Literature by Women

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    Tender Buttons

    The first publisher of Tender Buttons described the book’s effect on readers as “something like terror, there are no known precedents to cling to.” Written…

  • A City Girl

    In April 1888, Friedrich Engels wrote a letter to the English novelist and journalist Margaret Harkness, expressing his appreciation for her first novel, A City…

  • Mathilda

    Mary Shelley’s Mathilda, the story of one woman’s existential struggle after learning of her father’s desire for her, has been identified as Shelley’s most important…

  • Charlotte Smith: Major Poetic Works

    Immensely popular with contemporary readers, Smith’s major poetic works are foundational texts of the Romantic period. Smith’s innovations in poetic form have also placed her…

  • A Plea for Emigration; or Notes of Canada West

    Mary Ann Shadd’s pamphlet A Plea for Emigration; or Notes of Canada West is, as the title promises, a settler guide designed to inform prospective…

  • The Half-Caste

    Dinah Mulock Craik’s The Half-Caste concerns the coming-of-age of its title character, the mixed-race Zillah Le Poer, daughter of an English merchant and an Indian…

  • Kelroy

    Kelroy, a nearly-forgotten 1812 novel by Rebecca Rush, combines the refinement of the novel of manners with the Gothic novel’s hidden evil to tell the…

  • The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World

    First published in 1666, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle’s Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World is the first fictional portrayal of women…

  • The Sorceress of the Strand and Other Stories

    In 1898, The Strand Magazine, one of the most influential publications of the Victorian fin de siècle, deemed best-selling author and editor L.T. Meade a…

  • Black Beauty

    Continuously in print and translated into multiple languages since it was first published, Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty is a classic work of children’s literature and…

  • The Western Captive and Other Indian Stories

    This edition recovers Elizabeth Oakes Smith’s successful 1842 novel The Western Captive; or, The Times of Tecumseh and includes many of Oakes Smith’s other writings…

  • Beautiful Joe

    One of the first animal viewpoint novels published in North America, Margaret Marshall Saunders’s Beautiful Joe tells the story of an abused dog and his…

  • Domestic Manners of the Americans

    Frances Trollope’s Domestic Manners of the Americans, complemented by Auguste Hervieu’s satiric illustrations, took the transatlantic world by storm in 1832. An unusual combination of…

  • Peru and Peruvian Tales

    Helen Maria Williams’s epic poem Peru, first published in 1784, movingly recounts the story of Francisco Pizarro’s brutal conquest and exploitation of the Incas and…

  • The Manor House of De Villerai

    Rosanna Mullins Leprohon’s The Manor House of De Villerai, A Tale of Canada Under the French Dominion is a literary milestone—it is the first Canadian…

  • The Tunnel

    The Tunnel is the fourth volume in Dorothy Richardson’s novel series Pilgrimage. The series, set in the years 1893-1912, chronicles the life of Miriam Henderson,…

  • Pointed Roofs

    The first chapter-volume of Dorothy Richardson’s thirteen-volume novel series Pilgrimage, Pointed Roofs is a coming of age story. The protagonist is Miriam Henderson, seventeen years…

  • Conclusion of the Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph

    In 1761, Frances Sheridan published her novel The Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, which became a popular and widely praised example of the sentimental novel.…

  • Ethan Frome

    This amply annotated edition of Wharton’s 1911 classic novella includes textual notes and documents, including Wharton's preface, letters, reviews, and early short story, “Mrs. Manstey’s…

  • The O’Briens and the O’Flahertys

    The O’Briens and the O’Flahertys is a fast-paced tale of political intrigue and aristocratic vanity—a romp through 1793 Dublin as Ireland pitches towards the United…

  • Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

    “The art of travelling is only a branch of the art of thinking,” Mary Wollstonecraft wrote in one of her many reviews of works of…

  • Jane Austen’s Manuscript Works

    When Jane Austen died, at the age of 41, she left behind her not only six novels but a large number of manuscripts, ranging from…

  • Herland and Related Writings

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s provocative utopian novel Herland, first published in 1915, tells its story through the observations of three male explorers who discover a land…

  • The Turkish Embassy Letters

    In 1716, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s husband Edward Montagu was appointed British ambassador to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire. Montagu accompanied her husband…