From: barclay@RAIL9000.gatech.edu (Barclay Blanchard)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Summary: list of women authors
Date: 30 Aug 92 15:14:04 GMT
Organization: Georgia Tech Research Institute


Here's a list of some works I've read on my own, by female authors, which IMO
are at least as good as many works I've been assigned to read which were
written by men.  I chose 1930 as an arbitrary cut off date for when works are
old enough to be in the canon.  (I prefer contemporary fiction anyway.)  Some
of these may be considered to be in the canon, but I found most of them on my
own.
 
Edith Wharton: "Roman Fever"
Louisa May Alcott: "Mrs. Gay's Prescription"
Mary Wilkins Freeman: "The Revolt of `Mother'"
Kate Chopin: "The Story of an Hour"
Charlotte Perkins Gilman: "Making a Change"
Zora Neal Hurston: "Sweat"
Katherine Anne Porter: "Rope"
Harper Lee: _To Kill a Mockingbird_
Virginia Woolf: _Orlando_
Simone de Beauvoir: _The Blood of Others_
Anne Bronte: _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_
Carson McCullers: _The Member of the Wedding_
May Sarton: _Anger_
Charlotte(?) Bronte: _Jane Eyre_
 
 
Here's a list of some on the shelf which I'm planning to read (and I didn't
check if they were all written before 1930 but I'm assuming they were):
Gertrude Stein: _Lucy Church Amiably_ (can't get past the first page just yet)
Doris Lessing: _Martha Quest_
               _The Golden Notebook_
Isak Dinesen: _Babette's Feast_
Emily Bronte: _Wuthering Heights_
Edith Wharton: _The Muses's Tragedy_
               _The Custom of the Country_
Anne Bronte: _Agnes Grey_
Willa Cather: _Five Stories_
              _Death Comes for the Archbishop_
Carson McCullers: _The Heart is a Lonely Hunter_
                  _The Ballad of the Sad Cafe_
Harriet Beecher Stowe: _Uncle Tom's Cabin_
Viginia Woolf: _To the Lighthouse_
               _Mrs. Dalloway_
               _The Complete Short Fiction of Virginia Woolf_
Katherine Anne Porter: _The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter_
Katherine Mansfield: _The Short Stories of katherine Mansfield_
 
 
(I tend to read several books by an author I really like.)
 
 
Some fairly contemporary women's works I've read and which I found excellent:
Eva Figes: _Light_
Toni Morrison: _Beloved_
Ann Tyler: _The Clockwinder_
           _Searching for Caleb_
           _Earthly Possessions_
           _Accidental Tourist_
           _If Morning Ever Comes_
           _Celestial Navigation_
Florence King: _Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady_
Maya Angelou: _I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings_
Alice Walker: _The Temple of my Familiar_
Marge Piercy: _Woman on the Edge of Time_
Margaret Atwood: _The Handmaid's Tale_
 
 
Some fairly contemporary women's works I've not yet read but which have been
highly recommended to me:
Gail Godwin: _Father Melancholy's Daughter_
Toni Morrison: _Sula_
Eva Figes: _Ghosts_
Bharati Mukherjee: _Wife_
May Sarton: _Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing_
            _A Shower of Summer Days_
            _The House by the Sea_
            _Journal of a Solitude_
            _A Reckoning_
Marge Piercy: _The High Cost of Living_
Zora Neal Hurston: _Their Eyes Were Watching God_ (when was that written
                     again, Mike? it does seem contemporary)


-- 
Barclay Elizabeth Blanchard    barclay@rail9000@gatech.edu
"I've been laughed at by some of the funniest people."
--Lissie, Alice Walker's _The Temple of My Familiar_
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books