Literary Women

Books about women who have shaped our literary landscape.
Updated September 19, 2022
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The journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962 : transcribed from the original manuscripts at Smith College
Plath, Sylvia
Paper Book
The Journals of Sylvia Plath offers an intimate portrait of the author of the extraordinary poems for which Plath is so widely loved, but it is also characterized by a prose of vigorous immediacy which places it alongside The Bell Jar as a work of literature. These exact and...
Blue nights
Didion, Joan
Paper Book
From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts...
A writer's diary : being extracts from the diary of Virginia Woolf
Woolf, Virginia
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...
Mockingbird : a portrait of Harper Lee : from Scout to Go set a watchman
Shields, Charles J.
Paper Book
An extensively revised and updated edition of the bestselling biography of Harper Lee, reframed from the perspective of the recent publication of Lee's Go Set a Watchman To Kill a Mockingbird--the twentieth century's most widely read American novel--has sold...
Prairie fires : the American dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Fraser, Caroline
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR The first comprehensive historical biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the beloved author of the...
Virginia Woolf
Hermione Lee
Paper Book
Hermione Lee sees Virginia Woolf afresh, in her historical setting and as a vital figure for our times. Her book moves freely between a richly detailed life-story and new attempts to understand crucial questions - the impact of her childhood, the cause and nature of her madness and suicide, the...
Edith Wharton
Hermione Lee
Paper Book
Born in 1862, during the Civil War, Edith Wharton broke away from her wealthy background. She travelled extensively in Europe, eventually settling in Paris. This biography delves into various aspects of Wharton's extraordinary life-story, shifting the emphasis towards Europe & placing her in her...
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...
Margaret Fuller: A New American Life
Megan Marshall
Paper Book
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography   From an early age, Margaret Fuller provoked and dazzled New England's intellectual elite. Her famous Conversations changed women's sense of how they could think and live; her editorship of the Transcendentalist literary...
The Soul of a Woman
Isabel Allende
Paper Book
From the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea comes "a bold exploration of womanhood, feminism, parenting, aging, love and more" (Associated Press). "The Soul of a Woman is Isabel Allende's most liberating book yet."--Elle
Reading Jackie her autobiography in books
Kuhn, William M.
Paper Book
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis never wrote a memoir, but she told her life story and revealed herself in intimate ways through the nearly 100 books she brought into print during the last two decades of her life as an editor at Viking and at Doubleday. Based on archives and interviews with Jackie's...
A secret sisterhood : the literary friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot & Virginia Woolf
Midorikawa, Emily
Paper Book
Male literary friendships are the stuff of legend; think Byron and Shelley, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. But the world's best-loved female authors are usually mythologized as solitary eccentrics or isolated geniuses. Coauthors and real-life friends Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney prove...
The invention of Angela Carter : a biography
Gordon, Edmund
Paper Book
Angela Carter is widely considered one of the best loved and most highly acclaimed English writers of the last hundred years. She was prolific and inventive, producing an astounding range of innovative novels, short stories, screenplays, and essays that won her the admiration and respect of readers...
The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym
Paula Byrne
Paper Book
'Captures both Barbara and her writing so miraculously' JILLY COOPER Picked as a Book to Look Forward to in 2021 by the Guardian, The Times and the Observer A Radio 4 Book of the Week, April 2021 Barbara Pym became beloved as one of...

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