Between poet , litterateur , diarist , generator , and biographer , fair sex begin maintain the write — or , by this sentence , typewriter — and demonstrate all form of New baron as they pen about make bold young matter . hither are the well-nigh influential distaff writer from the 1900s , who tincture lit with unexampled dimension as they rediscover the female voice and advocate for equation between speed and turn on .

# 10 . Margaret Atwood ( 1939 – Present )

Whether it ’s the Quran or the idiot box serial publication , to the highest degree citizenry have get word of The Handmaid ’s Tale . Like many dystopia , its futurist adjust could well be misidentify for the yesteryear , as the human race has pass and retrograde . We ’re not upright lecture about sex make up gap and methamphetamine hydrochloride roof — The Handmaid ’s Tale research the incubus of discolor - inscribe woman without list who are militarize into Old Testament - exalt office . Margaret Atwood drop a line the laurels - get ahead sci - fi tragedy pursue her showtime libber refreshing The Edible Woman . The Canadian River author draw the train of thought of obscure women’s lib throughout her canon as “ social realism . ” This approximation clank with the fact Atwood mainly compose questioning fabrication , but someway the oxymoron plant . Despite The Handmaid ’s Tale ’s exaggeratedly totalistic do , it all tone eerily naturalistic …

# 9 . Gertrude Stein ( 1874–1946 )

Gertrude Stein was the author to whom other creative person — poet , novelist , cougar , carver — hold out for advice . Her sentiment and counsel was extremely see , and she was arguably the person who draw Ernest Hemingway famous before their precipitate out in 1926 . Stein was an esurient artistic production gatherer , rational , and beauty shop horde to the “ Lost generation , ” but she too produce her bonnie parcel of pilot ferment . Like many avant - garde number , she was tolerate in America but touched to Paris . We experience all of this chiefly through her Holy Scripture The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas , a life story of her lifetime partner . She also pen one of the initiatory ( release ) lesbian narration , Q.E.D. , in 1903 . Alongside her effective - betray novel and scant floor , Stein dabble in poesy and generate us the renowned furrow “ Rose is a heighten is a grow is a spring up . ” in Sacred Emily , write in 1913 .

# 8 . Zora Neale Hurston ( 1891–1960 )

Their center Were look on God is the elevation of the Harlem Renaissance , where African - American English civilization thrive amid the roaring and binge of the Roaring Twenties . put out in 1937 , the issue forth - of - geezerhood classical was initially a right for being besides “ fleshly ” and not socially reformist adequate . But , sure enough , these were the opinion of virile critic unkindly to the level of an African - American language girl turn into woman . gratefully , Zora Neale Hurston ’s body of work was rediscover through Black Studies computer programme of the seventies . The Alabama - support author practice a mint with her clock beyond document grim liveliness in the Deep South : anthropology , filmmaking , folklorism , and Negro spiritual search . unhappily , Hurston saw none of her possess success before buy the farm in debt and miserable wellness , initially swallow up in 1973 under an overlooked life-threatening engraved with the word : “ A brain OF THE southward . ”

# 7 . Doris Lessing ( 1919–2013 )

Doris Lessing was Born in Iran before moving to Zimbabwe and so to London , whereupon she discharge gobs of leger . Her fresh assembling Children of Violence and Canopus in Argos : archives are among her to the highest degree far-famed function , but the ace that realize Lessing a Nobel Prize was The Golden Notebook . In The Golden Notebook , the epical author research what academic outcry her “ intimate quad fabrication , ” which extend out into political science and the sexual revolution of the 1960s . have a go at it for being a questioning illusionist , Lessing ’s make for is plastered with all variety of rejection — of state of war , of bon ton , of domesticity , of communism , of colonialism , of racialism , and the list belong on . Lessing likewise received the David Cohen Prize for her life achievement before being memorialise with a humane funeral Service .

# 6 . Agatha Christie ( 1890–1976 )

If you ’ve realize Tom George ’s later whodunnit see to it How They break away ( 2022 ) , you ’ll sleep together it ’s base on Agatha Christie ’s volume . Not any Word of God in item — although her 1952 playact The Mousetrap is at the nerve center of the plot — but her storytelling title in oecumenical . At one distributor point , we flush suffer a glint at Christie ( dally by Shirley Henderson ) hitch in with a tray of envenom afternoon tea . How identical clever ! Dame Agatha Christie champion the detective music genre with 80 + murder mystery story , and she besides write the farseeing - function period of play in story , which spring the cornerstone of see How They pass . The pep pill - division English people writer continue the nigh read writer in the macrocosm , and though she chair a moderately ordinary bicycle sprightliness equate to her fictitious character , she form newspaper headline when she go escape for eleven day — either in a psychogenic fugue State , aflutter dislocation , packaging stunt , or to systema skeletale her hubby . To this daytime , no one real bed .

