The most famous women writers. Overview, history and interesting facts

2024 Author: Sierra Becker | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-26 03:40

There have always been strong women in literature. One can recall Shikiba Murasaki, who worked at the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries in Japan, or Arteia from Kyrenia, who wrote about 40 books in the first century BC. e. And if you think about the fact that women have long been denied the opportunity to receive an education, then the heroines of past centuries are admirable. They were able to defend their right to be creative in the male world.

Female writers in the 19th century began to feel a little freer: they still faced severe discrimination based on gender, but they were still published. Basically, ladies were allowed to engage in poetry and writing light romance novels. At the same time, they earned much less than their male counterparts.

But over time things got better and better, and today a woman's name on the cover is no surprise. There are many works written by women in the golden fund of world literature. BUTsome authors have won the love of readers around the world.

Why do women write under male pseudonyms?

Female writers with male pseudonyms are not uncommon today, but a century earlier there were many more of them. Why do the authors prefer the male version of the pseudonym? There are several answers to this question:

1. Women writing books used to be discriminated against. Books were not published, their work did not interest a male audience, and they received less for their work. The male name on the cover solved most of the problems. If someone thinks that such an attitude towards female authors in the past, then he is deeply mistaken: writers are not infringed on in matters of payment, but even today a female name on the cover scares away some of potential readers.
2. For a more serious attitude to the work. According to all canons, women's books are considered light, entertaining or tearful, suffering. To make their work more serious, writers depersonalize their gender.
3. To read the book. A beginner's start in the literary world can be unsuccessful because of one name: the male part will ignore a well-written novel, and the female part will consider it unsuccessful, since it was originally designed for a different audience.
4. In the 18th and 19th century, women writers often took on pseudonyms to protect their lives, since literature for a woman of that time was something indecent, almost shameful, and authors often suffered from their scandalous popularity.
5. To earn more. Today's feesauthors depend on the popularity of the name, but not so long ago, male authors received more for equivalent work.

Which of the famous authors hid their gender?

Here are the most famous writers with male pseudonyms:

1. Marko Vovchok (1833-1907). Maria Vilinskaya is famous for her stories about the life of the Russian people during the period of serfdom and the struggle for freedom.
2. George Sand (1804-1876). She is Aurora Dupin, married Dudevant. An incredibly strong and strong-willed woman who took a male pseudonym as a symbol of female freedom. In society, she behaved like a man, that is, scandalous for her time and freely started novels. Wrote many novels, short stories and plays.
3. Bronte sisters. Charlotte (1816-1855), Emily (1818-1848) and En (1820-1849) originally wrote under the pseudonym of the Bell Brothers, and published their first works with their own money, and the novels were not successful. Charlotte's novel Jane Eyre, which was published under her real name, changed everything, and the sisters' books followed suit.
4. George Eliot (1819-1880). The male pseudonym provided the girl with privacy. The most famous work is The Mill on the Floss.
5. Max Frei (1965). Svetlana Martynchik is hiding under the pseudonym (early works were created in collaboration with Igor Stepin).
6. JK Rowling (1965). The name is real, but on the advice of the publisher, only initials were on the cover of the first book, sothe author's gender remained in question.

19th century

We have already mentioned the most famous women writers of the 19th century - these are George Sand, the Bronte sisters, George Elliot, Marko Vovchok. You can also remember Zinaida Gippius, Durov Alexandra, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley and Ada Cross. With poetry, things were somewhat better - only one of our countries gathered a whole bunch of talented poetesses, such as E. Beketova, A. Barkova, N. Grushko, S. Dubnova, V. Ilyina, F. Kogan, L. Lesnaya, N. Poplavskaya, V. Rudich and M. Lokhvitskaya. But it should be noted that the male world treated the poetesses of the Silver Age condescendingly, downplaying and underestimating their literary talent. They sympathized with the husbands of the poetesses, because instead of normal women's affairs, their wives were engaged in “stupidity.”

