Women Writing on the Devon Land: A County's Women Who Wrote - circa 1965

Archive record of Dorothy Holman at Devon Heritage Centre After rather a long gap posting, during which I’ve been busy catching up with other neglected writing duties, here I am again. This year my main plan is to concentrate on women who have not yet featured in this blog. In this first post I intend to delve into some of the local archives in search of texts by women writers who were linked with Devon. Many of these writings and their authors have virtually disappeared from public awareness. In 2016, Anna Boyd Rioux published an article entitled Erased from history:  'Too many women writers -- like Constance Fenimore Woolson -- are left to languish in moldy archives. What will it take to bring them back?' Rioux continued: 'Feminist scholars have done the hard work of recovering women writers, but we're not there yet. Far from it' ... Two of the books on many of the best-of-2015 lists were written by women who died in virtual obscurity, Clarice Lis

Writing Women on the Devon Land A – Z of Devon Women Writers & Places Over the A377 at Umberleigh Track near Umberleigh House 'A private track leading away from the A377 across the Taw floodplain, giving access to several fields'. © Copyright  Derek Harper and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence . .      What often intrigues me when I'm out and about exploring Devon's lost literary links connected with women of the past are the occasional teasing facts which pop up unexpectedly out of the historical blue, and yet either report conflicting facts or omit tantalising details, leaving you wondering what might have been. Although through the centuries Devon has frequently played a vital role in many major historical happenings, perhaps because of its outlying position toward the western margins of our country, it is more often than not ignored - and especially in my line of research focusing on its women's past