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Articles on Women writers

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An illustration from Christine de Pizan’s ‘The Book of the City of Ladies.’ Fine Art Images/Heritage Images via Getty Images

Centuries after Christine de Pizan wrote a book railing against misogyny, Taylor Swift is building her own ‘City of Ladies’

By compiling stories about the accomplishments of women, Christine set out to build an allegorical city where women and their achievements would be safe from sexist insults and slander.
Betty Smith’s novel sold millions of copies in the 1940s. Weegee/International Center of Photography via Getty Images

Betty Smith enchanted a generation of readers with ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ − even as she groused that she hoped Williamsburg would be flattened

No other 20th-century American novel did quite so much to burnish Brooklyn’s reputation. But Smith rarely saw her hometown through rose-colored glasses − and even grew to resent it.
Illustration of explorer Isabella Bird’s first walk through Perak (Malaysia), from her book ‘The Golden Chersonese and the way thither’. Library of Congress / Wikimedia Commons

How English women wrote about their travels in the 19th century

In the 19th century, several English women wrote accounts of their world travels. While considered by some as second-rate travellers, they were just as restless as their male contemporaries.
What makes a winning book? Women's Prize for Fiction

Why we still need the Women’s Prize for Fiction

This separation or segregation of women’s writing should be understood as part of the patriarchal control of what and who matters – and, historically, women have not.
A portrait of George Eliot at 30 by Alexandre-Louis-François d'Albert-Durade. Her masterpiece Middlemarch is often claimed to be the greatest novel in the English language. Wikimedia Commons

Friday essay: George Eliot 200 years on - a scandalous life, a brilliant mind and a huge literary legacy

Henry James called her a ‘great, horse-faced bluestocking’. On the 200th anniversary of her birth, we celebrate George Eliot, a literary trailblazer with an endless appetite for ideas, living in a patriarchal time.
Anna McGahan as Charmian Clift in Sue Smith’s play Hydra. Long overshadowed by her husband George Johnston, recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in Clift’s life and work. Jeff Busby/Queensland Theatre

‘A woman ahead of her time’: remembering the Australian writer Charmian Clift, 50 years on

Fifty years after her death, Australian writer Charmian Clift is experiencing a renaissance. With her forward-thinking columns, Clift’s voice rose above the crowd during post-war Australia.
A photograph of Ellen N. La Motte soon after completing ‘The Backwash of War’ in 1916. Courtesy of the National Archives, College Park, Maryland

Did a censored female writer inspire Hemingway’s famous style?

Ellen N. La Motte’s ‘The Backwash of War’ was praised for its clear-eyed portrayal of war, but was swiftly banned. Yet the similarities between her spare prose and Hemingway’s are unmistakable.
Margaret MacLean visited and wrote about the Royal Ontario museum’s collections as well as visiting Egypt for Saturday Night magazine. (Database of Canadian Women Writers)

Playing detective with Canada’s female literary past

Did you know Lucy Maud Montgomery also published under the name Belinda Bluegrass? A new database of early Canadian women writers reveals thousands of stories about women’s lives in Canada.

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