"...a piercing blend of memoir, criticism, and biography examining how women writers across the centuries carved out intellectual freedom for their lives and how others might do the same.'

A Life of One's Own came into being as Joanna Biggs, as a woman and a writer, was going through a divorce, dealing with her mother's Alzheimers diagnosis, and trying to figure out what she wanted her life to look like.
She turned to other women writers: Mary Wollstonecraft, George Eliot, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison, and Elena Ferrante. I am sure you will your favorites among these. I especially loved Biggs discussions of Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison. She says, "Reading Woolf's account of the beginnings of To the Lighthouse, it is strange to me that anyone ever talks of books apart from a writer's life ... Even if a book is about everything else, it is never not about the life the writer lived." And on Morrison she says, "The Black community in both Morrison's life and her fiction is a place where a woman who doesn't fit into normal categories can thrive."
Bibliophiles will find much to enjoy and ponder in A Life of One's Own.

Publisher material indicates this title examines “how women writers across the centuries carved out intellectual freedom for themselves.” Hm, sounds good. I like woman writers….
True, the work is described as a combination of biography, memoir, literary criticism….
Well, the combination didn’t work for me. Detailed but disjointed chapters highlighted womens’ divorce, depression, suicide- mixed with portraits of dysfunction that were distasteful to me.
Still, some may read more objectively and find glimpses of the advertised “intellectual freedom.”

As a middle-aged, educated, recently divorced woman with no children but load of ambition and a dream to write, this book was just what the doctor ordered! I would recommend it!

This book made me feel understood, and there's nothing better than that.

Nine acclaimed female authors' biographical snapshots are interwoven with Joanna Biggs' own autobiography and reflections on her life. It's a book about starting over, having the courage to build the life that you want, no matter the cost.

I loved this book, so much that I need a physical copy in my collection.

I really enjoyed this. The mix of memoir of Joanna’s life and reflection on other authors’ lives and their works was something that drew me in more than I was expecting. I feel like I learned so much about Joanna and the authors she writes about. I enjoyed the history behind each of these famous women who I have read some of, but not all. I feel like giving context to their lives and referencing their works had so much power. I feel like I now know these authors so much more and I appreciated how Joanna when reflecting on them used all of their works to help her through a difficult time. I am interested now to read some of the authors mentioned here who I had not yet read. As someone who loves reading I appreciated how Joanna leaned into her feelings about all of these works and strayed away from the traditional critic way she had been taught in school. I definitely recommend if you like a book with a more loose structure that feels more like a conversation

This collection is an intermingling of biographic snapshots of nine famous female authors, woven amongst Joanna Biggs’ own autobiography and life reflections.

In the aftermath of her divorce, Biggs embarks on a personal reckoning with the ideal of female domesticity and her deep need to create a life that allows her to center her own creative work. In the time following her break up and her mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, Biggs turned to the female authors she idolized in her youth. Doing so, she hoped that their lives and their work would give her a semblance of a way forward through her own wreckage.

Biggs finds herself taking solace in the lives and the turmoils of these nine women who came before her. Breaking with the tradition of her Oxford education, where she was taught to analyze the books she was reading dispassionately, without regard for the author's lives or her own lived experience. In doing so, Biggs and the reader are reminded that literature written by women is so often much more than just the words written on the page. It is a web of connection, community, understanding, and creation of place.

I definitely enjoyed the informative aspect of this book. Getting to experience a deeper dive into the lives behind some larger names in literature, and how they made their own way in societies where the odds were stacked against them. Biggs weaves the life stories and discussions of each author within her own timeline wonderfully. The result is a fascinating meditation on literature, friendship, desire, the life of the mind, and the woman writers’ persistent struggle of making space to be free.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ecco Press for giving me access to an advanced reader’s copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 4.5/5 Stars

As a writer and one that wants to develop more of her craft, I was drawn to the title and description of this book. While I don't believe I learned that much I did enjoy the stories presented. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. Four stars.

When the author, Joanna Biggs, marriage ends in divorce she is adrift, depressed while also trying to embrace her freedom. She turns to other women writers who have gone through similar mid-life changes to discover how their lives and their writing changed. She examines Mary Wollstonecraft, George Elliot, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Silvia Plath, Toni Morrison and Elena Ferrante. The similar thread is the balance of love and freedom and how the lives behind these women writers impacts their work and the writers who come after them. As a woman in my forties, it was also encouraging to read about the women who were late starters and who needed some life behind them before they were ready to establish their work. I think that I may have tried to read this too quickly and I would recommend spacing out the reading of each chapter so they don’t run together. This is the kind of book that needs to be slowly read over time.