20th century

In 1909 a significant event took place. For the first time, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to a woman - Selma Lagerlöf, paying tribute to her work.

Since that time, women writers of the 20th century have been awarded several more times:

• Grace Deledda in 1926 for poetry.
• Sigrid Winset in 1928 for descriptive writings on the Scandinavian Middle Ages.
• Pearl Buck in 1938 for his work on the life of Chinese peasants.
• Gabriela Mistral in 1945 for poetry.
• Nellie Zaks in 1966 for her writings on the fate of the Jewish people.
• Nadine Gordimer in 1991 for Original Epic.
• WislavaSzymborska in 1996 for poetry.

Recently, awards have been given to Elfriede Jelinek, Doriss Lessing, Grete Muller, Alice Monroe and Belarusian writer Svetlana Aleksevich.

But here's what's interesting: despite the huge contribution of these authors to the spiritual development of all mankind, readers remember and appreciate the work of completely different authors. And they prefer to read books by other female writers, namely:

1. Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949) surpasses The Lord of the Rings in popularity with her most famous novel, Gone with the Wind.
2. Ursula Le Guin (1929-2018). More recently, the world has lost one of the best fantasy writers. Her best works are the Earthsea series and the Hain cycle.
3. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941). One of the best novelists of her time. The most popular works are "Mrs. Dalloway", "Orlando" and "The Clock".
4. Andre Norton (1912-2005). The greatest author of fantasy and classic science fiction.
5. Astrid Lindgren (1907-2002). One can only thank her endlessly for a happy childhood in the company of Carloson, Pippi Longstocking, the tomboy Emil from Lenneberg, the young detective Kalle and the Lionheart brothers.
6. Harper Lee (1926-2016). Author of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. And although the writer has only written two books, she deserves her place of honor in the hall of fame.

Masters of the detective genre

Women detective writers are not uncommon in ourthe world. Even in our country there are many authors specializing in this literary direction. These can be serious, close to reality books, like Alexandra Marinina, or lighter entertaining reading, like Daria Dontsova and Yulia Shilova, or with a romantic line, like Tatiana Ustinova. But in any case, these works can not be called outstanding. Yes, these Russian women writers are very popular, and their books are widely sold, but their works, according to some critics, only devalue the country's cultural heritage.

Among foreign authors, the following authors can be distinguished:

• Gillian Flynn (1971), author of the detective thrillers Gone Girl and Sharp Objects.
• Tess Geritson (1953), author of the Jane Rizzoli mystery series and numerous thrillers.
• Donna Tartt (1963), famous for The Goldfinch, later wrote The Secret History detective story.
• Liana Moriarty (1966), author of Big Little Lies.

If you look at the list of the best masters of the detective genre around the world, then there will be only one female name - Agatha Christie (1890-1976). Gorgeous and beautiful, amazing Agatha Christie! Literary "mother" of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot and other slightly less well-known book detectives. The works of Agatha Christie never touched on the topics of outright violence and sexual crimes, and although sometimes various social problems were raised in them, mostly in her stories and stories, the characters solved the classicalpuzzle "Who is the killer?"

Modern writers of Russia

Women in our country write a lot and often. But for the most part, these are mediocre books designed for a female audience. For example, all admirers of female love fantasy are familiar with the work of Zvezdnaya, Kosukhina, Zhiltsova, Gromyko and Myakhar. Their novels cannot be called bad, they are designed for a specific target audience and fully meet the needs of the mass buyer. But they are not remembered at all and are written as if according to a template.

There are other modern Russian writers, women who are known not only in Russia but also abroad. They can already be called classics of Russian literature, or rather the era of postmodernism. These names are:

• Tatiana Tolstaya (1951). Included in the "100 most influential women in Russia", continues to exploit the traditional Russian literature technique, namely, to reveal the "tragedy of a little man."
• Lyudmila Ulitskaya (1943). Her works have been translated into 25 languages.
• Lyudmila Petrushevskaya (1938). Russian writer, prose writer and poet.

