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Women in literature

Here are entered works which discuss the representation of women in literature. Works on women authors as a class of persons are entered under Women authors. Collections of works written by women are entered under the subdivision Women authors following the name of national literature and genre, e.g. American fiction -- Women authors. Collections of works in two or more literary forms written about women are entered under Women -- Literary collections.

See also what's at your library, or elsewhere.

• Women
• Literature

• Women in literature -- Bibliography
• Women in literature -- History
• Women in literature -- History and criticism

• Woman (Christian theology) in literature
• Women in drama
• Women in poetry

• In Contempt: Nineteenth-Century Women, Law, and Literature (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, c2012), by Kristin Kalsem (PDF at Ohio State)
• Typical Girls: The Rhetoric of Womanhood in Comic Strips (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, c2021), by Susan E. Kirtley (PDF with commentary at OAPEN)
• Women's Tanci Fiction in Late Imperial and Early Twentieth-Century China (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, c2015), by Li Guo (multiple formats with commentary at fulcrum.org)
• Inventing Womanhood: Gender and Language in Later Middle English Writing (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, c2011), by Tara Williams (PDF at Ohio State)
• The Other Women's Lib: Gender and Body in Japanese Women's Fiction (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, c2010), by Julia C. Bullock (PDF with commentary at Hawaii)
• Fantasies of Gender and the Witch in Feminist Theory and Literature (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, c2008), by Justyna Sempruch (multiple formats with commentary at fulcrum.org)
• Reconstructing Woman: From Fiction to Reality in the Nineteenth-Century Novel (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, c2007), by Dorothy Kelly (PDF at PSU)
• The New Woman in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, c2004), by Jin Feng (multiple formats with commentary at fulcrum.org)
• The Poethical Wager (Berkeley: University of California Press, c2003), by Joan Retallack (frame-dependent HTML with commentary at UC Press)
• Framing Anna Karenina: Tolstoy, the Woman Question, and the Victorian Novel (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, c1993), by Amy Mandelker (PDF files with commentary at Ohio State Press)
• Chivalry, Reading, and Women's Culture in Early Modern Spain: From Amadís de Gaula to Don Quixote (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, c2018), by Stacey Elizabeth Triplette (HTML and PDF with commentary at Project MUSE)
• Toys and Tools in Pink: Cultural Narratives of Gender, Science, and Technology (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, c2011), by Carol Colatrella (PDF at Ohio State)
• Uncommon Women: Gender and Representation in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Women's Writing (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2009), by Laura Laffrado (PDF at Ohio State)
• Representation and Resistance: South Asian and African Women's Texts at Home and in the Diaspora (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, c2008), by Jaspal Kaur Singh (PDF files at University of Calgary)
• Unsettled Subjects: Restoring Feminist Politics to Poststructuralist Critique (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1997), by Susan Lurie (page images at HathiTrust)
• Dedication to Hunger: The Anorexic Aesthetic in Modern Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, c1996), by Leslie Heywood (HTML at UC Press)
• The Honeysuckle and the Hazel Tree: Medieval Stories of Men and Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), ed. by Patricia Terry (HTML at UC Press)
• Representing Women: Law, Literature, and Feminism (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1994), ed. by Susan Sage Heinzelman and Zipporah Batshaw Wiseman, contrib. by Martha Minow, Kathryn Abrams, Judy Scales-Trent, Carol Sanger, Angela P. Harris, Linda Brodkey, Michelle Fine, Elizabeth Cullingford, Susan Estrich, Rita Copeland, Margaret Anne Doody, Christine L. Krueger, and Anne Tierney Goldstein (page images at HathiTrust)
• Economic Women: Essays on Desire and Dispossession in Nineteenth-Century British Culture (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, c2013), ed. by Lana L. Dalley and Jill Rappoport (PDF at Ohio State)
• Rewriting Womanhood: Feminism, Subjectivity, and the Angel of the House in the Latin American Novel, 1887-1903 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, c2009), by Nancy LaGreca (PDF at PSU)
