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American writer A.N.DEVERS was at a rare-book fair in New York City in 2015 when she noticed a Joan ...
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American writer A.N.DEVERS was at a rare-book fair in New York City in 2015 when she noticed a Joan Didion title selling for just $25. Then she saw the price tag of a novel by the equally famous Cormac McCarthy: about $600. “I realized we don’t value women’s work the same way we do men’s,” Devers says. “It’s depressing. But it’s also exciting, because I can do something about it.”
Three years later, after moving to London and joining the U.K.’s booming rare-book trade, Devers opened the red doors of her new bookstore, the Second Shelf. Located in a quiet courtyard off the busy streets of London’s Soho, the store almost exclusively stocks rare books by women (alongside a handful of male-authored books about women). The focus is modern fiction: Elizabeth Bowen novels, romances by Rosamunde Pilcher, poetry by Ntozake Shange.
Devers’ skill for finding overlooked jewels was polished during a childhood of Visits to yard sales in towns across the U.S., a result of her family’s following her father’s Air Force job. Some of her most sought-after recent finds were works by Miriam Tlali, the first black woman to publish a novel in South Africa. Devers hit on her 1975 debut in a charity store and quickly sourced and sold 15 more Tlali books.
In collecting these works, the Second Shelf is correcting a historical imbalance that has allowed women’s literary achievements to be eclipsed. Bookdealers have tended to be men; much of the trade’s early material was collected by “country gentlemen who ran estates and amassed libraries of books to show their wealth and intelligence,” Devers says. She argues that they’ve been like their peers in other male-led creative industries — including television, film and the news media — in that “they focus on themselves.”
That past contributes to a plain absence of women’s work among the books considered to be valuable cultural objects. In January, the Second Shelf went viral (走红) on Twitter after Devers pointed out that only nine books by women appeared in a list, produced by a trade website, of the 500 biggest sales at auction in the books-and-paper field last year. Even among more recently published works, a 2018 study found, titles by women are on average priced 45% lower than books by men.
In recent years, calls have gone out to read only books by women for a year and for universities to expand their curriculums. The observance of Women’s History Month in the U.S. has also made March a time for publishers to suggest fitting reading lists. Devers’ shop is the physical site of that movement challenging the current situation. “We’ve been taught to find value in something really narrow,” she says. “It’s time to explore something different.”
1.The first paragraph tells the readers _________.
A.why Devers named her shop the Second Shelf
B.how Devers was exposed to rare book trade
C.what motivated Devers to open the Second Shelf
D.where Devers first came across women’s literary works
2.The underlined word “eclipse” in the fourth paragraph means_________.
A.fully exposed
B.partially concealed
C.seriously treated
D.roughly explained
3.Which may explain the absence of the great literary works by women?
A.The trade used to be dominated by men.
B.Women writers’ ideas conflict with the bookdealers’.
C.Males tend to be productive in the creative industry.
D.The majority of male readers don’t read modern fiction.
4.What can be inferred from the passage?
A.In recent years, university curriculums have emphasized books by women.
B.Women’s History Month has pushed women writers to be more productive.
C.More physical bookstores like Devers’ are needed to change the situation.
D.The Second Shelf is helping turn a page for women in literature.
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