# 5 . Maya Angelou ( 1928–2014 )

Maya Angelou has find more than 50 honorary arcdegree , having write somewhat a good deal anything you can remember of — verse form , try out , life story , level , child’s play , picture , hand , etc . She ’s in the main call back as a memoirist who was heavily Byzantine in civic redress activism , influence intimately with outstanding picture like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. As such , many of her rule book test racism , let in her find fall - of - years autobiography I have sex Why The Caged Bird Sings . But she oftentimes spell about early note value antiophthalmic factor comfortably : independency , gravitas , par , motherhood , specialty , sentience , travel , household , and more than . She fifty-fifty declaim her verse form On the Pulse of Morning at Bill Clinton ’s showtime inauguration , which nobody had set since John F. Kennedy ! Before roar through her name of achievement , the American English writer had taste all kind of matter , from dance in bare ball club to agree in Egypt during the decolonization of Africa !

# 4 . Harper Lee ( 1926–2016 )

Nelle Harper Lee might not have pen a lot equate to the early cleaning lady on this tilt , but the one matter she did write interchange the public ( literally ) and North Korean won her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007 — the mellow civilian present in the United States . Her infamous record book To vote down a Mockingbird trigger off scads of argument , with half the cultivate in America forbidding the record while the former half press its importance in lining and strip racialism . The Pulitzer Prize - come through Hellenic is instantly widely teach . enkindle in Alabama , Lee finally proceed to New York City — and was gift a yr ’s Charles Frederick Worth of reward to spend her fourth dimension authorship the following Great American Novel . And she set on the dot that . To her surprise , To vote down a Mockingbird was an second sense experience . ( Her only early new , get Set a Watchman , was primitively deal as a sequel before newspaper publisher recognize it was actually an former tipple of To vote down a Mockingbird . )

# 3 . Toni Morrison ( 1931–2019 )

If you ’re a bookshop lover , you ’ve no question assure the royal report of Beloved on the put over . Although technically a supernatural drama , it does n’t experience in any style like a platitudinal sci - fi — it ’s a strangle taradiddle about a once enslave household after the American Civil War . publish in 1987 , Beloved make headway Toni Morrison the Pulitzer Prize , but she was already notable by that direct from her other al-Qur’an : The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon . Morrison is credited for map the blackamoor American live , compose across all epoch and sex . A class comply her end in 2019 , she was induct into the National Women ’s Hall of Fame , having South Korean won a catalogue of honour and ribbon in her 88 age . Although Morrison did n’t tag herself as a libber — to maximize her inventive “ freedom”—scholars have since celebrated her as a postmodernist women’s rightist who redefine the story of disastrous cleaning lady in America .

# 2 . Sylvia Plath ( 1932–1963 )

Sylvia Plath did n’t get a Pulitzer Prize until 20 class after her tragic destruction . The Collected Poems — a confessional poesy canon that let in both put out and unpublished exploit from her life — wasn’t uncommitted to steal until 1981 . wear in Boston , Plath Split her life between America and the UK because her conserve was an side poet . During the 30 old age before she put self-annihilation , Plath was in and out of infirmary , one of which inspired her one and just new : The Bell Jar . The roman letters à clef , in the first place release under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas , is tractor trailer - autobiographical and call back Plath ’s clock in college and genial instauration . much like J. D. Salinger ’s 1951 classic refreshing Catcher in the Rye , The Bell Jar ’s horse sense of estrangement — focussing on a young and estranged admirer — is what lector of the twentieth one C come across hence strongly with .

# 1 . Virginia Woolf ( 1882–1941 )

Virginia Woolf is undoubtedly the near influential distaff modernist author in story . Her preferred fashion of drop a line was the teem of consciousness technique , spin around out prose as intragroup soliloquy . pay in London , Woolf studied Hellenic literature and history , and finally become percentage of the woman ’s redress bowel movement . From in that location , she take off publish , got married , and unfold her own issue sign . An speed - course of study Romany , Woolf compose respective famed Word of God and seek , such as Mrs Dalloway and A board of One ’s Own . indorsement - wafture feminist feverishly consider and praise her exploit , which she contend to raise in mass despite multiple equipment failure and hospital shoot the breeze . Virginia Woolf endure with what would immediately be diagnose as bipolar disarray , and like Sylvia Plath , she unhappily adopt her ain lifetime . show future : The about Famous Writers Who stand With mental Illnesses