38-456: ( Helen ) Hope Mirrlees (8 April 1887 – 1 August 1978) was a British poet, novelist and translator. She is best known for the 1926 Lud-in-the-Mist , an influential fantasy novel, and for Paris: A Poem (1920) , an experimental poem published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf 's Hogarth Press, which critic Julia Briggs deemed "modernism's lost masterpiece, a work of extraordinary energy and intensity, scope and ambition." Helen Hope Mirrlees
76-434: A brief biography by writer Michael Swanwick , an artist-book facsimile reprint of Paris, a poem by printer and publisher Hurst Street Press, and translations of Lud-in-the-Mist into German and Spanish. Joanna Russ wrote a short story, The Zanzibar Cat (1971), in homage to Hope Mirrlees and as a critique of Lud-in-the-Mist – and indeed the entire genre of fantasy, describing Fairyland "half in affectionate parody, but
114-430: A city located at the confluence of the rivers Dapple and Dawl, in the fictional state of Dorimare, must contend with the influx of fairy fruit and the effect of the fantastic inhabitants of the bordering land of Faerie, whose presence and very existence they had sought to banish from their rational lives. When the denial proves futile, their mayor, the respectable Nathaniel Chanticleer, finds himself involved reluctantly with
152-401: A high poignancy that sticks in the mind". Lud-in-the-Mist had been named a source of inspiration to multiple fantasy and science fiction authors. Michael Swanwick called it "one of the least known and most influential of modern fantasies". Elizabeth Hand and Tim Powers have both named it as a source of inspiration. Neil Gaiman described Lud as "one of the finest [fantasy novels] in
190-679: A topic that she addressed in "Being Against Pornography". Her work is widely taught in courses on science fiction and feminism throughout the English speaking world. Russ is the subject of Farah Mendlesohn 's book On Joanna Russ and Jeanne Cortiel's Demand My Writing: Joanna Russ, Feminism, Science Fiction . Russ and her work are prominently featured in Sarah LeFanu's In the Chinks of the World Machine: Feminism and Science Fiction (1988). She
228-439: Is a virtue. She insisted on the unique qualities of her chosen genre, maintaining that science fiction shared certain qualities with art and its flexibility compared to other forms writing. Russ was also interested in demonstrating the unique potentials of women science fiction writers. As her career moved into its second decade in the 1980s, she started to worry about reviewing standards. She once said, "The reviewer's hardest task
266-488: Is best known for The Female Man , a novel combining utopian fiction and satire, and the story " When It Changed ". Joanna Russ was born in The Bronx , New York City, to Evarett I. and Bertha (née Zinner) Russ, both teachers. Her family was Jewish. She began creating works of fiction at a very early age. Over the following years she filled countless notebooks with stories, poems, comics and illustrations, often hand-binding
304-432: Is just beginning to wonder if it can explode." In a letter to Susan Koppelman, Russ asks of a young feminist critic "where is her anger?" and adds "I think from now on, I will not trust anyone who isn't angry." For nearly 15 years she was an influential (if intermittent) review columnist for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction . Though by then she was no longer an active member of science fiction fandom , she
342-505: Is the subject of increasing attention by scholars of modernism, inspired by Julia Briggs's considerable study, and is considered by some to have had an influence on the work of her friend, T. S. Eliot , and on that of Virginia Woolf . Mirrlees set her first novel, Madeleine: One of Love's Jansenists (1919), in and around the literary circles of the 17th Century Précieuses , and particularly those salons frequented by Mlle de Scudéry . Mirrlees later used medieval Spanish culture as part of
380-644: Is to define standards." Russ's reviewing style was characterized by logic. She was attacked by readers because of her harsh reviews of Stephen R. Donaldson 's Lord Foul's Bane (1977) and Joy Chant 's The Grey Mane of Morning (1977). She organized attacks into these seven categories, taken directly from the cited article: However, she felt guilty about dire and frank criticism. She apologized for her harsh words on Lloyd Biggle 's The Light That Never Was (1972) by saying, "It's narsty to beat up on authors who are probably starving to death on turnip soup ( ghoti soup) but critics ought to be honest." Around
