Scribbling Women
From a letter to William D. Ticknor, 19 January 1855:
.... Besides, America is now wholly given over to a d---d mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash--and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumerable editions of the Lamplighter, and other books neither better nor worse?--worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by 100,000.
From a letter to William D. Ticknor, 6 January 1854:
I am getting sick of Grace [Greenwood]. Her "Little Pilgrim" is a humbug, and she herself is--but there is no need of telling you. I wish her well, and mean to write an article for her, by and by. But ink-stained women are, without a single exception, detestable.
From a letter to Sophia Hawthorne, 18 March 1856:
My dearest, I cannot enough thank God that, with a higher and deeper intellect than any other woman, thou hast never--forgive me the bare idea!--never prostituted thyself to the public, as that woman [Grace Greenwood] has, and as a thousand others do. It seems to deprive women of all delicacy; it has pretty much such an effect on them as it would to walk abroad through the streets, physically stark naked. Women are too good for authorship, and that is the reason it spoils them so.