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612-822-4611
Shadow Work: Loneliness and the Literary Life

Shadow Work: Loneliness and the Literary Life

Hardcover

Women's HealthLiterary Criticism

ISBN10: 0231218494
ISBN13: 9780231218498
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: Mar 4 2025
Pages: 296
Weight: 1.15
Height: 0.81 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English

How is it that reading and writing can at once isolate us and bring us closer to others? Blending personal narrative with literary criticism, Emily Hodgson Anderson considers what a life spent with books has taught her about loneliness and human connection. She delves into the unseen labor of women, authors, and mothers, and she argues that we can reimagine intimacy through books. Herself a book lover and writer, a teacher of literature, and a single mom, Anderson reflects on the loneliness--and the strength--that can come from living, writing, and parenting alone.

Shadow Work puts writers such as Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Laurence Sterne, and Shakespeare into unexpected conversations with authors of children's literature and contemporary fiction, among them Roald Dahl, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Zadie Smith, and Lewis Carroll. Elegantly and poignantly written, this book examines what it means to revisit longtime literary companions and how literature can help us better understand what we show and hide about ourselves.

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Literary Criticism