Virago Monthly Author Reads - Final votes

Thanks everyone who suggested authors. We have a great list of names, and as it's well over the needed eleven we need to whittle it down to one author for each of the remaining months of the year.

I'm thinking three votes each would work ie you can vote for one, two or three authors. The authors with the most votes will be this year's Virago monthly reads.

Deadline for voting is Midnight British time Thursday 17th January.

The nominated authors are:

Stevie Smith
Angela Carter
Jane Bowles
F Tennyson Jesse
Dorothy Canfield Fisher
E.H Young
E.M Delafield
Kate O'Brien
Ellen Glasgow
Joyce Carol Oates
Gail Godwin
Ada Leverson
Molly Keane
Olivia Manning
Rosamond Lehmann
Antonia White
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Enid Bagnold
Zora Neale Hurston
Angela Thirkell
Margaret Oliphant
Kaye Gibbons
Storm Jameson
Radclyffe Hall
Winifred Holtby
Barbara Comyns

I vote for:

Stevie Smith
Jane Bowles
F. Tennyson Jesse

Thanks for doing this, Dee! :)

Dee, I so appreciate you getting us organized. Thank you!

I'll cast my votes for:

Stevie Smith
Angela Carter
Angela Thirkell

I vote for :

E.H. Young
Angela Thirkell
Kate O'Brien

Thanks from me too for your hard work organising us again, Dee!

Winifred Holtby
Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Roasamond Lehmann

Antonia White
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Enid Bagnold

EH Young
Olivia Manning
Kaye Gibbons

Molly Keane
Rosamond Lehmann
Antonia White

I would like to cast my votes for:
Gail Godwin,
E.H Young and
Angela Thirkell.

Thank you very much for all that you do, Dee.

Voting deadline extended as more votes needed...

I'm voting for

Olivia Manning
E.H Young
Rosamond Lehmann

Angela Carter
Radclyffe Hall
F Tennyson Jesse

Ellen Glasgow,
Ada Leverson,
Storm Jameson.

Keane
Holtby
Oliphant

Dorothy Canfield Fisher
E. H. Young
Kate O'Brien

Thanks everyone.

I'll close voting midnight tomorrow and announce this year's authors on Friday morning.

Angela Thirkell
Molly Keane
Olivia Manning

Winifred Holtby
Rosamond Lehmann
Olivia Manning

So we ended up with 12 authors who had 2 or more final votes, as follows:

E.H Young 5 votes
Rosamond Lehmann 4 votes
Angela Thirkell 4 votes
Olivia Manning 4 votes
Molly Keane 3 votes
Winifred Holtby 3 votes
Dorothy Canfield Fisher 2 votes
Kate O'Brien 2 votes
F Tennyson Jesse 2 votes
Antonia White 2 votes
Angela Carter 2 votes
Stevie Smith 2 votes

We were looking for eleven so I thought we could maybe combine two in one month. Maybe Stevie Smith and Angela Carter would be an interesting combination?

Any thoughts on order of reading? I'm not sure if there are any anniversaries coming up which would make a particular month relevant for any of our authors.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher's birthday is Feb 17 - Jane at Beyond Eden Rock has a reading day then as part of her Underappreciated Lady Authors, and she's doing the same thing with EH Young on March 21

>20 TheBookTrunk: Great, that's February and March decided then, thank you!

>21 Soupdragon: >20 TheBookTrunk:
If you are wanting to go by birthdays, our authors go as follows:
January: Angela Thirkell
February: DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER
also: Rosamond Lehmann
March: E.H. YOUNG
also: Olivia Manning & Antonia White
April: F. Tennyson Jesse
May: Angela Carter
June: Winifred Holtby
July: Molly Keane
August: 0
September: Stevie Smith
October: 0
November: 0
December: Kate O'Brien

The birthdays of our chosen authors don’t spread out nicely over the year – Antonia White and F Tennyson were both born on March 1st and Olivia Manning on the 2nd – but if we want to celebrate as many authors as we could in the months of their birth we could add these to the two already mentioned:

Angela Carter - May
Winifred Holtby – June
Molly Keane – July
Stevie Smith – September
Kate O Brien – December

That leaves Rosamond Lehmann, Angela Thirkell, Olivia Manning, F Tennyson Jesse and Antonia White and April, August, October and November.

If we then read the authors with most votes first and pair the two with the least votes that would give us:

Dorothy Canfield Fisher - February
E H Young - March
Rosamond Lehmann - April
Angela Carter - May
Winifred Holtby – June
Molly Keane – July
Angela Thirkell - August
Stevie Smith – September
Olivia Manning - October
F Tennyson Jesse & Antonia White - November
Kate O Brien – December

Would that work? Does it make sense?!

(Edit - Clearly Belva and I were thinking the same things at the same time!)

I like the way your minds work, ladies!

Looks rather good to me - thanks ladies! 😀😁😁

That's great, we have a list for the year! Thank you, Jane and Belva.

Just to confirm, the authors we'll be reading for the monthly reads are as follows:

Dorothy Canfield Fisher - February
E H Young - March
Rosamond Lehmann - April
Angela Carter - May
Winifred Holtby– June
Molly Keane – July
Angela Thirkell - August
Stevie Smith – September
Olivia Manning - October
F Tennyson Jesse & Antonia White- November
Kate O Brien – December

I'n going start a thread for Dorothy Canfield Fisher now but it'll be rather minimal. If anyone has the time to add any personal info, bibliography or a photo, that would be fab. If not, I'm sure we'll manage to read happily without 😊

Dee, thank you SOOOO much for leading us through this process. It looks like we have another excellent year of reading ahead.

>27 lauralkeet: You're very welcome. Thanks to everyone who was involved and provided the votes.

Thank you Dee, what a great year of reading we have in store!

I'm hoping to do all twelve months this year. As an encouragement, I'm going to use this post to keep track of myself. (I'd been posting to my Profile page, but using a post is more convenient.)

February — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Feb 10 ... The Brimming Cup
Mar 2 .... Rough-Hewn

March — E.H. Young

Mar 8 .... Jenny Wren
Mar 23 ... The Curate's Wife
Mar 30 ... The Vicar's Daughter

April — Rosamond Lehmann

Apr 7 .... The Ballad and the Source
Apr 17 .. The Gipsy's Baby
Apr 19 .. A Note in Music
Apr 21 .. Invitation to the Waltz
Apr 26 .. The Weather in the Streets
Apr 28 .. A Sea-Grape Tree
May 5 ... The Echoing Grove

May — Angela Carter

May 19 ... The Magic Toyshop
May 26 ... The Virago Book of Fairy Tales

June — Winifred Holtby

Jun 30 ... South Riding

July — Molly Keane

Jul 31 ... The Rising Tide

August — Angela Thirkell

Aug 10 ... High Rising
Aug 13 ... Wild Strawberries

September — Stevie Smith

Sep 27 ... The Collected Poems of Stevie Smith

October — Olivia Manning

Oct 10 ... The Wind Changes
Oct 28 ... The Great Fortune

November — F Tennyson Jesse & Antonia White

Nov 27 ... Antonia White, As Once in May
Nov 30 ... F. Tennyson Jesse, The Lacquer Lady

December — Kate O'Brien

Dec 10 ... Mary Lavelle