Charlotte Mew (November 15, 1869 – March 24, 1928)

Charlotte Mew's poetry encodes the emotional pain of hiding her lesbian identity in a world of compulsory heterosexuality.

Charlotte Mary Mew was born in London on November 15, 1869. Her father, Frederick Mew, was an architect. Her mother, Anna Maria Kendall Mew, was the daughter of the head of her husband's firm. Mew was strictly brought up by her nurse, Elizabeth Goodman, whom she was later to describe in the memoir "An Old Servant." The family was often struck by hardship; three of Mew's siblings died in childhood, and two others went insane in their twenties.

Mew wrote stories and verses in her teens. Her first published work was the story "Passed," accepted by Henry Harland for the 1894 number of The Yellow Book. Harland praised but rejected her next offering, "The China Bowl," and for the next decade and a half Mew published only the occasional story or essay, mostly in order to supplement the family's dwindling income.

Mew wrote most of her poems between 1909 and 1916. In 1912, she gained notice when Henry Massingham's radical paper The Nation published her poem "The Farmer's Bride." Mew was soon taken up by the hostess Catherine Scott, at whose teas she read and thereby gained some literary attention.

Introduced to Alida Klementaski and Harold Monro of the Poetry Bookshop, she published a chapbook, "The Farmer's Bride," under its imprint in 1916. The volume did not sell well, but Sidney Cockerell, the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, noticed it and sent copies to his literary friends, including Siegfried Sassoon and Thomas Hardy. Hardy was particularly impressed by her work. A second edition of "The Farmer's Bride" with additional poems was published in 1921. Cockerell's patronage enabled Mew to receive a small Civil list pension in 1923.

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Citation Information
Author: Najarian, James
Entry Title: Mew, Charlotte
General Editor: Claude J. Summers
Publication Name: glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture
Publication Date: 2002
Date Last Updated July 11, 2011
Web Address www.glbtq.com/literature/mew_c.html
Publisher glbtq, Inc.
1130 West Adams
Chicago, IL 60607
Today's Date March 24, 2013
Encyclopedia Copyright: © 2002-2006, glbtq, Inc.
Entry Copyright © 1995, 2002 New England Publishing Associates

( Further Readings )

More LGBT History at my website: www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Gay Classics

John Cavanagh (September 28, 1914 - March 24, 2003)

John Cavanagh was a successful Irish London-based couturier of the 1950s and 1960s.

John Bryan Cavanagh was born in County Mayo Ireland in 1914.

In 1932 Cavanagh was employed as a secretary for the couturier Edward Molyneux, first in London, and then in Paris. Molyneux insisted that Cavanagh learn how to draw before employing him. Through trial and error, Cavanagh rose to become supervisor of Molyneux's London branch, before becoming his personal assistant in Paris, where he learned how the haute couture business worked. In 1940, after war broke out, Cavanagh left Molyneux to join the British Army Intelligence Corps, where he was responsible for military intelligence and security. He was demobbed in 1946, and the following year became a design assistant for Pierre Balmain, for whom he worked until 1952.

In 1952, Cavanagh launched his eponymous fashion house, John Cavanagh, at 26 Curzon Street, London. He made his name with his "Coronation" collection for Spring-Summer 1953, marking the coronation of Elizabeth II. It consisted of dresses made up in sumptuous fabrics designed by Oliver Messel for the Sekers fabric mills. Although he had only been in business for a year, members of the English aristocracy ordered his dresses to wear for the Coronation celebrations, such as the gold brocade gown worn by Lady Cornwallis (née Esme d'Beaumont (1901–1969)), wife of Baron Cornwallis.

Cavanagh was renowned for his elegant tailoring, sense of colour and sense of chic, as well as the high standard and quality of his designs. Many of his staff had formerly worked for couturiers such as Nina Ricci, Lucile, and Molyneux. His personal assistant from 1961–1966, Lindsay Evans Robertson, described his work as being:

"...Paris in London. There was a lightness of touch, a feminine delicacy, a fragility unlike the work of any of the other London couturiers."

Susan Abraham wears a tiered evening dress by John Cavanagh, London, 1954. Photo by John French.

