Literary Women

Books about women who have shaped our literary landscape.
Updated September 19, 2022
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The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Paper Book
The complete, uncensored journals of Sylvia Plath--essential reading for anyone who has been moved and fascinated by the poet's life and work. "A genuine literary event.... Plath's journals contain marvels of discovery." --The New York Times Book Review  ...
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
Nancy Milford
Paper Book
Thirty years after the smashing success ofZelda, Nancy Milford returns with a stunning second act.Savage Beautyis the portrait of a passionate, fearless woman who obsessed American ever as she tormented herself. If F. Scott Fitzgerald was the hero of the Jazz Age, Edna St. Vincent Millay, as...
Blue Nights
Joan Didion
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...
Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee
Charles J. Shields
Paper Book
The colorful life of the remarkable woman who created To Kill a Mockingbird - the classic that became a touchstone for generations of Americans To Kill a Mockingbird, the twentieth-century's most widely read American novel, has sold thirty million copies and still sells a million...
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Caroline Fraser
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...
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 been the...
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...
My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson
Alfred Habegger
Paper Book
Emily Dickinson, probably the most loved and certainly the greatest of American poets, continues to be seen as the most elusive. One reason she has become a timeless icon of mystery for many readers is that her developmental phases have not been clarified. In this exhaustively researched biography,...
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
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,...

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