Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Remembering Edith Layton

AAR just posted the news that
Edith Layton passed away this morning following a long bout with ovarian cancer. [...] Ms. Layton was one of the bloggers at the popular Word Wenches blog and Susan King reports that [...] a tribute will be posted in which readers and friends are invited to post their thoughts for the family.
I'd just like to quote something Edith herself wrote, not so very long ago:
When I think of helping my country, some immediate pictures spring to mind. Photos I've seen in old newsreels: Factory workers assembling things on assembly lines. Farmers plowing, harvesting, sowing in fields.

Miners with sooty faces. Steel workers amidst blazing furnaces.

Teachers in their classrooms. Houses being built. Rosie the Riveter riveting.

I can't do any of those things. What I do is write. And mostly I write about Romance. For the first time in a long time, that made me feel inadequate. [...]

And then I got to thinking about it. What the world needs now is love. [...] I hoped I was encouraging readers to dream, to seek, to hope itself. [...] That's when I realized what love's got to do with it. Love is what we need now to see us through tough times ahead.

2 comments:

  1. Edith Layton was a wonderful writer and a master of style. I was once lucky enough to be able to tell her how wonderfully evocative her prose was. That was the period after her Signet Regencies. Unfortunately, I felt she did not maintain that high standard in later books, but she had mentioned that publishers weren't really interested in that kind of prose.

    I just went to pull all my Layton Signet Regencies off the shelf. I foresee a re-rereading spree.

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  2. I am sorry to hear this. I read a couple of her books some years ago on the recommendation of an American friend, and found them pleasant and well-written, but more recently, I often enjoyed her contributions on the Word Wenches site.

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