George Egerton

George Egerton, pseudónimo de la escritora Mary Chavelita Dunne, nacida en 1859 en Australia, pero cuya vida transcurrió entre Irlanda, Estados Unidos, Noruega e Inglaterra, fue siempre muy celosa de su intimidad y jamas quiso ser entrevistada ni que se escribiera su biografia. Seria el Premio Nobel de Literatura Knut Hamsun quien la animara a escribir sobre la naturaleza femenina. Tuvo una vida dificil, llena de penurias economicas y de cargas familiares. Sin embargo, su obra deja entrever la pluma de una mujer apasionada, deseosa de atencion y cariño, y la pluralidad cultural que su vida cosmopolita le proporciono."Tonicas" (1893) fue la primera obra que publico; "Disonancias" la siguio un año mas tarde. Ambas colecciones tuvieron un exito rotundo entre la clase literaria londinense de finales del XIX. En "Tonicas", los personajes son mujeres sensibles, complejas, inteligentes y fuertes que controlan sus propias vidas. "Disonancias" mantiene la misma intimidad psicologica, con un cierto caracter naturalista, pero con la insistencia de que es el individuo quien tiene la facultad para elegir su propio destino. Su autora quiso retratar a la mujer tal y como es y no como el hombre la imagina.

A release in celebration of World Womens day on March 8 2013. "Neurotic and repulsive" Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine "A deliberate outrage" Athenaem "Crazy and offensive drivel" Saturday Review Sounds good, right? George Egertons Wedlock is a pioneering work of 19th Century female writing. First published in 1893, it is a story that set about detonating contemporary ideas of female purity, as well as helping to usher in modernism with its focus on interior life and refusal to adhere to contemporary writing standards. It has with a Dostoyevskian tang: redemption in madness and, eventually, a wonderful sense of relief. With a new, dazzling introduction by our very own Eimear McBride, plus a variety of other interesting titbits (from a small snapshot of the trailblazing Egertons life - a woman, it seemed, who had more affairs than Casanova - to two vitriolic articles from stuffy journalists of the period), for the price of a Mars Bar you can take a taste of the strange, dated, and rather glorious work of a writer who paved the way for not only a new generation of women writers and social reformers, but also for the modernist movement. James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Hardy - they all owe a debt to Egerton; and we are proud, in our own small way, of helping to make sure shes not forgotten. This special Galley Beggar Press edition comes with an introduction from our own new female-purity-detonating writer Eimear McBride, a short biography of Egertons remarkable life and End Notes looking at the phenomenon of the "new woman" - and its most strident critics.

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