- Relationships
- de Brunhoff, Laurent (husband)
- Short biography
- Phyllis Davidoff spent her childhood on the south shore of Long Island, NY. She graduated summa cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1964 and spent the following year studying English literature at Yale University, where she earned a master's degree. She returned to Harvard to complete her graduate studies, specializing in 19th-century English literature and receiving a Ph.D. in 1970 with a dissertation on Charles Dickens that became the basis for her classic book, Parallel Lives.
She writes under the surname of her first husband, Mark Rose, with whom she had one son. Phyllis Rose began teaching in 1969 as an assistant professor of English at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where she spent her entire career, becoming a full professor in 1976 and retiring in 2005. Her first published work was a biography of Virginia Woolf called Woman of Letters (1978). A finalist for the National Book Award, it was in the forefront of feminist re-evaluations of literary figures and contributed to the surge of interest in Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group in the late 1970s.
In 1983, she published Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages, which -- taking as its model Lytton Strachey's famous Eminent Victorians -- considered the institution of marriage through portraits of individual marriages. In 1990, she married Laurent de Brunhoff, author and illustrator of the Babar the Elephant books. Since 1985, Ms. Rose has worked with him on the series. - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- New York, New York, USA
- Places of residence
- Middletown, Connecticut, USA
Key West, Florida, USA
New York, New York, USA - Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
Phyllis Rose, a literary critic, found herself thinking about how many books -- surely including many very good books -- are never paid any attention by critics and are unfairly doomed to obscurity. Almost on a whim, she decided on a project to explore this wider world of literature, at least a little bit: she chose a single shelf from a library and (mostly) read every book on that shelf, no matter what it was. (It's worth noting that the library was a private lending library, and the shelf show more was carefully chosen, so this isn't a scientific random sampling or anything, but that's not really the point.) She ended up reading an interesting variety of fiction, some more obscure than others, from an 18th century picaresque tome to contemporary women's fiction.
This sounds very much like the sort of thing that's likely to appeal to me, but I was still surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. Rose thinks very deeply about everything she reads, but the way she writes about those thoughts is wonderfully accessible. And she really goes above and beyond with this project, exploring the works she reads thoroughly, doing research on them, even sometimes contacting (and, in one case, striking up an odd friendship with) the authors. You'd think all of that might get a little tedious, actually, or that listening to someone talk about books you've never read (and, for the most part, have no desire to read) would get dull after a while, but it never does. I now sort of feel as if all these books are old friends of mine, and maybe Phyllis Rose is, too. The whole thing just made me one happy little book-lover. show less
This sounds very much like the sort of thing that's likely to appeal to me, but I was still surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. Rose thinks very deeply about everything she reads, but the way she writes about those thoughts is wonderfully accessible. And she really goes above and beyond with this project, exploring the works she reads thoroughly, doing research on them, even sometimes contacting (and, in one case, striking up an odd friendship with) the authors. You'd think all of that might get a little tedious, actually, or that listening to someone talk about books you've never read (and, for the most part, have no desire to read) would get dull after a while, but it never does. I now sort of feel as if all these books are old friends of mine, and maybe Phyllis Rose is, too. The whole thing just made me one happy little book-lover. show less
Enjoyable and likable book, as Rose reads her way through a somewhat randomly-selected shelf of books at the New York Library society. Along the way she encounters the frustration of Vladimir Nabokov's excessive footnoting and condescending remarks in his translation of Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time, the unexpected pleasures of the doorstop picaresque novel Gil Blas, the discovery of a mostly forgotten novelist, Rhoda Lerman, with whom she becomes friends, and the horrors of the once show more immensely popular William Le Queux. There are a few others as well, and Rose's comments are fair and perceptive, showing the ability to appreciate parts of even the worst things on her chosen shelf. She also understands the different motivators of these very different writers. I also appreciate that she doesn't knock e-readers, and even speaks of their advantages for transparent reading (vs. reading an old paperback whose pages are crumbling and coming unglued as you read.) Rose goes off on some sidetracks regarding why men don't read books by women and why some women authors are not given the same respect as male authors, even when they write about the same thing. A male author writing a book about a domestic situation is considered "literary fiction", while the woman's book is considered "women's fiction". Rose's points are well made and she doesn't rant.