I received a digital Advanced Readers Copy of the book from the Publisher via NetGalley.

Sometimes we need to see the thoughts that we bury deep inside of us out in the open to understand that we are not alone. This book does what The Feminine Mystique did for women of a generation past. A very confirming book for all to read.

A good introductory collection for readers interested in the unique struggles of famous women writers.

I published a video about this book on my Booktube channel. It can be accessed here: https://youtu.be/0zYuAB-nD2U

Following the dissolution of her marriage, Biggs scans back through her favorite female authors for perspective on how to move forward. This was a wonderfully insightful read, and I was happy to read that the author found such solace in the way authors like Plath, Morrison, Ferrante, etc found purpose in their lives outside the binds of marriage. Ultimately, life is better when we feel comfortable with ourselves. Partners should only add to our overall life experience, not take away. It was great to see how classic writers agree with that.

Big thanks to Ecco and NetGalley for the ARC of this book!

I never really have an idea of what to expect when I start reading a new book. More often than not, I only read the synopsis once, which is when I am at the point of deciding whether or not to buy it. This put me at a slight disadvantage, because I’d have loved to read this book after reading all its source material. That being said, finishing this immediately bumped up the works of Eliot, Beauvoir, and Ferrante on my TBR. I cannot wait to reread this after I go through them!

A Life of One’s Own reminded me a lot of the reading experience of The Lonely City by Olivia Laing, albeit a lot less visual. The book explores Biggs’ life following her divorce, as she sought to find meaning through the lives of eight women authors: Wollstonecraft, Eliot, Hurston, Woolf, Beauvoir, Plath, Morrison, and Ferrante. The title suggests a ninth, and that refers to our author, Biggs.

Majority of the chapters focus on these writers’ lives, where Biggs painstakingly takes out fragments of each and attempts to place them in alignment with hers. The act in itself is almost poetic, similar to how we often turn to movies, books, and songs in times of despair; trying to find some sense and meaning in situations we believe are so similar to ours.

I feel like my worldview has shifted with this book. While some of the biographical material is arguably well-known across the readership, it’s the very act of piecing them together and cross-referencing each authors’ lives that makes it so incredibly special. Biggs’ writing is open, conversational, and warm, inviting the reader to explore these lives with her. There’s not a tone of pretense; of admitting some form of higher knowledge in this book. Biggs’ work is profound without explicit demand of such.

My favorite chapters are the ones on Woolf, Beavouir, Plath, and Ferrante. I’ve always felt some sort of kinship in Plath—my life has not necessarily been as harrowing as hers, but I often sympathized with her inability to deem herself satisfied with her current state. I found comfort in Biggs’ segment on her—making me feel slightly more sane to know I wasn’t alone in looking up to Plath in such a degree.

This is the kind of book I would’ve picked up, regardless of whether or not it was gifted. That being said, I am so incredibly grateful to @eccobooks for gifting me this gem. This comes out on May 16, 2023, and I cannot WAIT to get my hands on a physical copy so I can annotate it in the degree it so willingly deserves. 5 stars.

I loved this book! The author, an Englishwoman and an editor at Harper's Magazine who lives in New York, goes against the grain of her Oxford education, where she was taught to analyze the books she was reading dispassionately, without regard for the author's lives or her own lived experience. Here, she takes us on a tour de force through the writings and lives of Mary Wollstonecraft, George Eliot, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison, and Elena Ferrante. Biggs combines memoir, detailing the aftermath of her divorce and her move from London to Brooklyn, NY, with literary criticism and close reading. Her reading is very different than the standard academic readings you would do in an English class. She weaves snippets from the lives of these trailblazing women with the lessons she learned and how she used their writings and their lives to inform her own life path and thinking. The result is a literary feast. Those who haven't read these seminal works, such as Beloved, To the Lighthouse, and Ariel, will hunger to get their hands on copies. Those who've read them will want to reread them. Highly recommend, with the caveat that there may be some spoilers if you're someone who reads for the plot.

A really well written interesting look at the lives of women authors through time how they lived their lives combined with their writing Interwwith the authors personal life.her divorce and other moments.A mix of memoir and history. Will be recommending #netgalley#eccobooks

An interesting book which delves into women's lives and their roles as artists. I appreciated the way the author linked her own life to the exploration she undertakes.

Full disclosure: I did not finish this (and won't post this review elsewhere). What I did read though was not for me. I did not realize the extent to which each writer's life was going to be tied back to the author's, not just in terms of framing but entirely throughout. And some of those tie-backs felt a little strained to me. Learned a lot though!!