Literary Women

Books about women who have shaped our literary landscape.
Updated September 19, 2022
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Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
Simone de Beauvoir
Paper Book
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
Nancy Milford
Paper Book
A "New York Times" Notable Book, this landmark biography uncovers for the first time the dark side of Edna St. Vincent Millay, the most famous poet of the Jazz Age. Chosen by "Entertainment Weekly" as the #1 nonfiction book of the year. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Zelda: A Biography
Nancy Milford
Paper Book
Zelda Sayre began as a Southern beauty, became an international wonder, and died by fire in a madhouse. With her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, she moved in a golden aura of excitement, romance, and promise. The epitome of the Jazz Age, together they rode the crest of the era: to its collapse and...
A Writer's Diary
Virginia Woolf
Paper Book
An invaluable guide to the art and mind of Virginia Woolf, drawn from the personal record she kept over a period of twenty-seven years. Included are entries that refer to her own writing, and those that are relevant to the raw material of her work, and, finally, comments...
Virginia Woolf
Hermione Lee
Paper Book
"A biography wholly worthy of the brilliant woman it chronicles. . . . It rediscovers Virginia Woolf afresh."  --The Philadelphia Inquirer              While Virginia Woolf--one of our century's most brilliant...
Anne Sexton: A Biography
Diane Middlebrook
Paper Book
Anne Sexton began writing poetry at the age of twenty-nine to keep from killing herself. She held on to language for dear life and somehow -- in spite of alcoholism and the mental illness that ultimately led her to suicide -- managed to create a body of work that won a Pulitzer Prize and that still...
Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley
Charlotte Gordon
Paper Book
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER * NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE SEATTLE TIMES This groundbreaking dual biography brings to life a pioneering English feminist and the daughter she never knew. Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley have each...
Edith Wharton
Hermione Lee
Paper Book
Delving into heretofore untapped sources, the author of the acclaimed masterpiece Virginia Woolf brilliantly interweaves Edith Wharton's life with the evolution of her writing, the full scope of which shows her to be far more daring than her stereotype as lapidarian chronicler of the Gilded Age.
Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties
Marion Meade
Paper Book
In her exuberant new work, Marion Meade presents a portrait of four extraordinary writers-Dorothy Parker, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St.Vincent Millay, and Edna Ferber- whose loves, lives, and literary endeavors embodied the spirit of the 1920s. These literary heroines did what they wanted...
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life
Ruth Franklin
Paper Book
Instantly heralded for its "masterful" and "thrilling" portrayal (Boston Globe), Shirley Jackson reveals the tumultuous life and inner darkness of the literary genius behind such classics as "The Lottery" and The Haunting of Hill House. In this "remarkable act of reclamation" (Neil Gaiman), Ruth...
The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym
Paula Byrne
Paper Book
'Captures both Barbara and her writing so miraculously' JILLY COOPERPicked as a Book to Look Forward to in 2021 by the Guardian, The Times and the ObserverA Radio 4 Book of the Week, April 2021 Barbara Pym became beloved as one of the wittiest novelists of the late twentieth century,...
Eudora Welty: A Writer's Life
Ann Waldron
Paper Book
Eudora Welty is a beloved institution of Southern fiction and American literature, whose closely guarded privacy has prevented a full-scale study of her life and work--until now. A significant contribution to the world of letters, Ann Waldron's biography chronicles the history and...
The Prosaic Soul of Nikki Giovanni
Nikki Giovanni
Paper Book
From one of the most commanding, luminous voices to grace America's political and poetic landscape comes a brilliant and searing collection of essays, articles, meditations and recollections.  This omnibus edition collects celebrated poet and activist Nikki Giovanni's adult prose:...

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