I tried to read The Handmaid's Tale and found it so, so, so boring. Which was a shame, since I heard so many good things about the novel, however it really did nothing for me. Her style of writing didn't strike me as particularly awe inspiring - I couldn't properly visualise the dystopian society - and the story moved far too slow for my liking.
For what it's worth, my list of great female writers:
Jane Austen
George Eliot
Emily Dickinson
Virginia Woolfe
Emily Bronte
Mary Shelley
Colette
Charlotte Bronte
Flannery O'Connor
Katherine Anne Porter
Eudora Welty
Harper Lee
Margaret Mitchell
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Denise Levertov
Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. - Albert Einstein
Wooow, really? You didn't find it distressingly creepy?Originally Posted by Thom Holliday
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"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
Virginia Woolf is incredible - The Lighthouse is a great book!
Here are some female writers I've enjoyed over the years: Carson McCullers, Emily Brönte, Toni Morrison, Angela Carter, Selma Lagerlöf, Charlotte Brönte, Pearl S. Buck, Elizabeth Browning. It's when I make these lists that I realise how poorly read I am regarding women.
Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters (even Anne, something about the women in that family just makes them incredible writers.), Mary Shelley, Emily Dickinson. I occasionally like Ayn Rand, even though sometimes she kinda loses me.
"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."-Ayn Rand.
Lorrie Moore is good, just read her short stories.
I'm quite fond of Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Sylia Plath, and Djuna Barnes.
For my American Literature class, we're only reading novels written by female authors. We're going to be reading books by Susanna Rowson, Catharine Sedgwick, Maria S. Cummins, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Harriet Jacobs. If any of them strike me as incredible, I'll make a note of it.
George Eliot and
Maria Edgeworth.
I am partial to George Elliot and Djuna Barnes. Austen is exceptional and the Bronte sisters are good as well. Gertrude Stein was very important. I have no time for Ayn Rand though.
"The farther he goes the more good it does me. I don’t want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the sh1t the more I am grateful to him..."
-- Harold Pinter on Samuel Beckett
Sadly I have not read many woman authors, I'll have to remedy that. Austen's P&P is pretty good though.
“Why did god create a dual universe?
So he might say
‘Be not like me. I am alone.'
And it might be heard.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
A couple of other names I should add, two poets: Wislawa Szymborska and Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen.
Anais Nin, Martha Nussbaum, Emily Bronte. Probably my favourite three female writers.
The Bronte Sisters
We have an equal number of good female writers. To start with Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey), Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre), Emily Bronte(Wuthering Heights), Anne Bronte(Agnes Grey), George Eliot(The Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede) and Agatha Christie. There are many other famous and good female writers.
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