Forgotten Authors, The - Women - Volume 1

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society. In literature the ambition is much narrower. In order to be known, to be popular, you had to be published. And for that people had to know you existed and your ideas worth reading. Obviously for most of humanity’s time people couldn’t read and texts couldn’t be published in any great number. In the 15th Century Gutenberg’s printing press began the revolution to address the second and by the 19th century had gathered pace with startling speed and mass distribution. Education for the many was brought in to help people understand more of their world and, with new skills, how to have a better place within it. Now, if the powers that owned the presses and means of distribution agreed an audience would now be able to avail themselves of your ideas, your printed words. All too often the talents of women have been scorned, mocked and laughed at. In reality that was more usually by those who’s own talents were hardly fit to even grace their shadows. But society in general still connived and set women to one side in almost everything that men considered their rightful territory. And literature was one such territory. Remarkably resilient as well as talented these women strove to be published, to show themselves as equals. The results more often than not proved that they were. Sadly, in the thirst for the new, the recent and the past fell from sight, relegated to dark corners and dusty shelves. But the printed word is rarely without someone, somewhere busying themselves through piles of papers and books rediscovering what a good story is, whatever its age. In this volume we offer up a small selection of talents whose time has now come again. He also made regular contributions to the Russian emigre press. Although reluctant to become involved in politics, Bunin was now feted as both a writer and the figurehead of non-Bolshevik Russian values and traditions. In 1933 he became the first Russian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature ‘for following through and developing with chastity and artfulness the traditions of Russian classic prose.’ In 1938 Bunin began working on the celebrated cycle of nostalgic, and erotically themed stories known Dark Avenues (or Dark Alleys). As World War II broke out he chose to remain in Grasse spending the war at his remote Villa Jeanette, high in the mountains. Ivan Bunin was a staunch anti-Nazi, and often, under difficult conditions, sheltered fugitives after Vichy was occupied by the Germans. He wrote but did not publish during these years until on August 23rd the Nazi’s fled Grasse without a fight. The next day the Americans came. In May 1945 he returned to Paris and, apart from convalescing at times in Juan-les-Pins, he stayed for the rest of his life. After 1948, with his health deteriorating, Bunin concentrated upon writing his memoirs and a book on Chekhov. His last years were overshadowed by bitterness and despair at the situation in Russia and the treatment of its peoples. He was suffering now from asthma, bronchitis and chronic pneumonia. Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin died in a Paris attic flat on 8th November 1953. Heart failure, cardiac asthma and pulmonary sclerosis were given as the causes of death. He was 83.