How To Be a Heroine by Samantha Ellis

published 2014

Samantha Ellis is writing about her favourite literary heroines. Blog notes start within the excerpts

[Ellis] Even now I cry my eyes out when Anne [of Green Gables] gets puffed sleeves.

[Clothes in Books covered this on the blog in two full entries here and here, with the words ‘It would take a heart of stone not to be charmed’ (which meant ‘it would take a heart of stone not to cry’). Here’s a brown gloria dress with puffed sleeves, below, and a specially elaborate puffed sleeve to the right.]

[Ellis, imagining meeting her heroines] Pauline and Posy Fossil [have] come straight from the shows they’re in, still in stage make-up and full of stories.


[Clothes in Books covered the audition dresses for Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the very modern fairy costumes they finally wore, below, and also looked at The Whicharts.]

[Ellis, on the other Fossil sister] Petrova, in a leather aviator jacket, goggles pushed back, a chic scarf knotted around her neck, is telling the thrilling story of her latest flight and how she fixed an engine fault in mid-air.

[Clothes in Books: Just like the costume we chose for Katniss Everdeen in Hunger Games, below,  and so we found another from the same series for Petrova, top picture.]

observations: Are we making the point? Samantha Ellis likes the same heroines, and books, that Clothes in Books does. She mentions many books inside this one, and 22 of them have featured on the blog. This is the book for those of us who really like reading. Not people who say ‘oh I like a book, I always have one on the go, books are great.’ This one is for the people who read manically, obsessively, lost in their books, living in the world inside their head, tied up forever in their favourites. You know who you are. In which case, do just go out and buy this book and read it, you will love it.

And, like me, you will say ‘I want to write this book!’ – not because you want to plagiarize, or do down Ellis (who is lovely) but because the idea is one that speaks to us, and although we all like, roughly, the same books, we would each have our own version of this one. Its subtitle is ‘What I’ve learned from reading too much.’ Ellis should launch a line of Literary Heroines Workbooks so we can each make our own. 

Some of the other books featured in this book and on the blog:

Nights at the Circus

Little Princess

Little Women

Bloody Chamber

Valley of the Dolls

Jane Eyre

Orlando

Excellent Women

The Bell Jar

Lolly Willowes

To the Lighthouse

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Bridget Jones' Diary

What Katy Did