I'm not sure if I want to pick a shelf of my own and try this experiment. Actually, given how many unread books I have downstairs, I could just do it at home! show less
I'm not sure if I want to pick a shelf of my own and try this experiment. Actually, given how many unread books I have downstairs, I could just do it at home! show less
This was a fun book to read, but my TBR list has grown alarmingly and may be pushing 400 now just on goodreads. That is, however, a danger of reading a book about reading books. Austrian authors I've never heard of? Authors that Phyllis Rose cites as the 'good' ones she really enjoys? Add them all to the list! Actually not all the Austrian authors are on goodreads, and I am still a bit baffled as to why Ingeborg Bachmann, whos book The Thirtieth Year I enjoyed very much in college, doesn't show more come up in search results for her name, but does appear under the link from her book's page on here ([b:The Thirtieth Year: Stories (Modern German Voices Series): Stories by Ingeborg Bachmann|265993|The Thirtieth Year Stories (Modern German Voices Series) Stories by Ingeborg Bachmann|Ingeborg Bachmann|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1356464622s/265993.jpg|257881]). I am in the second month of a project to read my local branch public library from A to Z, or at least the adult fiction, YA fiction and adult nonfiction, so Phyllis Rose's book was a nice sanction on my project, which especially without an income attached, seems insane to many of my friends and family. But, just as Phyllis Rose found her tiny slice of her library rewarding, with lots of books and authors she would never have read otherwise, my exploration has been quite rewarding already. It's obviously not something I did because of reading Phyllis Rose's project, but reading her book was a lot like chatting with a friend whose approach to reading mirrors my own.
I also found her chapter on women authors and feminism quite engaging. In fact, I finally added a gender column to my reading spreadsheet after reading this chapter. I found that I read female authors in clumps, and otherwise most of my reading is of male authors, or Andre Norton books. Take out Andre Norton and I suppose my stats are closer to 20% female authors for this year, out of ~140 books, which is pretty bad. Maybe I'll take the suggestion mentioned in Rose's chapter and alternate male and female authors for a while. I may not read another book about reading books for a while- my TBR list needs time to recover- but this one was fun and influential, even if it may take a while for me to reach the Leq-Les segment of our library. show less
I also found her chapter on women authors and feminism quite engaging. In fact, I finally added a gender column to my reading spreadsheet after reading this chapter. I found that I read female authors in clumps, and otherwise most of my reading is of male authors, or Andre Norton books. Take out Andre Norton and I suppose my stats are closer to 20% female authors for this year, out of ~140 books, which is pretty bad. Maybe I'll take the suggestion mentioned in Rose's chapter and alternate male and female authors for a while. I may not read another book about reading books for a while- my TBR list needs time to recover- but this one was fun and influential, even if it may take a while for me to reach the Leq-Les segment of our library. show less
First published in 1983, the joint biographies in Phyllis Rose’s book, Parallel Lives, provide a behind the scenes glimpse into the domestic life of five Victorian era couples. In all cases, one member of the relationship (and sometimes both) was a well known and respected writer. In separate chapters, Rose provides in-depth descriptions of four marriages and one long term relationship. The five couples included are Jane Welsh and Thomas Carlyle; Effie Gray and John Ruskin; Harriet Taylor show more and John Stuart Mill; Catherine Hogarth and Charles Dickens; and George Eliot (Marian Evans) and George Henry Lewes. Thoroughly researched, she uses their mutual correspondence, personal diaries, and other documentation to draw back the curtain, revealing the inner workings of their married lives.
Before the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870, married women’s property and income in England belonged to the husband. Divorce was expensive and usually was only granted in cases of adultery or in unconsummated marriages. When couples did separate, the husband was most often the one granted custody of the children. In this fascinating examination of these marriages, Rose not only shows the complexities of married life in Victorian England, but that the dynamics of power, desire, and sex shaping their relationships are still a part of marriages today. While the book was written at the height of the feminist movement, and the author clearly is one, she treats both husband and wife with respect, compassion, and understanding. For anyone interested in the lives of the writers profiled or the institution of marriage, this thoughtful book will be a title that you will want to share with others. show less
Before the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870, married women’s property and income in England belonged to the husband. Divorce was expensive and usually was only granted in cases of adultery or in unconsummated marriages. When couples did separate, the husband was most often the one granted custody of the children. In this fascinating examination of these marriages, Rose not only shows the complexities of married life in Victorian England, but that the dynamics of power, desire, and sex shaping their relationships are still a part of marriages today. While the book was written at the height of the feminist movement, and the author clearly is one, she treats both husband and wife with respect, compassion, and understanding. For anyone interested in the lives of the writers profiled or the institution of marriage, this thoughtful book will be a title that you will want to share with others. show less
Lists
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 10
- Also by
- 5
- Members
- 2,205
- Popularity
- #11,630
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 35
- ISBNs
- 48
- Languages
- 6
- Favorited
- 1