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cavanagh_(designer)

( Further Readings )

More Fashion Designers at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Art

It Happened Today: March 24

Bob Mackie & Ray Aghayan: http://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/3517712.html

Gorgen Ray Aghayan was a costume designer in the United States film industry. He won an Emmy Award in 1967 with his partner Bob Mackie for his work in Alice Through the Looking Glass. Aghayan was the lifetime partner of costume designer Bob Mackie for nearly 50 years. Aghayan was also nominated for an Academy Award for Costume Design three times for his work (Gaily, Gaily, Lady Sings the Blues, Funny Lady). Aghayan died on October 10, 2011 at his home in Los Angeles, California.

Charlotte Mew (November 15, 1869 – March 24, 1928): http://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/3517091.html

Charlotte Mew's two serious love affairs, with the writer Ella D'Arcy in 1898 and with the popular novelist May Sinclair nine years later, came to nothing when the women did not return her affection. Sinclair cruelly publicized Mew's attraction to her and Mew became the butt of ridicule. Mew's poetry does not explicitly mention her lesbianism but encodes the emotional pain of hiding her sexuality in complex dramatic monologues on themes of loss and isolation.

Jim Parsons & Todd Spiewak: http://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/3517295.html

Jim Parsons is an American actor. He is best known for playing Sheldon Cooper on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory. On May 23, 2012, an article in The New York Times noted that Parsons is gay and had been in a relationship for the last ten years. His partner is art director Todd Spiewak. In October 2013, Parsons called their relationship "an act of love, coffee in the morning, going to work, washing the clothes, taking the dogs out — a regular life, boring love".

John Cavanagh (September 28, 1914 - March 24, 2003): http://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/3517599.html

John Cavanagh was a successful Irish London-based couturier. Cavanagh was renowned for his elegant tailoring, sense of colour and chic, as well as the high standard and quality of his designs. Many of his staff had formerly worked for couturiers such as Nina Ricci, Lucile, and Molyneux. His personal assistant, Lindsay Evans Robertson, described his work: "Paris in London. There was a lightness of touch, a feminine delicacy, a fragility unlike the work of any of the other London couturiers."

Lanford Wilson (April 13, 1937 – March 24, 2011): http://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/3516746.html

One of the pioneers of the gay American theater, Lanford Wilson proved himself to be a powerful voice speaking of the lives of gay men. One of Wilson's most successful portrayals of gay themes occurs in Lemon Sky, in which the main character, Alan (whose situation is based on Wilson's own life after high school), is forced to come to grips with his homosexuality when he attempts a reconciliation with his estranged father. The play is influenced by Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie.

Margarethe Cammermeyer & Diane Divelbess: http://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/4270045.html

Margarethe "Grethe" Cammermeyer served as a colonel in the Washington National Guard (Vietnam veteran, recipient of the Bronze star, mother of four) and became a gay rights activist. She received a B.S. in Nursing in 1963 from the University of Maryland. In 1988, when she was 46, she met her partner, Diane Divelbess. In 2012, after same-sex marriage was legalized in Washington state, Cammermeyer and her partner Diane Divelbess became the first same-sex couple to get a license in Island County.

Blog Tour: When All The World Sleeps

Hi! We’re Lisa Henry and J.A. Rock, authors of When All the World Sleeps. We’re touring the web talking about our influences, our crazy ideas, this new book, and even giving you a sneak peek or two! And of course there’s a giveaway involved! Leave a comment to win!

Thanks so much to My Reviews & Ramblings for having us, and to everyone following the tour. Here’s today’s look at When All the World Sleeps:

Contest

Thanks for following our tour! To celebrate our release, we’re giving away a great pair of prizes! Up for grabs is an ebook of our last co-release, Mark Cooper versus America, and a $20 gift voucher from Riptide.  All you have to do is leave a comment on this post with a way for us to contact you, be it your email, your twitter, or a link to your Facebook or Goodreads account. Please put your email in the body of the comment, not just in email section of the comment form, because we won’t be able to see it otherwise! On APRIL 2, we’ll draw a winner from all eligible comments! Be sure to follow the whole tour, because the more comments you leave the more chances you have to win this awesome prize!

About When All the World Sleeps:

Daniel Whitlock is terrified of going to sleep. And rightly so: he sleepwalks, with no awareness or memory of his actions. Including burning down Kenny Cooper’s house—with Kenny inside it—after Kenny brutally beat him for being gay. Back in the tiny town of Logan after serving his prison sentence, Daniel isolates himself in a cabin in the woods and chains himself to his bed at night.

