Women's History Month No. 14

First, here's a factoid for you: on this day in history, 1781 to be exact, the astronomer Wm. Herschel discovered Uranus. :-)

Secondly, please note the life & works of the lady who wrote this: "I am not belittling the brave pioneer men but the sunbonnet as well as the sombrero has helped to settle this glorious land of ours."

And this: "Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death - fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant."

Edna Ferber (1885 ~ 1968)

If you don't already know, you will, once you look her up, that Miss Ferber was a stagestruck journalist-turned-novelist/playwright who wrote many a novel that was made into a film: Cimarron. Giant. So Big, [winner of the 1925 Pulitzer Prize for fiction]. Show Boat, which was turned into a glorious & historic Broadway production before it became a 1951 Technicolor vehicle for Howard Keel, Kathryn Grayson, & Ava Gardner. Saratoga Trunk. I'm sure there are more. Anyway, Miss Ferber also occupied a regular seat at the Algonquin Round Table. AND, she wrote one of my all-time favorite books, Edna's memoir of a rich life, lived, mostly, in the first half of the 20th Century: A Peculiar Treasure. I'll tell you, too, that when I visited Eleanor Roosevelt's home [left, so I was told, as it had been when she left it to go off to heaven] years ago, there it was on her coffee table.