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Jane Austen‘s unequalled reputation has led academic canon-makers to set her on a pedestal and scholars of early women’s writing to use her as an epoch. For generations she was the first—or the only—woman to be adjudged ‘major’. Recent attention has shifted: her balance, good sense, and humour are more taken for granted, and critics … Read more

Mary Shelley, long known almost exclusively for Frankenstein, is now being read for her later novels and her plays, as well as for her journals and letters. Her editing, reviewing, biographical, and journalistic work entitle her to the designation woman of letters. She is an important figure among women Romantics, and a channel for the … Read more

Patricia Wentworth began her writing career early in the twentieth century with half a dozen historical novels and romances and went on to achieve great popularity with between sixty and seventy thrillers, mysteries, and detective novels. She is a sharp observer of social comedy including relationships between the sexes, and her ability to evoke fear … Read more

Anna Wickham was a prolific poet of the earlier twentieth century: in addition to several hundred published poems, more than a thousand remain unpublished. Her poems, with their unique blend of acerbity and lyricism, offer an explicitly female, often feminist, perspective on subjects ranging from marriage and motherhood to poetry itself. Louis Untermeyerhas commented that “[t]he … Read more

Mary Wesley won some notoriety by beginning her writing career proper at the age of seventy, when she published her first novel for adults. After this she kept up for some time the rate of one new book a year. (Before this she had published two of her three novels for children and drafted several … Read more

Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde, remains best known for her fierce Irish Nationalist poems published in the Nation under the pseudonym ‘Speranza’. She became known for her translations of both poetry and fiction. Her literary output, often published first in periodicals, also included travel writing, literary criticism, essays, leaders, and two collections of Irish folklore. Despite her substantial … Read more

Q. D. Leavis, in her ‘socio-anthropological’ critical monographs and essays, evaluates literature by examining it in the context of the culture from which it emerges. She focuses on intellectual, social, and moral elements of literary work, and she insists on a rigorous standard of judgement for works by well-known, as well as by unknown, writers. … Read more

Emily Jane Pfeiffer published during the latter half of the nineteenth century. She composed three lengthy narrative poems, six volumes of other poetry, a work documenting her travels, a play, a work of prose fantasy, and, for prominent periodicals, a number of essays. She was particularly admired for her work in the sonnet form. Recurring … Read more

Emmuska, Baroness Orczy, a best-selling novelist of the early twentieth century, is best-known for The Scarlet Pimpernel, her romance of aristocrats during the French Revolution. Apart from almost a dozen Scarlet Pimpernel sequels, she published many other historical romances, a few thrillers with modern settings, one historial biography, and her memoirs. Her short stories include … Read more

Rose Tremain is a contemporary novelist and short-story writer whose first book was a history of the feminist movement in Britain. She teaches creative writing, and she has also published fiction for young people, and plays for radio and television. Her novels (some of them by most definitions historical) aim to take her readers to … Read more