An aunt imparts wisdom to her teenage niece, inspired by the works of Jane Austen, in this novel from the Man Booker Prize–nominated author. Alice is an aspiring novelist with green hair and zero interest in reading Jane Austen for her college English class. However, her Aunt Fay, a novelist herself, isn’t about to let Alice stick her nose up at Austen or other enduring authors. “You find her boring, petty and irrelevant, and, that as the world is in crisis, and the future catastrophic, you cannot imagine what purpose there can be in reading her,” Fay writes her. “My dear pretty little Alice, now with black and green hair . . . How can I hope to explain Literature to you, with its capital ‘L’?” Alternating between passages from Jane Austen’s novels and accounts of her own career, Aunt Fay pays tribute to a great author, explores the craft of fiction, and charts her niece’s development as a writer in this unique book that reveals how Austen—and great literature—is truly, wonderfully timeless.

Letters to Alice by Fay Weldon is one of the title's in the Cambridge Literature series. It is edited by Jenifer Smith.

Down through the ages there have been countless men and women who have lived intelligent and courageous lives that didn’t even make a footnote in the history books. Such a woman is the subject of this anthology. Women like Alice King have been and will be an inspiration to generations of young women. Although she lived in “a man’s world,” Alice created a niche for herself through self-determination, intelligence, and above all, an undefeatable spirit that never waned through her 89 years of life in the Rockies (1905 to 1995). Alice is to be admired for her genuine pioneer spirit, her zest for life, and her determination to live life to the utmost. Even when her eyesight had gone and getting around was so difficult, she kept her mind active by learning and growing and doing – right to the end. This woman was a wonderful example to all of us of how a confident, active mind can remain lucid into the declining years. Her letters reflect the personal strength and determination that guided her through a long and productive life.

In the summer of 1881, Robert Justus Kleberg rode across the hot, dusty South Texas brush country to the palatial home of Capt. Richard King to consult with the cattle baron about attending to his legal affairs. On that same journey, the young lawyer also first laid eyes on Alice King, “Princess of the Wild Horse Desert.” Neither of their lives would ever be the same. Published for the first time in this book, the love letters written by Kleberg to Alice Gertrudis King provide a glimpse of the lives of two of the most influential people in Texas history. Editors Jane Clements Monday and Frances Brannen Vick have also provided generous documentation and annotation of these important primary documents from the Special Collections at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi, affording historians and interested readers an insider’s view of one of the world’s greatest ranching empires as it transitioned from its founders to the next generation. Letters to Alice: Birth of the Kleberg-King-Ranch Dynasty represents the only existing collection of letters between any of the great Texas cattle barons and their wives. Although a great deal is already known about the ranch and its development, Monday and Vick present for the first time Robert Justus Kleberg’s personal perspective on his first meeting with Alice King, their early courtship, the difficulties obtaining her parents’ permission to marry, and the poignant time surrounding Captain King’s death.

The Catholic convert and women of letters Alice Meynell (1847–1922) ranks as a sophisticated essayist and poet of the late Victorian period and the early twentieth century. She had the advantage of an educated father and a musical mother who spent much of their early time with the family visiting Europe, especially Italy. Alice’s father was a friend of Dickens and her mother was admired by Dickens. Alice and her sister Elizabeth, later the famed artist Lady Butler, were educated privately and more so by their travels. This background gave Alice a great interest in art, music, poetry and literature. Her conversion to Catholicism in 1868 was the rock of her existence and coloured her entire life. Alice and her convert husband Wilfrid were very involved in the journalistic world as she was a contributor to the Scots / National Observer, Dublin Review, Tablet, Athenaeum, Speaker, Spectator, and the Magazine of Art. Alice was also an important unsigned contributor to the Pall Mall Gazette ‘Wares of Autolycus’ column for many years. Together Wilfrid and Alice edited and wrote for their own illustrated monthly Merry England from 1883–95. Contributors included Alice’s close friend Katharine Tynan, Coventry Patmore, Andrew Lang, and Francis Thompson, whose “The Hound of Heaven” was first published by them. They also managed the Weekly Register from 1881–98. The two journals kept Alice very busy as did her large family. Alice’s letters show her literary work, both poetry and essays, and her relationship with John Lane, who published many of her books, an arrangement not always easy. She discusses her work with poets such as John Freeman and John Drinkwater, and her admiration for Coventry Patmore with the writer Frederick Page. She was obviously considered important for aspiring and established poets who sought her approbation. She visited America in late 1901 for a short lecture tour which was fairly successful but also gave her some lifelong friends. She supported women’s suffrage and marched, although she was against its militancy. Alice was ambivalent about the First World War and her final years were spent writing and editing anthologies.

She was first considered "subversive" during World War I, yet she lived to protest our involvement in Vietnam. She was America's foremost industrial toxicologist, a pioneer in medicine and in social reform, long-time resident of Hull House, pacifist and civil libertarian. She was Edith Hamilton's sister, and the first woman on the faculty of Harvard, though she retired--an assistant professor in the school of public health--ten years before women medical students were admitted. This legendary figure now comes to life in an integrated work of biography and letters. A keen observer and an extraordinarily complex woman, Alice Hamilton left a rich correspondence, spanning the period from 1888 to 1965, that forms a journal of her times as well as of her life. The letters document the range of her involvement, from the battle against lead poisoning to debates with Felix Frankfurter over civil liberties. But as Alice Hamilton describes a woman's medical education in the late nineteenth century, her unlikely adventures in city slums, mine shafts, and factories, her work with Jane Addams and the women's peace movement, we also witness the stages of one woman's evolution from self-deprecating girl to leading social advocate. The charming details of her girlhood help us to understand her conflicted need to escape Victorian constraints without violating her own notion of femininity, a dilemma resolved only by a career combining science with service. Beautifully realized works themselves, these letters have been woven by Barbara Sicherman into an exemplary biography that opens a window on the Progressive era.

Two women. One secret. Will they be able to keep it under wraps?