David Prashker's Book Of Days: October 20

Poetess, playwrightess and novelistess Madame de Villedieu (Marie-Catherine Desjardins), early advocate for the equal status of women, but as women, not as pseudo-men, died today in 1683; her tale can be found on the Ancien Régime page of "Woman-Blindness".

And sharing her birthday, albeit decades later, in 1740, Isabelle de Charrière, or sometimes Belle van Zuylen, and just to make it even more complex her birth certificate says Isabella Agneta Elisabeth van Tuyll van Serooskerken(Oct 20 1740-Dec 27 1805): complex because she started out life as Dutch, married a Swiss and moved to Le Pontet, the Charrière family home near Neuchâtel, but wrote in French, and acquired most of her fame there, somewhere in the literary-intellectual spectrum between Jane Austen and Mary-Ann Evans: “The Nobleman and Other Romances” is pure Jane Austen, social critique, the intricacies of male-female relationships: but “By A Lady” would never have written the thinly-veiled attack on Marie-Antoinette which is “Eagonlette and Suggestina”. Mary-Ann might well have done, and would have been proud to put her name to Charrière’s “Trois Femmes” or “Lettres Neuchâteloises”, though these were rather more influenced by Diderot and Rousseau than by M-A’s beloved Spinoza. She is also listed on the Napoleonic Age page of "Woman-Blindness".

Amber pages

Sir Christopher Wren, English astronomer and architect, born today in 1632. Follow the map on the right by clicking here

Arthur Rimbaud, French poet, born today in 1854 (see also July 10 and October 8)

Charles Ives, US composer, born today in 1874

The 49th parallel established as the border between US and Canada, today in 1818

And one of the most despicable of all the many despicable events that comprise American history, the House Un-American Activities Committee opened its hearings today in 1947, Senator Joe McCarthy in the Chair; and that is all that I intend to say here on this subject. The light, on this occasion, is stopped on red (save just that one name, which, as you can see, has been black-listed).

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