Susan Sontag

Joyce Carol Oates

Virginia Woolf

Judith Ortiz Cofer

Jamaica Kincaid

Joan Didion

Jenny Diski

Elizabeth David

Annie Dillard

M. F. K. Fisher

Gretel Ehrlich

Anne Fadiman

Elizabeth Hardwick

Cynthia Ozick

Margaret Cavendish

Rebecca West

Alice Walker

Linda Hogan

Zora Neale Hurston

Elizabeth Bowen

Fanny Fern

Eliza Haywood

Sara Suleri

Grace Greenwood

Charlotte Lennox

Margaret Fuller

Vernon Lee

Eliza Lynn Linton

Kyoko Mori

Lydia Maria Child

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Harriet Martineau

Gail Hamilton

Frances Brooke

Mary Russell Mitford

Frances Power Cobbe

Zitkala-Sa

Alice Meynell

Louise Imogen Guiney

Ann Plato

Agnes Repplier

Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Judith Sargent Murray

Elisabeth Woodbridge Morris

Gertrude Bustill Mossell

Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi

Of Women and the Essay brings together forty-six American and British women essayists whose work spans nearly four centuries. The contributions of these essayists prove that women have been significant participants in the essay tradition since the genre’s modern beginnings in the sixteenth century. Many of these essayists, such as Eliza Haywood, Fanny Fern, Gertrude Bustill Mossell, Agnes Repplier, and Alice Meynell, achieved significant success as writers within whatever essay form ruled the day; others bent the rules, though often imperceptibly, to make room for themselves. Collectively they represent a missing piece in the larger history of the essay. In Of Women and the Essay Jenny Spinner contextualizes the broad range of literary essays included within the chronological development of the genre. She makes a compelling argument that women have constructed their own tradition in the essay genre, often utilizing periodic traits of the essay to their own advantage. At the same time, she suggests that the personal essay’s demands on the essayist required both a public and personal authorization that proved challenging for women essayists in general and for women of color in particular. The appendix catalogs the works of nearly 200 female essayists and should inspire further reading. As a whole, the volume lifts women writers from the cutting-room floor of essay scholarship and returns them to their rightful place in the essay canon.

An Anthology from 1655 to 2000

Of Women and the Essay

Books like Of Women and the Essay

Your next favorite book is out there