Between the Sheets: Nine 20th Century Women Writers and Their Famous Literary Partnerships

Critic, novelist and literary journalist McDowell (The Picnic) takes a scholarly but fascinating look at the love lives of women writers, revealing how writers like Anais Nin, Simone de Beauvoir and Sylvia Plath were affected by their romantic liaisons. Using their letters, journals and diaries, McDowell explores the ambitions and desires of nine writers, often uncovering tell-tale signs of dependence on their male counterparts. McDowell reviews some famous, oft-covered romances-including Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway (the celebrity couple of their day), Nin and Henry Miller, Plath and Ted Hughes-but also finds the relationships between figures like Elizabeth Smart and George Barker, or Rebecca West and H.G. Wells, also rich in power struggles regarding art and sex. Almost every union explored had devastating consequences for the women involved, but fueled some of their best work, begging some big questions: Would they have become writers without their entanglements with these men? And was success in their art ultimately worth the heartbreak? This stirring account lets their devotees decide.