Charlotte Gordon is an American writer, distinguished professor of humanities at

Endicott College Endicott College is a private college in Beverly, Massachusetts. History Endicott College was founded as Endicott Junior College in 1939 by Eleanor Tupper and her husband, George O. Bierkoe. Originally a two-year women’s college, its miss ...

, and winner of the

National Book Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Mary Wollstonecraft Mary Wollstonecraft (, ; 27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was a British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationsh ...

and

Mary Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel '' Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also ...

'' (2015). She was born in

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

in 1962, and received her B.A in English and American Literature from

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...

. She received her M.A in Creative Writing and her Ph.D in Literature from

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with ...

. She was awarded the Massachusetts Book Award for non-fiction for her biography of the seventeenth-century poet,

Anne Bradstreet Anne Bradstreet ( née Dudley; March 8, 1612 – September 16, 1672) was the most prominent of early English poets of North America and first writer in England's North American colonies to be published. She is the first Puritan figure in ...

, ''Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Life of America's First Poet''. This was followed by ''The Woman Who Named God: Abraham's Dilemma and the Birth of Three Faiths'', which in the author's own words describes the "shadows, gaps and silences" in the biblical texts about

Abraham Abraham, ; ar, , , name=, group= (originally Abram) is the common Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father of the special relationship between the Je ...

, Sarah and

Hagar Hagar, of uncertain origin; ar, هَاجَر, Hājar; grc, Ἁγάρ, Hagár; la, Agar is a biblical woman. According to the Book of Genesis, she was an Egyptian slave, a handmaiden of Sarah (then known as ''Sarai''), whom Sarah gave to h ...

. Examining them as stories, and drawing on the Bible both as a source of literature and religion, she notes that "some of the most crucial western ideas about freedom come from Hagar". Her most recent book, ''Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of

Mary Wollstonecraft Mary Wollstonecraft (, ; 27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was a British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationsh ...

and

'' (2015), is about the mother and daughter pair of writers. The first Mary died giving birth to the second in 1797, and ''The Guardian'' said that the biography did a creditable job of binding them together again. It was favourably reviewed in ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' as well. ''Romantic Outlaws'' was the

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

Book of the Week ''Book of the Week'' is a BBC Radio 4 series that is broadcast daily on week days. Each week, extracts from the selected book, usually a non-fiction work, are read over five episodes; each fifteen-minute episode is broadcast in the morning (9:45a ...

on August 10, 2015, and won the 2016

National Book Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Lyndall Gordon Lyndall Gordon (born 4 November 1941) is a British-based biographical and former academic writer, known for her literary biographies. She is a senior research fellow at St Hilda's College, Oxford. Life Born in Cape Town, she had her undergradua ...

, also a literary biographer of Wollstonecraft (2005) and of mother-daughter pairs

References

External links

* Charlotte Gordon's websit

*

Little, Brown Little, Brown and Company is an American publishing company founded in 1837 by Charles Coffin Little and James Brown (publisher), James Brown in Boston. For close to two centuries it has published fiction and nonfiction by American authors. Ear ...

's author pag

*

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

intervie

*

CBC Radio CBC Radio is the English-language radio operations of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The CBC operates a number of radio networks serving different audiences and programming niches, all of which (regardless of language) are outlined below ...

intervie

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gordon, Charlotte 21st-century American women writers Living people Harvard College alumni Boston University College of Arts and Sciences alumni Endicott College faculty American women non-fiction writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers Year of birth missing (living people) Mary Wollstonecraft scholars