Masters of Illusion (1994) was Mary-Ann Tirone Smith’s fourth novel. It is a fictional account of the Hartford Circus Fire of 1944 and the decades following. The protagonist and the fire arrive on the first page, and then there’s a life-changing meeting on an Old Saybrook beach. Continue reading from Masters of Illusion
Tag Archives: Women’s Lives
“Awhirl in a Kaleidoscope of City Memories”
With five novels and three mysteries under her belt, Tirone Smith had established a sterling reputation by 2002 when she was asked by Hartford Courant Books Editor Carole Goldberg to write the keynote essay for the newspaper’s first annual Literary Supplement, which focused on Hartford authors. A phone call from a reader helped lead to her acclaimed memoir, Girls of Tender Age. Continue reading “Awhirl in a Kaleidoscope of City Memories”
from Two on an Old Pathway
from Two on an Old Pathway
by Eleanor O’Rourke Koenig
(Hartford: Edwin Valentine Mitchell, 1929)
CONQUEST
She had a way
Of sweeping up a room
Then for a minute
Hanging on the broom.
Plumb in the middle—
There she would stand
Holding a broom
And the world in her hand.
from Herb Woman and Other Poems
from Herb Woman and Other Poems
by Eleanor C. Koenig
(New York: Harold Vinal, 1926)
RELEASE
OH, let me run with autumn winds
That pass through reeds and rushes
Let me shriek with evening gales
In ragged currant bushes.
Let me tear through aspen trees,
Roar on naked beaches,
Let me howl through bending oaks
In haunted woodland reaches.
I tell you, this, the grief I hold
Is no considerate sorrow;
This is the King of Pain who must
A fitting garment borrow. Continue reading from Herb Woman and Other Poems
The Last of the Beechers: Memories on my Eighty-Third Birthday
The Last of the Beechers: Memories on my Eighty-Third Birthday (Connecticut Magazine, 1905)
by Isabella Beecher Hooker
Full text available from Internet Archive in book reader format: Continue reading The Last of the Beechers: Memories on my Eighty-Third Birthday
Shall Women Vote?
SHALL WOMEN VOTE?
A Matrimonial Dialogue
By Isabella Beecher Hooker
Scene: New York, February 18, 1860
Dramatis Personae: Mr. Smith and Mrs. Smith
Mr. Smith:
Did you read this Editorial in the Independent, on women’s voting? Continue reading Shall Women Vote?
The Constitutional Rights Of The Women Of The United States
The Constitutional Rights Of The Women Of The United States: An Address Before the International Council of Women, Washington D. C., March 30, 1888
by Isabella Beecher Hooker
In the month of August, 1774, that eminent statesman and true patriot, Thomas, Jefferson, in a little tract entitled “A Summary View of the Rights of British America,” used certain words which I will take for my text while addressing you to-day on the “Constitutional Rights of the Women Citizens of the United States.” They are these: Continue reading The Constitutional Rights Of The Women Of The United States
The Triumph
“The Triumph” was originally published in The New Yorker (February 1, 1941) and is described as Gill’s finest by the article on his fiction in Gale’s Contemporary Novelists. The story is set in Connecticut and is centered on an elderly woman and her daughter clinging to the mores and social distinctions of the Old World in a way that contrasts ironically with their present circumstances. “The Triumph” ends in a subtle revelation of character that exposes a layer to the story the reader may have missed and increases the title’s irony. Continue reading The Triumph