Anya Seton, Lucinda H. MacKethan
Anya Seton, Lucinda H. MacKethan
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Anya Seton
A Writing Life

Author: Lucinda H. MacKethan

Narrator: Tanya Eby

Unabridged: 11 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/04/2020


Synopsis

Anya Seton was the bestselling author of ten historical novels, including the masterpieces Katherine and The Winthrop Woman, which are still widely beloved over sixty years after their publication; yet there has never before been a book-length biography about this great American writer.

Ann Seton was born in 1904 the daughter of two celebrity writers: Ernest Thompson Seton and Grace Gallatin Seton. At age thirty-six and self-renamed Anya, she placed her first novel with a major publisher. Anya the author was protective of her private life yet also mused, "I suppose I write myself over and over again in my heroines." She reinvented herself within carefully researched historical settings and biographical materials that provided both escape and wish-fulfillment. In journal entries, letters, and "self-analyses," she provides an intimate study of what it meant to her to be a writer. She wrote probably her own best epitaph while working on her masterpiece, Katherine: "My forte is story, and a peculiarly meticulous (fearful, yes) desire to weave historical fact into story. Make history come alive and as exciting as the past is to me."

About Lucinda H. MacKethan

Lucinda H. MacKethan is Alumni Distinguished Professor of English Emerita at North Carolina State University and the author or editor of six books, including Daughters of Time: Creating Women's Voice in Southern Story and the coedited Companion to Southern Literature.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sharon on December 09, 2020

Anya Seton is the author who made me love historical fiction, more years ago than I care to recount. Her Green Darkness is the first book I remember reading in the genre, and I was hooked. This biography is based largely on Anya Seton's own journals, to which the author was given access by family mem......more

Goodreads review by Tom on March 16, 2023

I read my first Anya Seton novel, “Green Darkness,” while cruising the Mediterranean Sea on my old Navy ship, in 1974. I was 19 years old, a young pup feeling my way through the literary world. Once I completed the book, I realized I had found a real treasure, including the author who wrote it. The......more

Goodreads review by Kathy on August 31, 2020

This is an illumninating and well-written biography of an author I've read and re-read since I was a teenager. I appreciate knowing all these details about Anya Seton's life and her writing process.......more

Goodreads review by Megan on March 02, 2023

What a truly abysmal disappointment this biography was. If I wanted to read Seton’s diaries for 300 pages I would have. MacKethan gives us no character sketch of the author, no interviews with family or friends, no historical context for the era in which Seton was writing in. MacKethan is too enamor......more

Goodreads review by Sandy on September 29, 2020

The author captures the personal and professional journey of a prolific historical fiction writer through intimate details shared in journals written over 30 years. Not only do we learn how Seton chose a character, we watch her create a gripping story of an imagined life through intense historical r......more