Authors Electric

Most of you are too young to remember, but you're about to learn some news--so astonishing and wonderful you can't help but cry Well, that's enough foreplay. It's time for the news: Once upon a time writers had actual lives. And their books were all the better for it...as were our poor addled brains. They did not spend all their time on Facebook or Twitter...doing interviews...writing blogs...traveling on extended tours. They had lives. And they had lives not only because they had enough money to  have  lives. No, the books they burned to write were born of a passion for life...and first-hand experience, not research snatched from Google. Some great writers wrote quickly while others did not. Not all achieved fame in their lifetimes. But the books that do live on were grounded in experience. Rowdy and bloody or quietly blue, the one thing they all have in common is this: They came from the hearts of real men and women who, by God, who had actual l...

I read an article online recently about the invisibility of the middle-aged woman. And to a certain extent it’s true. At 53 (ssh!), I no longer get wolf-whistled in public, although to be fair, I never really did attract huge amounts of attention in that way (although I had my moments as a student – a red leather mini skirt was a great way of getting a taxi in Liverpool in the mid 1980s). I have no interest in clubs, or staying out until the sun comes up and these days I’d often rather be at home with a good book or film, instead of in the pub. I’m never going to be an astronaut, or the prime minister either. Fortunately, I accepted both of these facts early on in life; I’m not clever enough for the former and having non-British recent ancestry (I'm part-Chinese) excludes me from the latter. I’m not bitter. But we all want to be noticed , don’t we? Just for the right reasons. Yet still we women of a certain age go out in our cloaks of invisibility, especially us writers....

Brawls are fun to enjoy from the bleachers. And the first great literary feud still has a lot to teach us. Meet the two combatants now. In the left corner, Lord Byron (aka George Gordon): Born in 1788. 5'8". Lover, boxer, swimmer, marksman and literary rock star. Drank wine from a human skull and had sex with his half-sister. In the right corner, Robert Southey: Born in 1774. A 6' former rebel who turned coat for a government pension. Became Poet Laureate when Walter Scott declined. Sang prolifically then for his supper. Fight genesis: Motives seem murky. Southey may have seen in Byron the sins he wished he'd been blessed to commit, while Byron saw in Southey the staid bore he feared he'd become. But three factors combined to stir up the big brawl: -- 1818 . Byron took quick playful shots at Southey in the Dedication of Don Juan. Though Lord B's English Bards & Scotch Reviewers had lambasted everyone nine years before, his new dig at Sou...