This week Bill is hosting Australian Women Writers Week for Generation Four (loosely, writers who began to publish in the ‘60s, ‘70s’ and ‘80s, but do follow the link for more details and the thoughtful commentary on characteristics of that time period’s innovations) and because he loves details that create a sense of place, I’m beginning by describing the neighbourhood in which I had my first apartment, amidst rows of older brick homes many of which had been turned into rental properties, downtown in a Southern Ontario city of (at that time) 300,000ish people.

Even in this city known for insurance and business—not the arts—my small apartment was a five-minute walk from three independent bookshops: one for booklovers, one for litlovers, and one for feminists. There was overlap between these three bookshops: you could buy Kate Chopin’s The Awakening in all of them. But stock diverged, too: in the first, I could buy Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars pocketbooks; in the second, I could buy a lovely reissue of The Hobbit; and in the third, I discovered Dale Spender’s books.

Bill would want me to state her spec’s clearly, I’m sure. (It’s probably a little late to please him: I’m walking a fine line.) Dale Spender was born September 22nd, 1943 in Newcastle, New South Wales although she would later be associated with Brisbane. (I wish I had a photograph here: Bill would.) Her aunt was Jean Spender, who wrote Australian mysteries (some of them were racy, according to Wikipedia!) and her uncle was a politician, Percy Spender.

Now that you have that handy link, you can check her out in detail. I’ll just add that one thing I knew was she had a younger sister Lynne, because several years later I would discover a second-hand copy of the letters they exchanged in the 1980s. And one thing I didn’t know (from a long list of not-knowing) is that she was a founder of Pandora Press, with its recognizable black-and-white covers and spines (think: Virago from Oceania).

Back to those bookshops: they were all open late on Friday evenings. My paycheques were issued on alternate Thursdays and, in those weeks of false but glorious abundance, stealing from funds that rightly belonged with foodstuffs or other essentials, I would go bookshopping on Friday evenings. Sometimes I would spend all my time (and money) in one of them. Sometimes I would tour all three and then make a tortured selection. This says a lot about me, I realize, that that comprised my Friday nights, but we’re all friends here.

The first of Dale Spender’s books that I bought was Mothers of the Novel (1986) which presents “100 good women writers before Jane Austen.” That was one of my earliest (and most ambitious, at that point) reading projects. It was closely followed by Women of Ideas (1982) whose girth was intimidating; I had it on the shelf for a few years before I dared to begin but then it read even more quickly than the literature volume. What struck me in that volume was the presence of scientists and mathematicians; learning about those women was a game-changer for me.

These two books made me such a fan of Dale Spender that I bought every book of hers I could find in that shop. And believe me, some of them nearly bored me to tears. Conceptually, they were interesting (her focus on bias in favour of male students, in classroom settings, for instance) but the studies were a little outdated (because not many were conducted on this topic) and they were carried out in places and institutions that I’d never heard of. Still, out of loyalty I read these books too and shelved them on what was then a barely existent non-fiction shelf. The idea of their keeping my favourite Spenders company: that was enough.

Her books about early feminist writers in the colonies were wholly interesting to me though; these I borrowed from an academic library, and I made ridiculously detailed notes. (Like 1983’s Feminist Theorists, for instance.) When I found a second-hand copy of Scribbling Sisters, with those letters between Dale and Lynne, I loved it hard. Then, I searched everywhere to find a copy for my friend, Helen, whom I considered my scribbling sister (but we aren’t sisters!), and I’ve picked it up countless times to browse, over the years, whenever I’ve felt a little lonely or faraway from a friend.

But now when I think of Dale Spender, I think of an oversized volume that I picked up on a whim one afternoon. After a short shift at work, I got off the bus and walked the half block to the shop, before crossing the street to go home. It felt like a boon, because I was rarely book-shopping during the day. That’s when I found her guide to the internet. I see that she has a 1995 publication, Nattering on the Net, but I recall that being more of a theoretical volume. What was this book? No doubt it’s a collectible now, even if it was real.

So I have to wonder whether I’ve imagined it, or imprinted her name onto a volume by another familiar and well-loved woman writer. Nonetheless, this book introduced me to the internet in a format that I could understand. Which is to say, via the printed page. Yes, there were pages and pages of URLs: places to visit and explore, communities of bookish people who were as obsessed about reading as I am. Yes, it was incredibly awkward to type in those seemingly nonsensical internet addresses with all their colons and slashes and dashes.

In time, this landscape would change. The feminist bookshop moved further down the street—and then it closed. The litlovers shop closed too. The booklovers shop shrank and moved around the corner (where it is still functioning seemingly although I’ve not visited in a couple of years). And the digital landscape changed too.

What hasn’t changed at all, is how great a reading project Dale Spender’s The Mothers of the Novel would be. Just browsing through it, with Bill’s week in mind, I am all a-swell with reading lists and possibilities again. Over the years I have added little sheets of paper for particular authors I’ve enjoyed, and although I now feel as though most of the names are familiar, I would probably have a much easier time locating all those books now (via Project Gutenberg and similar ventures).

And even if it wasn’t Dale Spender who encouraged me to find other booklovers online, I can’t help but feel like she’s kinda introduced me to all of you, and I’m so heartfully glad to have met you here. Thanks for hosting, Bill.