How to Be a Heroine
Or, What I've Learned From Reading Too Much
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group · Print & ebook · February 3, 2015
While debating literature’s greatest heroines with her best friend, thirtysomething playwright Samantha Ellis has a revelation—her whole life, she's been trying to be Cathy Earnshaw of Wuthering Heights when she should have been trying to be Jane Eyre.
We earn from qualifying purchases.
- Who it’s for
- A thoughtful, bookish braid of criticism, memoir, and hard-won perspective.
- Genres
- Books & Reading, Personal Memoirs, Feminist Lit Crit
- Published
- Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, February 3, 2015
Nearest books
Matched by what the books are about, then ordered by what their readers also loved.
What Jane Austen's Characters Read (and WhySusan Allen Ford58% matchShares Books & Reading
Miss AustenGill Hornby55% match
Girl on GirlSophie Gilbert56% match
Sleeping With CatsMarge Piercy53% match
Plain Bad HeroinesEmily M. Danforth, Sara Lautman56% match
For younger readers: Wonderful Women of the World, The Brontë Sisters, Knocking on Windows
Start with three books, and this one can be the first.
Members get a new edition every morning: a route out from their books to essays, research and talks, with the reason for each.
Start with this bookAbout this book
While debating literature’s greatest heroines with her best friend, thirtysomething playwright Samantha Ellis has a revelation—her whole life, she's been trying to be Cathy Earnshaw of Wuthering Heights when she should have been trying to be Jane Eyre. With this discovery, she embarks on a retrospective look at the literary ladies—the characters and the writers—whom she has loved since childhood.
Continue reading
From early obsessions with the March sisters to her later idolization of Sylvia Plath, Ellis evaluates how her heroines stack up today. And, just as she excavates the stories of her favorite characters, Ellis also shares a frank, often humorous account of her own life growing up in a tight-knit Iraqi Jewish community in London. Here a life-long reader explores how heroines shape all our lives.
Bookish Reflections
A thoughtful, bookish braid of criticism, memoir, and hard-won perspective.
Come here for
- book-club conversation about reading and self-making
- essayistic, layered reflections on women’s lives and books
Expect
- prestige-leaning, contemplative tone
- ideas that linger rather than a tidy argument
Where it sits
| Feminist Lit Crit | 30% |
|---|---|
| Books & Reading | 25% |
| Personal Memoirs | 20% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Personal Memoirs
- Humor Essays
- Humor in Literature
- Authors
- Samantha Ellis
- Publisher
- Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Published
- February 3, 2015
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Reading lane
- Personal Memoirs