Some book lists are about favorites. Some book lists are about the best. Other book lists collect important and/or significant works on a particular subject. Still others define books by date or relevance.
Here at Still Life with Book Maven’s “Listification,” we sometimes put together book lists just because we’ve thought of something that amuses us (just as we sometimes write about ourselves in the third person because it amuses us. But we’ll stop now).
Today on Twitter, @KatMeyer challenged me to start creating a list of books with the word “mistress” in their titles. Why? Probably because we’d been talking about whether or not the phrase “virtuous courtesan” was an oxymoron, or not (truly, even if it technically is, as one twerson mentioned, it’s a common trope in romance fiction). Kat started the ball rolling with @KatePullinger‘s Mistress of Nothing. I immediately added Ariana Franklin’s Mistress of the Art of Death series, as well as Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices.
There are more! So here’s my challenge: Let’s build as comprehensive a list of books with “mistress” in the title as possible here. I’ll probably focus on literary and historical fiction in my picks, but genre fiction, nonfiction, memoir titles are all welcome. Once we’ve gotten a good solid list, Kat and I are going to try and round up a few of the authors for a live chat.
Mistress by Anita Nair
Mistress of the Vatican by Eleanor Herman
Mistress Shakespeare by Karen Harper
Mistress of the Sun by Sandra Gulland
Mistress of the Monarchy by Alison Weir
Sounds lovely! Do not forget Sandra Gulland’s MISTRESS OF THE SUN — love and intrigue in the court of Louis XIV, the Sun King.
I have no book titles with “mistress” but my favorite Andrew Marvell poem is “To his coy mistress”
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
Mistress Masham’s Repose by TH White
(or did you want only living authors?)
Mistress of Mellyn – I think this was Victoria Holt’s first gothic (first I read anyway); a classic of its kind.
Mistress Masham’s Repose – T.H. White (inspired by Gulliver’s Travels)
Needless-to-say, the first title that comes to my mind is my latest novel, MISTRESS OF THE SUN. The title was the result of a down-to-the-wire title change that has since grown on me. The original title, which I had bonded with, was BONE MAGIC — glad I changed!
Here are some other titles you might want to consider for your list:
Mistress Shakespeare by Karen Harper
The French Mistress by Susan Holloway Scott
The Perfect Royal Mistress by Diane Haeger
Mistress of the Revolution by Catherine Delors
Cheers, love this blog!
Sandra Gulland
*****
Website: http://www.sandragulland.com/
Blog: http://sandragulland.blogspot.com/
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“Mistress of Spices” by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- a rather fantastical and fairytale sort of book with an Indian background (hence the spices). But ACTUALLY my favourite book lately was Brian Moore’s 1998 book “The Magician’s Wife” – who almost (in the book) became a mistress but ultimately stayed on the path of virtue
The book is extraordinarily subtle, beautifully researched (1850s France and N. Africa) and magnificently written.
The Mistress’s Daughter — a memoir by A.M. Homes. A fun challenge — your mistress list. Thanks.
And I wanted to come to your round table. It sounded like such fun. Martha