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Collection of five short stories by:
• Lucy Maud Montgomery
• Elizabeth Gaskell
• Louisa May Alcott
• Harriet Jacobs
• Katherine Mansfield
Five Festive Stories by Female Authors is a small collection of celebrating the Christmas literature of women writers, including Anne of Green Gables author Lucy Maud Montgomery; Elizabeth Gaskell, author of North and South, Cranford and Mary Barton; and Louisa May Alcott, best remembered for her classic Little Women. This pocket collection also includes a poignant extract from Harriet Jacobs' memoir, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and is concluded by a short story written by the young Katherine Mansfield.
A Christmas Inspiration by Anne of Green Gables author Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942), written in 1901, contains all the classic features of the Christmas story genre. It tells the tale of five girls, who determine to share the season of goodwill with their neighbour.
Christmas Storms and Sunshine was written by the author of North and South, Cranford and Mary Barton. Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) - often referred to as Mrs Gaskell - became popular for her portrayal of many levels of Victorian society, including the lives of the very poor. This 1848 short story tells of two couples, the Hodgsons and the Jenkinses, who despite sharing the same lodgings were divided by politics. The events of one Christmas however, serve to remind the warring pairs that there are some things more important than political opinions and that seeing beyond these differences to our common humanity can help even the most hostile of opponents make peace.
A Country Christmas, set during the late 1860s, is the story of Sophie, a city girl, who while staying in rural Vermont with her Aunt Plumy, invites two friends to stay for Christmas. Despite rural life coming as something of a shock to the city dwellers, together they enjoy a 'real old-fashioned frolic' and a New England country celebration. Although she is best remembered for her novel Little Women (the opening chapters of which are set during the festive season), Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) wrote many other stories about Christmas.
While the other four stories in this collection are fictional, Christmas Festivities by Harriet Jacobs is autobiographical. Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) was born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina. She suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her enslaver, who threatened to sell her children if she did not submit to him. In order to escape her owner's advances, Jacobs went into hiding in a tiny crawl space beneath the roof of her grandmother's house. She would remain in hiding there for seven years. This extract - chapter 22 of her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which was published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent - offers a poignant insight into the author's experience during this time. Whilst some of the language used may be uncomfortable by modern standards, we felt it only fitting to preserve the text as it was originally written - a powerful account of an African-American author, who experienced slavery.
The final story is by one of the most notable short story writers of the last century. Katherine Mansfield - the pen name for Kathleen Mansfield Murry, née Beauchamp - was born in New Zealand in 1888. Although she would die at the tragically young age of 34, Mansfield would publish several collections of short stories. The story included here was written in 1899 and published in The Reporter, the school magazine for Wellington Girls' College where Mansfield was educated. Even at the young age of 10 ½, Mansfield is already displaying elements of her later characteristic literary style making this short work a delightful story to be shared on A Happy Christmas Eve.
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