Rachel Feder – författare

“Even the most obsessive Swiftie will discover new Easter eggs in these pages.”—Oprah DailyFrom a Robert Frost poem on her debut album to the myth of Cassandra on The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift’s lyrics are filled with literary connections.Make sure you're catching them all with this expert guide to the novels, poems, and plays that influence her songwriting.Let a literature professor and a musical theater artist guide you through the Taylor Swift canon—from Shakespeare to the Brontë sisters to Daphne du Maurier!Learn what "New Romantics" has to do with the old RomanticsGet to know the Gothic monsters haunting MidnightsSpot Taylor's many Great Gatsby referencesDiscover what Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson have in commonAnd find your new favorite tortured poet!Packed with fun facts, entertaining analysis, and literary-themed playlists that fans will love, Taylor Swift by the Book will turn anyone from a Taylor Swift lover into a Taylor Swift scholar.With full-color illustrations highlighting the literary eras of Dr. Swift (yes, she has an honorary PhD), it’s a perfect gift for the Swiftie in your life.

Arguably the most famous vampire story in all of literature, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) is the chilling tale of a monster of incomprehensible evil and the band of heroes who desperately hunt him. With twists and turns that unfold through journal entries, letters, and other “found” writings, Stoker stages a dramatic struggle between forces of good and evil, insanity and reason, and fear and desire as the group contends with the mysterious Count Dracula and his terrifying nature. This unforgettable masterpiece of Gothic horror inspired several iconic adaptations and has become the archetype for the vampire lore that continues to grip audiences across countless genres and mediums.

In the period between 1815 and 1820, Mary Shelley wrote her most famous novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, as well as its companion piece, Mathilda, a tragic incest narrative that was confiscated by her father, William Godwin, and left unpublished until 1959. She also gave birth to four—and lost three—children.In this hybrid text, Rachel Feder interprets Frankenstein and Mathilda within a series of provocative frameworks including Shelley’s experiences of motherhood and maternal loss, twentieth-century feminists’ interests in and attachments to Mary Shelley, and the critic’s own experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood. Harvester of Hearts explores how Mary Shelley’s exchanges with her children—in utero, in birth, in life, and in death—infuse her literary creations. Drawing on the archives of feminist scholarship, Feder theorizes “elective affinities,” a term she borrows from Goethe to interrogate how the personal attachments of literary critics shape our sense of literary history. Feder blurs the distinctions between intellectual, bodily, literary, and personal history, reanimating the classical feminist discourse on Frankenstein by stepping into the frame.The result—at once an experimental book of literary criticism, a performative foray into feminist praxis, and a deeply personal lyric essay—not only locates Mary Shelley’s monsters within the folds of maternal identity but also illuminates the connections between the literary and the quotidian.

A narrative-poetic retelling of The Great Gatsby from the perspective of a 1990s teen poet Daisy: Poems is a captivating and imaginative take on The Great Gatsby that puts F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 classic in the hands of a messy, ambitious, and possibly devious teen poet. From her privileged yet precarious perch in the roaring 1990s, Daisy navigates the expectations of her parents, boyfriend, and lover, alongside her own artistic ambitions, as she explores whether freedom is what she truly desires - and wonders if it's even possible. Rachel Feder puts a new spin on beloved characters: Jay, longtime and secret lover Nick, somewhat mysterious and always meddling cousin and Jordyn, best friend and companion in doomed relationships. A meditation on juvenilia, constructions of femininity, the purity myth, and canonical literary silences, Daisy is told in sparse, evocative verse that pulsates with youthful passion and offers a new elegy for our lost American dreams.

A collection of poems weaving together astrology, motherhood, music, and literary history.In Birth Chart, a collection of heartfelt, ruthless poetry, Rachel Feder rethinks the relationship between astrology and motherhood. She asks, if astrology constellates the universe around the moment of one's birth, then how might it serve as shorthand for a vast number of personal experiences and cultural phenomena? How might it speak to and of friendship, motherhood, authorship, the mysteries of literary history, and the wonders of watching a child come into language? Across four sections, including a serial poem in sustained conversation with the modernist poet H.D., Feder's references range from group texts to the Talmud to ʼ90s song lyrics. In her hands-and her inimitable yet familiar, often straight-up funny voice-astrology is less a means of explaining the world than of communicating, of capturing a feeling, of sealing a bond. The result is an equally sentimental and sardonic collection in which "the language of explanation is a heart emoji. It means you know what I mean." And we do.

“A wildly entertaining read.”—The Washington PostCovering cultural touchstones ranging from Normal People to Taylor Swift and from Lord Byron to The Bachelor, The Darcy Myth is a book for anyone who loves thinking deeply about literature and culture.You already know Mr. Darcy—at least you think you do! The brooding, rude, standoffish romantic hero of Pride and Prejudice, Darcy initially insults and ignores the witty heroine, but eventually succumbs to her charms. It’s a classic enemies-to-lovers plot, and one that has profoundly influenced our cultural ideas about courtship. But what if this classic isn’t just a grand romance, but a horror novel about how scary love and marriage can be for women?In The Darcy Myth, literature scholar Rachel Feder unpacks Austen’s Gothic influences and how they’ve led us to a romantic ideal that’s halfway to being a monster story. Why is our culture so obsessed with cruel, indifferent romantic heroes (and sometimes heroines)? How much of that is Darcy’s fault? And, now that we know, what do we do about it?