Lost Ladies of Lit
A book podcast hosted by writing partners Amy Helmes and Kim Askew. Guests include biographers, journalists, authors, and cultural historians discussing lost classics by women writers. You can support Lost Ladies of Lit by visiting https://www.patreon.com/c/LostLadiesofLit339.
Episodes
298 episodes
Josephine Tey — The Daughter of Time with Jennifer Morag Henderson
Considered one of the greatest crime novels of all time, Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time flipped 450 years of British history on its head by re-examining Richard III’s purported involvement in the murder of his two young nephews, ...
Hildegart Rodríguez Carballeira — A Prodigy’s Meteoric Rise… and Murder
“Mommy Dearest” meets 1930s Spain in this episode’s exploration of a young woman conceived and raised by her single mother to be a prodigy and prototype of the “perfect woman.” Hildegart Rodríguez Carballeira more than lived up to her mother’s ...
Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry—The Tale of the Rose with Sara Kippur
Though her high-flying literary husband took center-stage, Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry was more than just the metaphorical “rose” in his novella The Little Prince. She was a writer and artist in her own right, with a gift for storytellin...
Clara S. Foltz, María Ruiz de Burton and the Land Wars That Stymied Them Both
In this follow-up to last week’s episode, Amy explores the connection between legal pioneer Clara Foltz, California’s first female attorney, and our previous “lost lady,” María Amparo Ruiz de Burton. After fighting to change state laws so that ...
María Amparo Ruiz de Burton — Who Would Have Thought It? with Quite Literally Books
The first Mexican-American woman novelist to be published in English, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton chose a surprising subject matter—East Coast high society—for her first novel, Who Would Have Thought It? She was uniquely qualified to s...
Recent "Firsts" for Women in the Workforce
From NASA to the Church of England to the WNBA, women have celebrated some significant professional milestones in recent weeks. In this bonus episode, Amy breaks down all the bright spots while also diving into some disappointing news: the gend...
Juanita Harrison—My Great, Wide, Beautiful World with Cathryn Halverson
Determined from a young age to escape the Jim-Crow South and see new places, Mississippi native Juanita Harrison managed, as a working-class Black woman, to cultivate her own version of a grand world tour, paying for her globe-trotting by picki...
Tragic Mansions by Mrs. Philip Lydig
Gilded-Age gossip meets Edith-Wharton-style scandal in the 1927 Fifth-Avenue tell-all Tragic Mansions by Mrs. Philip Lydig (a.k.a. the fashionable socialite Rita de Acosta Lydig). Find out what prompted this glamorous doyenne to dish t...
Magda Szabó — Abigail with Deborah H. Sussman
A literary icon in her native Hungary, Magda Szabó was relatively unknown to English-speaking readers until recent translations of her work opened the door to her powerful storytelling. In today’s episode we focus on her 1970 novel Abigail<...
The Heroine's Journey ... Do We Need It?
Amy shares updates on previous book recommendations and contemplates how the ups and downs women encounter in life might differ from the archetypal “hero’s journey” described by Joseph Campbell. Jungian-oriented psychotherapist Maureen Murdock ...
Mary Elizabeth Braddon — Lady Audley's Secret with Kristine Huntley
Pass the smelling salts! Readers of the Victorian Era eagerly (or furtively) set scruples aside to read Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s 1862 sensation novel Lady Audley’s Secret — the title of which was enough to tempt even the most puritanic...
"Wuthering Heights" — The Reviews Are in!
Amy and Kim hightailed it to the theater to catch an opening-night screening of the new Emerald Fennell-directed "Wuthering Heights" starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. (We procured front-row seats and alcoholic drinks to prepare ...
ENCORE and updates! Elizabeth Garver Jordan — The Case of Lizzie Borden and Other Stories with Jane Carr and Lori Harrison-Kahan
Her Life in Ink, a brand new biography by Sharon Harris about Elizabeth Garver Jordan, provides a good reason to plunder our podcast vault this week to revisit an episode about this star journalist, editor and mystery author. Jordan’s ...
Olive Higgins Prouty — Sylvia Plath's Patroness
American novelist Olive Higgins Prouty served as both benefactress and mentor to a young Sylvia Plath — she’s depicted in The Bell Jar as the elderly patroness Philomena Guinea. Knowing that Prouty helped procure and pay for Plat...
Hazel Hawthorne — Salt House with Allison Bass-Riccio and Livia Tenzer
“Queen of the Dunes” Hazel Hawthorne was a Cape Cod legend who wrote about The Road nearly two decades before her one-time tenant, Jack Kerouac. A uniquely feminine precursor to Beat literature, her novel Salt House captures Bohemian l...
Disregard First Book — Trad Wives Pen a New Perspective
She wrote a book in defense of traditional homemaking — only to pen an about-face reckoning decades later when her 40-year-marriage went belly-up. In this episode, Amy discusses Disregard First Book author Terry Martin Hekker, who pass...
From Jane Austen to Zadie Smith — Advice from Women Writers for a More Productive 2026 (Encore Presentation)
In this encore presentation, Kim and Amy take stock by dusting off a "New Year’s" episode from 1921, sharing secrets of what makes their writing partnership work and turning to famous women writers — including Nancy Mitford, Isabelle Allende, A...
Daily Reading Goals and Thoughts on Shelly’s Sex Appeal
Amy elaborates on the reading goals she’s set for herself in 2026 to help center her distracted mind, including her mission to read at least one poem a day. The compelling joint biography of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, Romantic Ou...
Virginia Faulkner — Willa Cather Champion, with Brad Bigelow
Virginia Faulkner had no family ties to that other famous Faulkner, but she is connected to another icon of classic American literature. A young flapper who made an authorial splash with the New York literati (earning comparis...
Sympathy For the Devil (In Literature)
Charming devils have a way with words, especially when penned by savvy satirists. In this week’s bonus, Amy explores some literary works that put an almost-friendly spin on the Prince of Darkness, including C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letter...
Katharine Lee Bates — "Goody Claus on a Sleigh Ride"
Before penning the lyrics to “America the Beautiful,” Katharine Lee Bates shone a spotlight on the invisible (and not so invisible) labor tackled by an unsung Christmas heroine, Mrs. Claus. Bates’s 1888 poem “Goody Claus on a Sleigh Ride” imagi...
More Djuna ... And Jeff Buckley's Bookshelf!
In this follow-up to last week’s episode on Djuna Barnes, Amy recounts her own fleeting experience as a “stunt reporter” and recommends a recent release of Djuna Barnes’s short stories from McNally Editions. Having glimpsed a copy of Barnes’s <...
Djuna Barnes — Nightwood with Margaret Vandenburg
Dark and disturbing, yet strangely redemptive, Djuna Barnes’s 1936 modernist masterpiece Nightwood left even its greatest champion, T.S. Eliot, a bit bewildered. Guest Margaret Vandenburg, an expert in modernism, post-modernism and gen...
Dinah Brooke — A Double Take
The works of British writer Dinah Brooke are having a renaissance thanks to two recent reissues by McNally Editions: Love Life of a Cheltenham Lady and Lord Jim at Home (first published in 1971 and 1973, respectively.) Having ...
Malachi Whitaker — And So Did I with Valerie Waterhouse
Likened to a fresh Yorkshire breeze, Malachi Whitaker’s year-in-the-life memoir And So Did I, published in 1939, is a quirky spirit-quest juxtaposing wry humor and contemplative observations amidst the impending threat of global confli...