Women in the field of writing have been very few. Most of them never received any recognition. There were many books that were bestsellers but were written under pseudonym, names of their writers revealed much later. The reason they went for pseudonyms was that they were afraid their work wouldn’t be accepted by society.

I haven’t read the works of all famous women writers but there have been some writers who have stayed with me. I will talk about four of them here.

Jane Austen

Jane Austen’s work can be read as a comment and critique on the British gentry of the late 18th Century. Her books explore the life of women at the time and their dependence on finding a good match for a respectable social standing. But, her heroines are mostly strong-willed and sensible.

She published Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1815) anonymously. Her two other novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were both published posthumously in 1818. She earned all her fame after her death and her six books have never been out of print since.

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! — When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.

Pride and Prejudice

Toni Morrison

Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist whose first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987) and she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

Her works address the harsh reality of racism in America and experiences of the Black American people.

If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.

Toni Morrison

Anita Desai

Anita Desai is an Indian novelist and the Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times for Clear Light of Day (1980), In Custody (1984) and Fasting, Feasting (1999). She received a Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the Mountain, from the Sahitya Akademi.

She won the British Guardian Prize for The Village by the Sea (1983).Her other works include The Peacock, Voices in the City, Fire on the Mountain and an anthology of short stories, Games at Twilight.

Isn’t it strange how life won’t flow, like a river, but moves in jumps, as if it were held back by locks that are opened now and then to let it jump forwards in a kind of flood?

Anita Desai

Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Christie was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world’s longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End since 1952.

Christie was called the “Queen of Crime” in her time. She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. She is listed in the Guinness World Records as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies. Hercule Poirot has been one of our favourite detectives and his crime solving abilities are marvelous.

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.

Agatha Christie

These are four of the many women writers I want to write about. Soon, I shall share about more women writers I like.

This post is a part of #BlogchatterAtoZ 2023.