Women of substance

 authors

This Women’s Day, You! highlights some classic as well as contemporary female writers who have achieved international acclaim...

The classics

Writing and publishing wasn’t always easy for women, especially in the old times when they suffered great gender discrimination. However, a few names broke out of the shackles of society and proved everyone wrong with their intellect. These women made a difference when the whole society was adamant in pulling them down and it is their work that built a platform for many female authors of today.

Jane Austen (1775-1817)

Jane Austen

Jane Austen was a Georgian era English novelist whose works of romantic fiction earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. Even today she has a legion of fans around the world numbering in millions.

Fascinated by the world of stories, Jane began to write in bound notebooks. In the 1790s, during her adolescence she crafted her own novels and wrote ‘Love and Friendship’ [sic], a parody of romantic fiction organized as a series of love letters. The next year she wrote ‘The History of England...’, a 34-page parody of historical writing that included illustrations drawn by Cassandra. These notebooks, encompassing the novels as well as short stories, poems and plays, are now referred to as ‘Jane’s Juvenilia’. While not widely known in her own time, Austen’s comic novels of love among the landed gentry gained popularity after 1869, and her reputation skyrocketed in the 20th century. Austen’s transformation from little-known to internationally renowned author began when scholars began to recognize her works as masterpieces. Her novels, including ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Sense and Sensibility’, are considered literary classics, bridging the gap between romance and realism. 

Mary Shelly 1797-1851

Mary Shelly

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer. She also wrote one of the most famous books of all time; ‘Frankenstein’. Yes, that is one fictional character that is known by all even today and it was created by a woman that shook the world with her tale of horror.

Mary Shelley was the daughter of philosopher and political writer William Godwin. She married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1816. Two years later, she published her most famous novel, ‘Frankenstein’. Many thought that Percy Bysshe Shelley had written the books since he had penned its introduction and the book proved to be a huge success. She later on wrote several other books, including ‘Valperga’ (1823), ‘The Last Man’ (1826), the autobiographical ‘Lodore’ (1835) and the posthumously published ‘Mathilde’. Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book ‘Rambles in Germany and Italy’ (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner’s ‘Cabinet Cyclopaedia’ (1829-46), support the growing view that Mary Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life.

Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)

Charlotte Bronte

Charlotte Bronte was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Bronte sisters whose novels have become classics of English literature. Bronte worked as a teacher and governess before collaborating on a book of poetry with her two sisters, Emily and Anne. The books were written under the name Currer Bell as it was hard at that point in time for women to gain popularity for their work.

Bronte published her first novel, ‘Jane Eyre’, in 1847 under the manly pseudonym and received a positive response. The book’s style was innovative, combining naturalism with gothic melodrama, and broke new grounds of being written from an intensely evoked first-person female perspective. Charlotte believed art was most convincing when based on personal experience and in ‘Jane Eyre’ she transformed the experience into a novel.  Today, Jane Eyre is considered a classic of Western literature. In 1848 Charlotte and Anne visited their publishers in London, and revealed the true identities of the ‘Bells’. From that point onwards, there was no turning back and she followed the success with ‘Shirley’ in 1848 and ‘Villette’ in 1853.

Emily Bronte (1818-1848)

Emily Bronte

Emily Jane Bronte was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, ‘Wuthering Heights’, now considered a classic of English literature. She was the sister of Charlotte and Anne Bronte. Some of Emily’s earliest known works involve a fictional world called ‘Gondal’, which she created with her sister Anne. She wrote both prose and poems about this imaginary place and its inhabitants.

Publishing as Ellis Bell, Bronte published her defining work, ‘Wuthering Heights’, in December 1847. The complex novel explores two families-the Earnshaws and the Lintons-across two generations and their stately homes, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. It was considered controversial because its depiction of mental and physical cruelty was unusually stark, and it challenged strict Victorian ideals of the day, including religious hypocrisy, morality, social classes and gender inequality. Wuthering Heights is now widely regarded as a classic of English literature.

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

Virginia Woolf

Born into a privileged English household in 1882, writer Virginia Woolf was raised by freethinking parents. She began writing as a young girl and published her first novel, ‘The Voyage Out’, in 1915. Her nonlinear, free form prose style inspired her peers and earned her much praise. In 1925, ‘Mrs. Dalloway’, her fourth novel, was released to rave reviews. The mesmerizing story interweaves interior monologues and raises issues of feminism, mental illness and homosexuality in post-World War I England. By her mid-forties, she had established herself as both an intellectual and an innovative thinker and writer. While she is best known for her novels, especially ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ (1925) and ‘To the Lighthouse’ (1927), Woolf also wrote pioneering essays on artistic theory, literary history, women’s writing, and the politics of power.

