Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Past Voices

I'm reading a Harvard Classics featuring Descartes, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Hobbes. Most days on Twitter I follow accounts dedicated to Samuel Pepys, Richard Burton, and actively contribute to a Thomas Paine page. Waiting to be read are memoirs by Anais Nin and Charles Darwin. Put bluntly, I enjoy reading dead people ruminating about the minutiae of their daily lives, cultural events of their day, and whatever else passed their radars. Question: I'm looking to expand beyond the mostly white guys and looking for women essayists before the 20th century and writers from countries outside the US. Any suggestions?

5 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

Not a woman, and from the 20th century, but James Baldwin, who was an African American writer, has a very interesting biography and he wrote some tremendous essays.

David Cranmer said...

I have read Baldwin and agree, Charles. Exceptional human, writer.

Todd Mason said...

Mary Wollstonecraft and Emma Goldman, though the latter was an immigrant to the US for a while before deportation for working for labor and other human rights and birth control access and other offenses to God and Man, satisfy both criteria.

Todd Mason said...

And, of course, Goldman lived well into the 20th Century...mostly in Canada.

David Cranmer said...

Thanks, Todd. I have read Mary Wollstonecraft (who was friendly with a hero of mine, Thomas Paine) and know of Emma Goldman.