Literature by Women

Showing 121–144 of 202 results

  • Selections from The Girl’s Own Paper, 1880-1907

    The Girl’s Own Paper, founded in 1880, both shaped and reflected tensions between traditional domestic ideologies of the period and New Woman values in the…

  • Emma

    Jane Austen’s Emma (1816) tells the story of the coming of age of Emma Woodhouse, “handsome, clever, and rich,” who “had lived nearly twenty-one years…

  • Wormwood

    Though disparaged by literary critics of her day, Marie Corelli was one of the most popular novelists of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Wormwood…

  • The History of Ophelia

    In the mid-eighteenth century, Sarah Fielding (1710-68) was the second most popular English woman novelist, rivaled only by Eliza Haywood. The History of Ophelia, the…

  • Between Two Worlds

    Set in Soweto outside Johannesburg, Between Two Worlds is one of the most important novels of South Africa under apartheid. Originally published under the title…

  • Fantomina and Other Works

    This collection of early works by Eliza Haywood includes the well-known novella Fantomina (1725) along with three other short, highly engaging Haywood works: The Tea-Table…

  • Anti-Pamela and Shamela

    Published together for the first time, Eliza Haywood’s Anti-Pamela and Henry Fielding’s An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews are the two most…

  • The Story of a Modern Woman

    Ella Hepworth Dixon’s The Story of a Modern Woman originally appeared in serial form in the women’s weekly The Lady’s Pictorial. Like Hepworth Dixon herself,…

  • The Wonder

    Susanna Centlivre’s play The Wonder (1714) was one of the most popular works on the eighteenth-century English stage. Set in Lisbon, the plot interweaves two…

  • Lady Audley’s Secret

    Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) was one of the most widely read novels in the Victorian period. The novel exemplifies “sensation fiction” in featuring a beautiful…

  • An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting

    Perhaps the first extended non-fiction prose satire written by an English woman, Jane Collier’s An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting (1753) is a…

  • Emmeline

    The plot of Charlotte Smith’s autobiographical first novel Emmeline (1788) includes the usual thrills of the eighteenth-century courtship novel: abduction, duels, and a “fairy tale…

  • Grace Aguilar: Selected Writings

    For the first time in over a century, this edition makes available the work of the most important Jewish writer in early and mid-Victorian Britain.…

  • Diana of Dobson’s

    Very successful when first performed in London in 1908, Diana of Dobson’s introduces its audience to the overworked and underpaid female assistants at Dobson’s Drapery…

  • Life in the Sick-Room

    Believing herself to be suffering from an incurable condition, Harriet Martineau wrote Life in the Sick-Room in 1844. In this work, which is both memoir…

  • My Ántonia

    Willa Cather’s My Ántonia is considered one of the most significant American novels of the twentieth century. Set during the great migration west to settle…

  • A Serious Occupation

    This anthology of literary criticism by Victorian women of letters brings together a wealth of difficult-to-find writings. Originally published from the 1830s through the 1890s,…

  • Walsingham

    Walsingham is both a lively story and a commentary by Mary Robinson on her society’s constraints upon women. The novel follows the lives of two…

  • A Letter to the Women of England and The Natural Daughter

    Mary Robinson’s A Letter to the Women of England (1799) is a radical response to the rampant anti-feminist sentiment of the late 1790s. In this…

  • The Father and Daughter with Dangers of Coquetry

    The Father and Daughter was one of the most widely read novels of the early nineteenth century, captivating readers with its pathos and melodrama. It…

  • A Known Scribbler

    Frances Burney’s journals and letters, composed between 1768 and 1839, contain a unique account of the creative, social, and commercial ambitions and achievements of an…

  • The Old Manor House

    In The Old Manor House (1794), Charlotte Smith combines elements of the romance, the Gothic, recent history, and culture to produce both a social document…

  • The Siege of Valencia

    This parallel text edition of Felicia Hemans’s important dramatic poem presents the 1823 publication alongside a transcription of the original manuscript, offering a unique glimpse…

  • The Witlings and The Woman-Hater

    This Broadview edition pairs two of Frances Burney’s linked comedies. They both present the character of Lady Smatter, a “femme savante” whose lineage may be…