Sunday book pick: Eight iconic women writers inspire freedom and creativity in ‘A Life of One’s Own’

“Toni has become an ancestor, the way Wollstonecraft was for Eliot, Eliot was for Woolf, Woolf for Plath, someone women use to encourage one another when our lives don’t fit conventional shapes.”

What is it about books that makes us feel so possessive about them? Or about writers that embolden us to think of them as an “ancestor”? Why do we feel so moved by stories? Why do we seek advice from fictional characters? Why do we read stories about imaginary people who lived many, many years before us? Why do we read?

These questions knock on a reader’s mind every time they find themselves in the company of a great writer or a great book. The immediate connection that one feels with lives separated by great swathes of time and space is nothing short of magic. The human mind is capable of remarkable brilliance, and our limitless imagination is perhaps our greatest gift to ourselves.

Re-reading favourites

In Joanna Bigg’s book A Life of One’s Own, she revisits her relationships with eight women writers and the essential ways their works – and lives – shaped her life. After a complicated divorce and starting over in a new country, Biggs found that her creative reservoir had been significantly depleted....

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