Shaggy Muses, Maureen Adams
Shaggy Muses, Maureen Adams
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Shaggy Muses
The Dogs Who Inspired Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Bronte, Emily Dickinson,Edith Wharton, and Virginia Woolf

Author: Maureen Adams

Narrator: Polly Stone

Unabridged: 9 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/07/2007


Synopsis

In Shaggy Muses, we visit Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Flush, the golden Cocker Spaniel who danced the poet away from death, back to life and human love. We roam the wild Yorkshire moors with Emily Brontë, whose fierce Mastiff mix, Keeper, provided a safe and loving outlet for the writer’s equally fierce spirit. We enter the creative sanctum of Emily Dickinson, which she shared only with Carlo, the gentle, giant Newfoundland who soothed her emotional terrors. We mingle with Edith Wharton, whose ever-faithful Pekes warmed her lonely heart during her restless travels among Europe and America’s social and intellectual elite. We are privileged guests in the fragile universe of Virginia Woolf, who depended for emotional support and sanity not only on her human loved
ones but also on her dogs, especially Pinka–a gift from her lover, Vita Sackville-West–a black Cocker Spaniel who soon became a strong, bright thread in the fabric of Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s life together.

Based on diaries, letters, and other contemporary accounts–and featuring many illustrations of the writers and their dogs–these five miniature biographies allow us unparalleled intimacy with women of genius in their hours of domestic ease and inner vulnerability. Shaggy Muses also enchants us with a pack of new friends: Flush, Keeper, Carlo, Foxy, Linky, Grizzle, Pinka, and all the other devoted canines who loved and served these great writers.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR Shaggy Muses

“An intimate look at famous women authors whose lives were more difficult than we would ever have imagined. Their dogs helped them to survive and create their great works of classic English literature. Lovers of literature and all those interested in the human-animal bond should read this fascinating book.”
–Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation

“I so enjoyed Shaggy Muses. It manages very successfully to bring into focus exactly why these dogs were important to these writers–providing some with confidence, some with love, some with protection, and all of them with a curious sense of identification with another spirit that, sometimes, fueled their writing. No mean feat.”
–Margaret Forster, author of Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A Biography

“Shaggy Muses gives readers an intriguing new approach to these five authors. Writing can be a lonely profession. As a dog lover and writer, it’s wonderful for me to think of how these important authors all seem to have needed the kind of comfort and love that dogs give best.”
–Diana Wells, author of My Therapist’s Dog: Lessons in Unconditional Love

About The Author

Maureen Adams is a licensed clinical psychologist. Before teaching psychology at the University of San Francisco, she taught English at the University of Missouri. She is the author of Shaggy Muses: The Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton, and Emily BrontëShe and her husband live in Sonoma, California.Polly Stone won the 2016 Audie Award for fiction. She has lived in France, Central America, and New York. She currently lives in Northern California with her husband and Maggie, a Portuguese water dog.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Deborah on May 30, 2015

The short review: A pleasant overview of several important female writers and their canine companions. If you're not a dog person, you still won't be one after reading this book, but you may understand them a little better, even if you still think they're insane (because they are). The details: Bear......more

Goodreads review by Carla on June 29, 2019

Conhecer um pouco melhor estas cinco escritoras através dos seus cães foi um prazer e um privilégio.......more

Goodreads review by Cecily on February 03, 2018

Not a big I would have normally picked up but a decently interesting read. I am not too familiar with a lot of these poet/Author's work but I have at least heard of them and now know a lot more about them, at least some of their work, and their personal lives. It really gave some of their work more......more

Goodreads review by Sumangali on February 02, 2013

They say that behind every great man there has to be a great woman, but behind a great woman? They do not mention. Perhaps we should look down toward the hearth. Shaggy Muses, by Maureen Adams, is a heartful tribute to the dogs who unknowingly, and unconditionally inspired five iconic female writers......more

Goodreads review by Angela on June 29, 2017

Too full of remote speculative psychoanalysis, especially built upon premises that were unsafe in the first place. One key example is the alleged beating given to her dog Keeper by Emily Bronte: a luridly told story from the Gaskell biography of Charlotte Bronte, which is known to be somewhat exagge......more