Maeve Brennan, The Long-Winded Lady

Dolores McLoughlin (Trinity College Dublin)
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The Long-Winded Lady (1997), first published in book form in 1969, contains fifty-six sketches written by Maeve Brennan for The New Yorker, a magazine known for its commentaries on popular culture and eccentric Americana, between 1954 and 1981. When Brennan first began writing articles for the “Talk of the Town” section in 1954, individual pieces appeared anonymously alongside those of other writers. Her first Long-Winded Lady sketch, which appeared on 23 January 1954, changed the pattern and the character of the section. Entitled “Skunked”, the piece described the Lady’s failure to gain a shop assistant’s attention when taking a purse to a dress shop to have a matching collar made. Geoffrey Hellman, a regular c…

1800 words

Citation: McLoughlin, Dolores. "The Long-Winded Lady". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 July 2011 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=33488, accessed 22 November 2024.]

33488 The Long-Winded Lady 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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