418-518: The University of Colorado, Boulder , from 1975 to 1977. In 1977 she started teaching at the University of Washington . She became a full professor in 1984 and retired in 1991. Russ was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in 1974-1975. Russ came to be noticed in the science fiction world in the late 1960s, in particular for her award-nominated novel Picnic on Paradise . At
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#1733086011338456-479: The 'Prophet Business': The Merril-Russ Intersection," Newell and Tallentire described Russ as an "intelligent, tough-minded reviewer who routinely tempered harsh criticism with just the sort of faint praise she handed out to Judith Merril ," who in turn was among the foremost editors and critics in American science fiction in the late 1960s. Russ was also described as a fearless, incisive, and radical person, whose writing
494-551: The 1920s. Sandeep Parmar is currently writing a biography of Mirrlees as well. She also features in the group biography Square Haunting by Francesca Wade (2020). Lud-in-the-Mist Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) is the third and final novel by the British writer Hope Mirrlees . It continues the author's exploration of the themes of Life and Art, by a method already described in the preface of her first novel, Madeleine: One of Love's Jansenists (1919): "to turn from time to time upon
532-445: The 1969 Nebula and 1970 Hugo awards for best science fiction novel, arguing that gender discriminations that permeated science fiction by men showed up just as frequently in science fiction by women. According to Russ, Le Guin's novel represented these stereotypes. Russ felt that science fiction gives something to its readers that cannot be easily acquired anywhere else. She maintained that science should be accurate, and seriousness
570-502: The Cold Spring Press includes a foreword by Neil Gaiman and an introduction by Douglas A. Anderson . A new edition from Prologue Books was published in 2013. In a 1946 discussion of fantastic literature, Edward Wagenknecht referred to "Hope Mirrlees' unappreciated masterpiece Lud-in-the-Mist ". David Langford and Mike Ashley describe Lud-in-the-Mist as "a moving book, shifting unpredictably from drollery to menace to
608-775: The Doubleness of Sex for Women", and "Being Against Pornography", which can be found in her archival pieces located in the University of Oregon's Special Collections . These essays include very detailed descriptions of her views on pornography and how influential it was to feminist thought in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Specifically, in "Being Against Pornography", she calls pornography a feminist issue. Her issues with pornography range from feminist critiques to women's sexuality in general, maintaining that porn prevents women from freely expressing their sexual selves like men can. Russ believed that anti-pornography activists were not addressing how women experienced pornography created by men,
646-455: The English language.... It is a little golden miracle of a book." He described Mirrlees's writing as "elegant, supple, effective and haunting: the author demands a great deal from her readers, which she repays many times over." He says that it is one of his top ten favourite books. Joy Wilkinson wrote an adaptation for BBC Radio 4, which broadcast on 30 October 2021. It starred Olivia Poulet , Richard Lumsden and Lloyd Hutchinson. Neil Gaiman
684-656: The United Kingdom and France, often returning to Paris to continue Harrison's medical treatments, their travels also took them to other European countries. Both of them studied Russian, Mirrlees earning a Diploma in Russian from the École des Langues Orientales of Paris, and went on to collaborate on translations from the Russian. Mirrlees and Harrison visited Spain in 1920, and there took Spanish lessons. After Harrison's death, Mirrlees converted to Catholicism. In 1948, Mirrlees moved to South Africa and remained there until 1963, when
722-571: The University of Oregon's Special Collections and University Archives. The late 1960s and 1970s marked the beginnings of feminist SF scholarship—a field of inquiry that was all but created single-handedly by Russ, who wrote many essays on feminism and science fiction that appeared in journals such as College English and Science Fiction Studies . She also contributed 25 reviews to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , covering more than 100 books of all genres. In their article "Learning
