Rosemary Dinnage (1928–2015)

The biographies themselves are short but good, and Dinnage has the talent of supplying telling details of her subjects without seeming gossipy. Unfortunately, I had never heard of 2/3rds of the people she wrote about. Some are muses, mistresses, hangers-on, or petty artists in their own right; only a few are known beyond their own tiny sphere of time and place. I like that she chose to write about people who are otherwise unexamined, but given that all of them were artists it seems short-sighted not to include a painting or sample of writing. She reviews and critiques their art, but if I’ve never seen it, how can I participate? Ah well, now I have more writers on my "to read" list.
… (mere)

A good collection of essays about an assortment of women, each isolated in one way or another. Occasionally the essay would be more about the man in the woman's life than the woman herself (if she was a mistress or muse to an artist for example). I hadn't heard of most of the women she wrote about (and there are many great ones she could have written about), but I did discover some interesting figures, and I do like how she sketches out the broader background to which they belonged - what was going on in the world politically and culturally during their lives.… (mere)