• Feminist Realism at the Fin de Siècle: The Influence of the Late-Victorian Woman's Press on the Development of the Novel (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, c2008), by Molly Youngkin (PDF at Ohio State)
• Middle Passages and the Healing Place of History: Migration and Identity in Black Women's Literature (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2006), ed. by Elizabeth Brown-Guillory (PDF at Ohio State)
• Sex Variant Women in Literature: A Historical and Quantitative Survey (New York et al.: Vantage Press, c1956), by Jeannette H. Foster (page images at HathiTrust)
• The Romance of Biography: or, Memoirs of Women Loved and Celebrated by Poets, From the Days of the Troubadours to the Present Age (third edition, 2 volumes; London: Saunders and Otley, 1837), by Mrs. Jameson
  • Volume I: multiple formats at archive.org
  • Volume II: multiple formats at archive.org
• Satiric Advice on Women and Marriage: From Plautus to Chaucer (Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, c2005), ed. by Warren S. Smith (page images at HathiTrust)
• Taking Her Seriously: Penelope and the Plot of Homer's Odyssey (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, c2005), by Richard Heitman (page images at HathiTrust)
• Gender, Discourse, and Desire in Twentieth-Century Brazilian Women's Literature (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, c2004), by Cristina Ferreira Pinto (multiple formats with commentary at fulcrum.org)
• Lewd and Notorious: Female Transgression in the Eighteenth Century (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, c2003), ed. by Katharine Kittredge (page images at HathiTrust)
• Mother Without Child: Contemporary Fiction and the Crisis of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, c1997), by Elaine Tuttle Hansen (HTML at UC Press)
• Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage: Boy Heroines and Female Pages (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, c1994), by Michael Shapiro
  • multiple formats at fulcrum.org
  • page images at HathiTrust
• The Naked Text: Chaucer's Legend of Good Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), by Sheila Delany (HTML at UC Press)
• Sexualizing Power in Naturalism: Theodore Dreiser and Frederick Philip Grove (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, c1994), by Irene Gammel (PDF files at University of Calgary)
• Women Healers in Medieval Life and Literature (New York: King's Crown Press, 1943), by Muriel Joy Hughes (page images at HathiTrust)
• Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), by Elaine Tuttle Hansen (HTML at UC Press)
• Feminizing the Fetish: Psychoanalysis and Narrative Obsession in Turn-of-the Century France (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, c1991), by Emily S. Apter
  • PDF files at Project MUSE
  • PDF and EPub with commentary at Cornell Open
• Women and Romance: The Consolations of Gender in the English Novel (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, c1990), by Laurie Langbauer (PDF and EPub with commentary at Cornell Open)
• Misogyny, Misandry, and Misanthropy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), ed. by R. Howard Bloch and Frances Ferguson (HTML at UC Press)
• Cervantes' Women of Literary Tradition (New York: Instituto de las Españas en los Estados Unidos, 1932), by Sadie Edith Trachman (page images at HathiTrust)
• Characteristics of Women: Moral, Poetical, and Historical (New York and London: J. Wiley, 1848), by Mrs. Jameson
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust
• Characteristics of Women: Moral, Poetical, and Historical (Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Co.; New York: J. C. Derby, ca. 1854), by Mrs. Jameson
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust
• Characteristics of Women: Moral, Poetical, and Historical (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin company, 1900), by Mrs. Jameson (multiple formats at archive.org)
• Lucrecia Triciptino: Kasaysayang Tunay Na Nangyari Dakilang Uliran Ng̃ Mg̃a babae (in Tagalog; Manila: Limbagan ni J. Martinez, 1914), by Pascual H. Poblete (multiple formats at archive.org)
• A Mulher na Poesia Brasileira (in Portuguese; Rio de Janeiro: Leite Ribeiro & Maurillo, 1918), by Leal de Souza (page images at HathiTrust; US access only)
• Woman in Sacred History: A Series of Sketches Drawn from Scriptural, Historical and Legendary Sources, by Harriet Beecher Stowe (page images at MOA)
• The Mary Carleton Narratives, 1663-1673: A Missing Chapter in the History of the English Novel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1914), ed. by Ernest Bernbaum (multiple formats at archive.org)
• Penelope in the Odyssey (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1916), by J. W. Mackail (page images at HathiTrust)