760-503: The Young Gentlemen" (1982). Her fiction has been nominated for nine Nebula and three Hugo Awards, and her genre-related scholarly work was recognized with a Pilgrim Award in 1988. Her story "The Autobiography of My Mother" was one of the 1977 O. Henry Prize stories. She wrote several contributions to feminist thinking about pornography and sexuality, including "Pornography by Women, for Women, with Love" (1985), "Pornography and
798-538: The action the fantastic limelight of eternity, with a sudden effect of unreality and the hint of a world within a world". Lud-in-the-Mist begins with a quotation by Jane Harrison , with whom Mirrlees lived in London and Paris, and whose influence is also found in Madeleine and The Counterplot . The book is dedicated to the memory of Mirrlees's father. In the novel, the prosaic and law-abiding inhabitants of Lud-in-the-Mist,
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#1733086011338836-491: The author was alive or dead, "since our efforts to trace this lady [Mirrlees] have so far been unsuccessful." Since 2000, Mirrlees' work has undergone another resurgence in popularity, marked by new editions of her poetry, an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography and several scholarly essays by critic Julia Briggs, new introductions to Lud-in-the-Mist by writer Neil Gaiman and scholar Douglas A. Anderson , essays and
874-563: The background of her second novel, The Counterplot (1924). Lud-in-the-Mist was reprinted in 1970 in mass-market paperback format by Lin Carter , without the author's permission, for the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series , and then again by Del Rey in 1977. The "unauthorised" nature of the 1970 reprint is explained by the fact that, as Carter indicated in his introduction, he and the publishing company could not even ascertain whether
912-505: The conflict and obliged to change his conventional personal life and disregard the traditions of Lud-in-the-Mist to find a reconciliation. Whereas in the novels Madeleine and The Counterplot , Mirrlees adapted elements from history, religion and literature, her use of a secondary-world setting in Lud-in-the-Mist associates it with the tradition of high fantasy , and thereby with its current popularity. In 1970, an American reprint
950-415: The constraints of gender and asks if gender is necessary in a society. Russ's writing is characterized by anger interspersed with humor and irony. James Tiptree Jr , in a letter to her, wrote, "Do you imagine that anyone with half a functional neuron can read your work and not have his fingers smoked by the bitter, multi-layered anger in it? It smells and smoulders like a volcano buried so long and deadly it
988-859: The first volume of her "extravagant biography" of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton was published (the second volume is unpublished). Two volumes of poetry, Poems and Moods and Tensions , were also privately published. Mirrlees was a friend of Virginia Woolf, who described her in a letter as "her own heroine – capricious, exacting, exquisite, very learned, and beautifully dressed." Her circle of celebrity friends also included T. S. Eliot ; Gertrude Stein , who mentions Mirrlees in Everybody's Autobiography ; Bertrand Russell ; and Ottoline Morrell . Mirrlees died in Thames Bank, Goring, England, in 1978, aged 91. Mirrlees' 600-line modernist poem, Paris: A Poem , published in 1920 by Leonard and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press ,
1026-568: The material with thread. As a senior at William Howard Taft High School , Russ was selected as one of the top ten Westinghouse Science Talent Search winners. She graduated from Cornell University , where she studied with Vladimir Nabokov , in 1957, and received her MFA from the Yale Drama School in 1960. She was briefly married to Albert Amateau. Russ taught at Queensborough Community College from 1966 to 1967, at Cornell from 1967 to 1972, SUNY Binghamton , from 1972 to 1975, and at
1064-403: The other half very seriously indeed". Hope-in-the-Mist , a book-length study of Mirrlees and her work by Michael Swanwick, was published by Temporary Culture in 2009. The Collected Poems of Hope Mirrlees was published by Fyfield Books ( Carcanet Press ) in 2011 (edited by Sandeep Parmar). It includes previously unpublished poems, the full text of Paris , her later poems and prose essays from
1102-453: The time of the publication of The Female Man in 1975, Russ came out as a lesbian. However, Russ remained protective of her personal life, and as late as a December 1981 interview with Charles Platt, she was still evasive on the subject for the first third of the interview. In her later life she published little, largely because she had chronic pain and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). On April 27, 2011, it
