As writers' wives are spotlit at a festival event, we look for the husbands in the distinguished tradition of 'other spouse' literature
The fourth Mrs Papa … Mary Welsh Hemingway. Photograph: Popperfoto/Popperfoto/Getty Images
No fewer than seven writers' wives will be on stage – albeit in virtual form – at a single event on Saturday, the first day of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. The subject is The Women Who Married Literary Giants, and the panellists are Naomi Wood and David Park.
Naomi Wood's novel Mrs Hemingway mops up four of them, courtesy of the serially-monogamous Papa H, while David Park's The Poets' Wives mixes the real (Catherine Blake, Nadezhda Mandelstam) with the fictional widow of an egotistical Irish poet.
With the film of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl also coming very soon, there's a lot of talk about the genre of marriage thrillers, with their riveting switches between husband/wife versions, and the idea that we readers move our sympathies about as well.
This set us thinking about the tradition of "other spouse stories" that has grown up since Jean Rhys burgled Jane Eyre to write Wide Sargasso Sea , about the first Mrs Rochester.
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Naomi Wood's novel Mrs Hemingway mops up four of them, courtesy of the serially-monogamous Papa H, while David Park's The Poets' Wives mixes the real (Catherine Blake, Nadezhda Mandelstam) with the fictional widow of an egotistical Irish poet.
With the film of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl also coming very soon, there's a lot of talk about the genre of marriage thrillers, with their riveting switches between husband/wife versions, and the idea that we readers move our sympathies about as well.
This set us thinking about the tradition of "other spouse stories" that has grown up since Jean Rhys burgled Jane Eyre to write Wide Sargasso Sea , about the first Mrs Rochester.
More
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