Literary Women

Books about women who have shaped our literary landscape.
Updated September 19, 2022
Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
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  ...
Blue Nights
Joan Didion
Audiobook
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...
The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors
Juliet Barker
Paper Book
The story of the tragic Brontë family is familiar to everyone: we all know about the half-mad, repressive father, the drunken, drug-addicted wastrel of a brother, wildly romantic Emily, unrequited Anne, and "poor Charlotte." Or do we? These stereotypes of the popular imagination are precisely that-...
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.
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...
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,...
A secret sisterhood :
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...

Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or log in here.