1140-531: The time, SF was a field dominated by male authors, writing for a predominantly male audience, but women were starting to enter the field in larger numbers. Russ was one of the most outspoken female authors to challenge male dominance of the field, and is generally regarded as one of the leading feminist science fiction scholars and writers. She was also one of the first major science fiction writers to take slash fiction and its cultural and literary implications seriously. She published over fifty short stories. Russ
1178-407: Was a self-described socialist feminist , expressing particular admiration for the work and theories of Clara Fraser and her Freedom Socialist Party . Both fiction and nonfiction, for Russ, were modes of engaging theory with the real world; in particular, The Female Man can be read as a theoretical or narrative text. The short story " When It Changed ", which became a part of the novel, explores
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1216-735: Was associated with the American New Wave of science fiction. Along with her work as a writer of prose fiction, Russ was also a playwright, essayist, and author of nonfiction works, generally literary criticism and feminist theory, including the essay collection Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans & Perverts ; How to Suppress Women's Writing ; and the book-length study of modern feminism, What Are We Fighting For? . Her essays and articles have been published in Women's Studies Quarterly , Signs , Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies , Science Fiction Studies , and College English . Russ
1254-633: Was born in Chislehurst, Kent, and raised in Scotland and South Africa. She attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before going up to Newnham College, Cambridge to study Greek. While at Cambridge, Mirrlees developed a close relationship with the classicist Jane Ellen Harrison , Mirrlees' tutor and later her friend and collaborator. Mirrlees and Harrison lived together from 1913 until the latter's death in 1928. Although they divided their time mainly between
1292-400: Was cast as Duke Aubrey. Joanna Russ Joanna Russ (February 22, 1937 – April 29, 2011) was an American writer, academic and feminist . She is the author of a number of works of science fiction , fantasy and feminist literary criticism such as How to Suppress Women's Writing , as well as a contemporary novel, On Strike Against God , and one children's book, Kittatinny . She
1330-657: Was interviewed by phone during Wiscon (the feminist science fiction convention in Madison, Wisconsin ) in 2006 by her friend and member of the same cohort , Samuel R. Delany . Her first SF story was "Nor Custom Stale" in F&;SF (1959). Notable short works include Hugo winner and Nebula Award finalist " Souls " (1982), Nebula Award and Tiptree Award winner " When It Changed " (1972), Nebula Award finalists "The Second Inquisition" (1970), "Poor Man, Beggar Man" (1971), "The Extraordinary Voyages of Amélie Bertrand" (1979), and "The Mystery of
1368-589: Was named to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2013. Gwyneth Jones wrote a 2019 book about Joanna Russ that was part of the University of Illinois Press series called Modern Masters of Science Fiction. In a 2004 essay about the connections between Russ's work and D. W. Griffith 's film Intolerance , Samuel R. Delany describes her as being "one of the finest - and most necessary - writers of American fiction" since she published her first professional short story in 1959. Her papers are part of
1406-483: Was often characterized as acerbic and angry. Russ was acclaimed as one of science fiction's most revolutionary and accomplished writers. Helen Merrick claimed that Russ is an inescapable figure in science fiction history. James Tiptree Jr. once commented on how Russ could be an "absolute delight" one minute, but then she "rushes out and bites my ankles with one sentence." For example, Russ criticized Ursula K. Le Guin 's 1969 The Left Hand of Darkness , which won both
1444-548: Was published without the author's permission, as part of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series . According to that volume's introduction, Lin Carter , the series editor, could not locate the author. The book had fallen into the public domain in the United States as the copyright had not been renewed in 1954 or 1955, which was the statute at the time. It was reprinted subsequently by Orion Books in 2000 as part of their Fantasy Masterworks series. A more recent republication by
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