Reaction to the Reclaim Her Name book campaign is somewhat mixed

The Women’s Prize for Fiction and its sponsor have hit the headlines in multiple ways — good and bad.

The prize is celebrating its twenty-fifth year in existence with the Reclaim Her Name campaign, in which twenty-five novels originally released under male pseudonyms will come out under their authors’ birth names.

These works include Middlemarch by Mary Ann Evans (not George Eliot) and Indiana by Amantine Aurore Dupin (not George Sand).

A sour note, however, marred the announcement of this project.

The original cover for The Life of Martin R. Delany by Frances Rollin Whipper shows the profile not of Delany, but rather of the better-known abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

Baileys, the prize sponsor responsible for the cover, has apologized and replaced the cover, reports the Guardian.

Other controversies over the collection include the crediting of a short story to Chinese-American author Edith Maude Eaton, when a single scholar has only speculated that the tale was hers. 

That’s the tip of the iceberg; head to the Guardian to read more of the criticisms of the Reclaim Her Name collection.