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it's a grrl's world
Heidi Wyss
Gormglaith (completed 2006) is a fluorescently written, radical third wave feminist separatist novel set in a scientifically plausible future. Read this cult hit online for free. |
| free Gutenberg texts
by female writers |
 | Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre (415Kb) is a classic gothic novel (1848) with a powerful first person narrative and autobiographical structure. Raised by a cruel aunt and later sent to an abusive girls' boarding school, Jane Eyre becomes a governess, faces a daunting dilemma and eventually finds herself by holding steadfastly to her values. |
 | Agatha Christie
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (125Kb) was Christies first published novel (1920) and introduced Hercule Poirot. Emily Inglethorpe is poisoned while visiting her family. Secret Adversary (165Kb), her second novel, depicts the adventures of Tommy Beresford and Tuppence Cowley shortly after the First World War. |
 | Charlotte Gilman
Not so much great literature as stunning social commentary when it appeared in 1915, Herland (133Kb) is a story told in plain, realist style of three men who stumble upon a feminist utopian society. |
 | Ida Pfeiffer
She was 49 when she made her six month Visit to Iceland (193Kb) alone in 1846 on a tight budget. Pfeiffer wrote in German, later became quite famous as a travel writer, and was elected to the geographic societies of Berlin and Paris (the British refused her because she was a woman). |
 | Gene Stratton-Porter
Timeless and still highly readable,
A Girl Of The Limberlost (274Kb) is the thoroughly positive story of Elnora Cornstock, who during the early 1900s finds refuge from an insensitive mother and the pressures of high school in the woods of northern Indiana. |
 | Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
She was 19 when she wrote
Frankenstein (179Kb) in 1816 while visiting Geneva, Switzerland with her soon-to-be husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron and his friend Polidori. One night Byron suggested that each write a ghost story. Hers was the only ever published (1818) and has never been out of print. The novel is far more complex than most of the films it has inspired, and echoes of its cultural impact continue to resonate. |
 | Kate Douglas Wiggin
The author established the first kindergartens on the North American west coast and began her writing career to fund them. Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm (183Kb), published in 1903, is probably her most enduring novel. A spirited ten year old arrives at a farm in Maine, to be raised to young adulthood by two very different aunts. |
 | Virginia Woolf
Her second novel, Night and Day (360Kb) was published in 1915 and is a humorous and sparkling depiction of an intellectual household in London during the early 20th century. Katharine Hilbery alternates between night and day, her secret interest in math and astronomy, and her social role in the house of her famous father.
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