Like the rest of Logan, local cop Joe Belman doesn’t believe Daniel’s absurd defense. But when Bel saves Daniel from a retaliatory fire, he discovers that Daniel might not be what everyone thinks: killer, liar, tweaker, freak. Bel agrees to control Daniel at night—for the sake of the other townsfolk. Daniel’s fascinating, but Bel’s not going there.

Yet as he’s drawn further into Daniel’s dark world, Bel finds that he likes being in charge. And submitting to Bel gives Daniel the only peace he’s ever known. But Daniel’s demons won’t leave him alone, and he’ll need Bel’s help to slay them once and for all—assuming Bel is willing to risk everything to stand by him.

You can read an excerpt and purchase When All the World Sleeps here.



About the Authors

Lisa Henry lives in tropical North Queensland, Australia. She doesn’t know why, because she hates the heat, but suspects she’s too lazy to move. She spends half her time slaving away as a government minion, and the other half plotting her escape.

She attended university at sixteen, not because she was a child prodigy or anything, but because of a mix-up between international school systems early in life. She studied History and English, neither of them very thoroughly.

She shares her house with too many cats, a dog, a green tree frog that swims in the toilet, and as many possums as can break in every night. This is not how she imagined life as a grown-up.

You can visit Lisa her website, at Goodreads, or on Facebook or Twitter.

J.A. Rock has worked as a dog groomer, knife seller, haunted house zombie, standardized patient, cashier, census taker, state fair quilt hanger, and, for one less-than-magical evening, a server—and would much rather be writing about those jobs than doing them. J.A. lives mostly in West Virginia, and always with a beloved dog, Professor Anne.

You can visit J.A. at her website, her blog, or on Twitter or Facebook.

2014 Rainbow Awards Submission: Dirty Beautiful Words

Transgender Poetry
Dirty Beautiful Words by Brooklyn Brayl
Amazon Kindle: Dirty Beautiful Words

New York based writer/performer Brooklyn Brayl takes us on a journey through the untangling of conventions.

Charities Donation program progress:
25$ YouthCare: www.youthcare.org/
25$ Point Foundation: www.pointfoundation.org/
25$ CARE: careprogram.org/
25$ Lost-n-Found Youth: www.lost-n-found.org/
25$ Lambda Legal: www.lambdalegal.org/
50$ Wes for Youth: wesforyouth.privacemail.com/
83$ COLORS: www.colorsyouth.org/
132$ Galop: www.galop.org.uk/
150$ Cancer Research Institute: www.cancerresearch.org/
160$ UCAN: www.ucanchicago.org/
190$ SAGE: giveto.sageusa.org/
350$ Ali Forney Center: www.aliforneycenter.org/
TOTAL: 1240$*

* more than 150$ is a direct donation from a supporter of the Rainbow Awards who isn't submitting; while some authors were more than generous, arriving to donate 5 times the suggested amount, being the submission fee a non mandatory and voluntary direct donation, we were struggling to raise the same amount as last year and there is who decided to cover part of it. I thank you for all you are doing, and if you wish to donate to the above links, please drop me a note with your donation and I will update the total.

2014 Rainbow Awards Guidelines: reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/4162490.html

Cowboys & Vampires by Hank Edwards

What is probably the first you notice in Cowboys & Vampires, the first adventure in the Venom Valley series, is the horror: a living dead zombie, a man who is forced to "kill again" the woman he has always considered his mother, the difficult of trying to scind the memories of the good time past and the present horror. Sincerely I'm not a fan of horror stories, so the first instinct should have been to not continue with the reading, but there was something in Josh, an innocence and naivete that was a stark contrast with the horror.

And as soon as Dex enters the scene, I was bought. Josh's secret, the hidden force that linked me to him, was now clear, it was Dex. The boys growing old together, both of them having feeling for each other, both of them not having the courage to say it. But the horrific events, instead of tearing them apart, is the reason to finally come true. The sweetness of their love was the right counterbalance for the horror and the main reason why I wanted to go on and see what happened.

A small warning, Cowboys & Vampires more than a first novel in the series, is a first part of the story, to fully enjoy it you have probably to read it together with the second installment, Stakes and Spurs.

Paperback: 318 pages
Publisher: Wilde City Press, LLC; 2 edition (August 21, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1925031462
ISBN-13: 978-1925031461
Amazon: Cowboys & Vampires/Stakes & Spurs
Amazon Kindle: Cowboys & Vampires: Venom Valley Book One

More Reviews by Author at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Reviews