There are others, no less, but for most people, and more famous Russian female writers. Their books sell out in huge numbers, yet they regularly rank in the "worst of the worst" rankings.

So this is:

• Daria Dontsova.
• Alexandra Marinina.
• Tatiana Ustinova.
• Polina Dashkova.
• Yulia Shilova.
• Anna Malysheva.
• Maria Arbatova.

Love Story Writers

The most famous women writers in the modern world often became famous not due to their great literary talent, but due to the fact that their work unexpectedly “hit” the audience. This is usually the case with romance novels and books for teenage girls.

And today the following modern women writers are bathing in the rays of world fame:

• Sylvia Day. Master of romantic and erotic novel.
• Veronica Roth. Author of the Divergent series.
• Casandra Claire. An amateur fanfiction writer unexpectedly received worldwide recognition for his "The Mortal Instruments" series.
• Stephanie Meyer. Author of the super-popular vampire Twilight.
• E. L. James. She became famous for a series of novels about a fantasy millionaire called 50 Shades of Grey.
• Susan Collins. Known to everyone as the author of The Hunger Games, but she also wrote a good teen fantasy Gregor the Overground.

Apart from the entire list of women writers, I would like to dwell on several authors in more detail. Not only did they manage to become the best, these writers influenced the lives of entire generations.

Agatha Christie

This woman writer considered her best work to be "10 Little Indians", or as it is called today for reasons of political correctness, "And there were none." Let's disagree with the author - she has a lot of great detective stories, and, of course, "10 Little Indians" is included in theirnumber. As well as "Murder on the Orient Express", "Crooked House", "White Horse Villa", "The Mirror Crashed, Ringing" and many other great works.

Her books are "closed detective stories", when the circle of suspects is limited, and only the correct logical chain and evidence will help to expose the criminal. Agatha Christie's books have been filmed many times, and continue to do so regularly. In the last 3 years alone, 3 films and one series based on the works of the writer have appeared.

JK Rowling

JK Rowling's life is the dream of not only any woman writer, but writers in general. One moment you're unemployed on welfare, and the next year you're the author of the world's best fantasy series, earning millions for your work. Harry Potter books are adored by billions of people around the world - children, teenagers, adults and respectable men, housewives and even other writers. Stephen King himself confessed his boundless love for the "Potteriana".

Astrid Lindgren

Among all the famous female writers, Astrid Lindgren deserves special attention. Everyone has heard the story that the stories about "Pippi Longstocking" appeared on the basis of those stories that Astrid Lindgren told her daughter at bedtime. But few people know that in the youth of the future celebrity, she had to give her newborn son to a foster family, since she did not have the financial opportunity to raise him. And only years later, she was able to take the boy into her family.

Perhaps this step influenced all the work of the famous writer -a woman who could not forgive herself for having abandoned her son devoted herself entirely to her children. She has written countless children's stories and books for teens, and her speech in the Swedish parliament led to the first European law to protect children.

Jane Austen

The first lady of English literature, who created bright, imaginative, satirical and romantic works at the same time. Jane Austen (1775-1817) had an amazing gift - she saw through all human weaknesses of character and inclinations to vices and aptly reflected what she saw on paper. Her best works are Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma.

Jane Austen's books have been filmed many times. Only the novel "Pride and Prejudice" was filmed 9 times - the first time in 1938, the last - in 2005, with Keira Knightley in the title role. And this is not counting the many film adaptations for different cultures and the use of the book idea in films with a different title.

Mary Shelley

This young rebel was not destined to live the boring life of an ordinary woman. Mary Shelley (1797-1851) - the daughter of a writer and an ardent feminist and atheist philosopher, became the ancestor of a whole genre, namely science fiction. Her novel "Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus" was repeatedly played out both in the literary world and in cinema. Mary Shelley's other works, Matilda, Lodor, Faulkner, are not so famous.