• The Crooked Rib: An Analytical Index to the Argument About Women in English and Scots Literature, to the End of the Year 1568 (contributions in languages and literature #10; Columbus: The Ohio State University, 1944), by Francis Lee Utley (page images at HathiTrust)

• Factory Girl Literature: Sexuality, Violence, and Representation in Industrializing Korea (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, c2012), by Ruth Barraclough (multiple formats with commentary at escholarship.org)

• La Mujer en Los Libros de Caballerías (in Spanish; 1917), by Eduardo de Laiglesia (page images at HathiTrust; US access only)

Items below (if any) are from related and broader terms.

• An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex, by Judith Drake, contrib. by James Drake and Mary Astell (multiple editions)
• Sir Thomas Elyot's The Defence of Good Women (Oxford, OH: Anchor Press, 1940), by Thomas Elyot, ed. by Edwin J. Howard (page images at HathiTrust)
• Divinity of Woman: Her Superiority Over Man (third edition revised; Los Angeles: Filipino Federation of America, 1927), by Hilario Camino Moncado (page images at HathiTrust)
• Can Woman Regenerate Society? (London: John W. Parker, 1844), by Anne Richelieu Lamb Dryden (page images at Google)
• Do They Really Respect Us? and Other Essays (San Francisco: A. M. Robertson, 1912), by Margaret Collier Graham (multiple formats at archive.org)
• Epistles on Women, by Lucy Aikin (HTML at Michigan)
• Female Pre-Eminence: or, The Dignity and Excellency of That Sex, Above the Male (in Latin and English, based on editions of 1529 and 1670), by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, trans. by Henry Care (HTML at esotericarchives.com)
• The Joys of Being a Woman, and Other Papers (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1918), by Winifred Margaretta Kirkland (Gutenberg text and illustrated HTML)
• The Nature of Woman (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1913), by J. Lionel Tayler, contrib. by William Caldwell Roscoe (page images at HathiTrust)
• The Powder-Puff: A Ladies' Breviary (New York: Duffield and Co., 1910), by Franz Blei (page images at HathiTrust)
• Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World; To Which Are Added Rules for Determining the Precise Figure, the Degree of Beauty, the Habits, and the Age of Women, Notwithstanding the Aids and Disguise of Dress (Boston: T. Abbot, 1841) (Gutenberg text, illustrated HTML, and page images)
• The Sum of Feminine Achievement: A Critical and Analytical Study of Woman's Contribution to the Intellectual Progress of the World (Boston: The Stratford Company, 1917), by W. A. Newman Dorland (page images at HathiTrust)
• Woman in All Ages and in All Countries (10 volumes; Philadelphia: G. Barrie and Sons, ca. 1907-1908), contrib. by Mitchell Carroll, Alfred Brittain, Edward B. Pollard, Pierce Butler, John R. Effinger, Hugo P. Thieme, Hermann Schoenfeld, Bartlett Burleigh James, and John Rouse Larus (Gutenberg texts and illustrated HTML)
• Women and Other Women: Essays in Wisdom (New York: Duffield and Co., 1908), by Hildegarde Hawthorne
  • multiple formats at Google; US access only
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust; US access only
• Essays (with a biographical sketch of the author; New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1863), by Henry Thomas Buckle (page images at HathiTrust)
• Men, Women and Emotions (Chicago: W. B. Conkey Co., 1899), by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (multiple formats at archive.org)
• Man and Woman in Christ: An Examination of the Roles of Men and Women in Light of Scripture and the Social Sciences, by Stephen B. Clark (frame-dependent HTML at Wayback Machine)

More items available under broader and related terms at left.