Contemporary ones

While it is next to impossible to come at par with these classic writers, still there are many women from the contemporary times who have managed to excel at creating stories that have gained them international recognition. Following are a selected few.

Harper Lee (1926-2016)

Harper Lee

Nelle Harper Lee developed an interest in English literature in high school and after graduating in 1944, she went to the all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery. Lee stood apart from the other students because she couldn’t have cared less about fashion, makeup or dating. Instead, she focused on her studies and writing. Harper Lee is best known for writing the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ (1960) and ‘Go Set a Watchman’ (2015). A condensed version of the story appeared in Reader’s Digest magazine. It also won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize and several other literary awards. Soon enough, Horton Foote wrote a screenplay based on the book and used the same title for the 1962 film adaptation. To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than 40 languages with more than a million copies sold each year. It has also become a classic of modern literature and is taught at many schools and colleges.

J.K Rowling  (1965- present)

J.K Rowling

J.K. Rowling is the creator of the ‘Harry Potter’ fantasy series, one of the most popular book and film franchises in history. As a single mother living in Edinburgh, Scotland, Rowling became an international literary sensation in 1999, when the first three instalments of her Harry Potter children’s book series took over the top three slots of The New York Times best-seller list after achieving similar success in her native United Kingdom. The phenomenal response to Rowling’s books culminated in July 2000, when the fourth volume in the series, ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,’ became the fastest-selling book in history. By the summer of 2000, the first three Harry Potter books, ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’, ‘Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets’ and ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ earned approximately $480 million in three years, with over 35 million copies in print in 35 languages. In 2012, Rowling released the non-Potter novel ‘The Casual Vacancy’.

Stephanie Meyers (1973- present)

Stephanie Meyers

Stephenie Meyers is the writer of the hit international best seller series ‘Twilight’ that was later on adapted into a movie. Meyers who is a mother of three sons, invented the plot during the day through swim lessons and potty training, and wrote it out late at night when the house was quiet. Three months later she finished her first novel, ‘Twilight’. With encouragement from her older sister (the only other person who knew she had written a book), Meyers submitted her manuscript to various literary agencies. Twilight was picked out of a slush pile at Writer’s House and eventually made its way to the publishing company. Twilight was one of 2005’s most talked about novels and within weeks of its release the book debuted at #5 on The New York Times bestseller list. The highly-anticipated sequel, ‘New Moon’, was released in September 2006, and spent more than 25 weeks at the #1 position on The New York Times bestseller list.

On August 2, 2008, the final book in the Twilight Saga, ‘Breaking Dawn’ was released and it sold 1.3 million copies in its first 24 hours. Her books changed the way people perceive vampires and launched an entire new genre of fantasy books and movies where humans and vampires were seen romancing each other.

Veronica Roth (1988- present)

Veronica Roth

Veronica Roth is an American novelist and short story writer known for her debut New York Times bestselling Divergent trilogy, consisting of ‘Divergent’, ‘Insurgent’, and ‘Allegiant’; and Four: ‘A Divergent Collection’. Her books managed to gain immense popularity due to their dystopian genre and futuristic plot.

She is the recipient of the Goodreads 2011 Choice Award and the Best of 2012 in the category Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction and also Best Goodreads Author in 2012. Roth wrote her first book, ‘Divergent’, while on winter break in her senior year at Northwestern University. Her career took off rapidly with the success of her first novel, with the publishing rights sold before she graduated from college in 2010 and the film rights sold mid-March 2011, before the novel was printed in April 2011. At 26, Roth is now worth $20 million thanks to her success with Divergent and its sequels ‘Insurgent’ and ‘Allegiant’.

Suzanne Collins (1962- present)

Suzanne Collins

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1962, Suzanne Collins was the daughter of an Air Force pilot. After proving herself as a talented children’s television writer, Collins published her debut book, ‘Gregor the Overlander’, the first book of ‘The Underland Chronicles’. However, the book that gained her recognition world over was ‘The Hunger Games’, released in 2008. Its two sequels, ‘Catching Fire’ and ‘Mockingjay’, were published in 2009 and 2010. Overall, the series has been a fantastic success, selling more than 50 million print and electronic copies. A film version of the first book, with a screenplay written by Collins, was released in 2012. As a result of the significant popularity of The Hunger Games books, Collins was named one of Time magazine’s most influential people of 2010.  In March 2012, Amazon announced that Collins had become the best-selling Kindle author of all time.