May CATWoman: Classics Written by Women

First we need a definition of classic, not too subjective, so let's start with age as the criterion: anything published fifty or more years ago. But then there are books that were written more than fifty years ago but published more recently, so we should include them. What about books that were published 49 years ago? Classic next year but not this year? So let's make fifty years a guide, rather than an arbitrary cut-off. Some suggestions follow.

Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Mary Wollstonecraft
Jane Austen
Mary Shelley
Elizabeth Gaskell
George Eliot
Charlotte Bronte
Emily Bronte

Twentieth Century
Willa Cather
Virginia Woolf
Daphne DuMaurier
Marguerite Duras
Doris Lessing
Harper Lee
Sylvia Plath

Genre Fiction
Crime: Agatha Christie
Science Fiction: Ursula LeGuin
Romance: Georgette Heyer

Continents
Australia and New Zealand: Henry Handel Richardson; Miles Franklin; Katherine Mansfield
Asia: Fumiko Enchi; Sei Shonagon: Natsume Soseki
Africa: Mariama Ba; Bessie Head
South America: Gabriela Mistral; Clarice Lispector
Europe: George Sand; Madame de Stael; Emilia Pardo Bazán

To the Wiki

Crime Classics

The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham
Green for Danger by Christianna Brand
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
The Patient in Room 18 by Mignon G Eberhart
The Horizontal Man by Helen Eustis
In a Lonely Place and The Expendable Man by Dorothy B Hughes
The Bat by Mary Roberts Rinehart
Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L Sayers

Humour

Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns
The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E M Delafield
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay
No Fond Return of Love by Barbara Pym
Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp
High Rising by Angela Thirkell

Second Wave Feminists

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer
Sexual Politics by Kate Millett

In Search of a Classification

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
The Lover by Marguerite Duras
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

Travel and Reporting

West with the Night by Beryl Markham
Forbidden Journey by Ella Maillart
The Weather in Africa and The View from the Ground by Martha Gellhorn
Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea by Teffi

>1 pamelad: A few more:

18th-19th century
Louisa May Alcott
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Anne Bronte
Frances Burney
Maria Edgeworth
Amy Levy
Ann Radcliffe
Harriet Beecher Stowe

20th century
Pearl S. Buck
Kate Chopin
Zora Neale Hurston
Nella Larsen
Sigrid Undset
Elizabeth von Arnim
Rebecca West
Edith Wharton

>3 kac522: Thank you. I've added some more too, and they're all different from yours! It's a wonderfully broad topic.

I've still not finished my February Author CAT choice of North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, so I'll crack on with it for this CAT too.

Adam Bede by George Eliot (1859) has been sitting on my treebook TBR shelf to be re-read for a while now.

Other possibilities are:
The Flight From the Enchanter by Iris Murdoch (1956),
Death Comes At The End by Agatha Christie (1944), and
If Not, Winter by Sappho (7th/6th centuries BC)

My inclination now is to read Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.

I will likely read These Happy Golden Years / Laura Ingalls Wilder

I am going to read Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren, a classic children’s lit.

I will try to read another Christie. I have not read much and want to change that. Perhaps a reread of Murder on the Orient Express or go back to the beginning and read The Mysterious Affair at Styles I also have Sense and Sensibility later in the year for another group. I'll see what I get to in May.

>7 dudes22: - I think I've changed my mind and will read A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh unless someone thinks this isn't appropriate for the theme. Well - One or the other.

I'm planning to read Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, which, I'm ashamed to say I have never read.

>11 dudes22: Absolutely! Along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh was one of the Golden Age Queens of Crime.

I'm thinking of either The Story of Gösta Berling or In the Wilderness, both by Nobel-prize-winning women.

With the reminder of the AuthorCAT theme, I might read (instead or also):
Anne of Green Gables

I've been wanting to reread for a while. If I do, I will get an audio version. My library has 5 or 6 versions to choose from.

>14 NinieB: I'm also planning to read The Saga of Gosta Berling, but am tempted to read my 34th Mignon G Eberhart, which would be a less worthy option. Might try to read both.

>16 pamelad: I read a novella by Selma Lagerlöf previously that makes me think Gösta Berling will be relatively easy reading, so your plan to read both seems doable.

The Grass Is Singing is one I've been wanting to read; also High Rising. I may try to read one of those which are in my stash.

Oooooh, Germaine Greer. I've had her book on my shelves for years, and this would be a receptive group in which to read and post.

Also, Agatha Christie.

I've decided to read Excellent Women by Barbara Pym.

I've finished The Story of Gosta Berling early, and have started Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, which has started well, with Alice and Gertrude hanging around in Paris with Picasso and Matisse and assorted other artists. No one is famous yet. So far Alice B is much easier to read than I thought it would be!

I plan to read Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis. If I have time, I'll also read A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

I plan to read Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie. I've just seen the movie and I'll be interested to see how close it was to the book.

I have a few possibles as I am supposed to be reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Pride and Prejudice this month.

My possibilities are My Antonia by Cather, The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim, or/and Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

I had a lot of extra time to read this week (due to missing work due to an infected finger, of all things, which is now healing), so I've already finished The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman and Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey for this category.

The book I'm reading at the moment, The Legacy of the Bones by Dolores Redondo mentions the Agotes (according to Wikipedia aka Cagots), an oppressed group who I must admit I had never heard of before. However, Mrs Gaskell wrote protesting their treatment in An Accursed Race, which I will read after I finish my current reading.

Seabiscuit: An American Legend / Laura Hillenbrand
3.5 stars

Seabiscuit was a racing horse, famous in the 1930s. As a colt, he just wanted to sleep and eat. He only turned on the speed when he felt like it. His owner was Charles Howard; trainer was Tom Smith; jockeys were Red Pollard and George Woolf. This book includes biographical information about Seabiscuit in addition to all the men. Of course, there is plenty of information on horse racing, in addition.

The story was good. Horse racing is dangerous and I do not like using animals for human entertainment. This certainly didn’t help my opinion. Of course, the author mostly focused on the danger for the jockeys, but those same dangers go for the horses, as well. But the human jockeys choose to do what they do, knowing the dangers. I was surprised to learn how much those jockeys mistreat their own bodies (“reducing” to lose weight) in order to race – the health issues that must come about from that! Being from Alberta, it was interesting to learn that Red Pollard was originally from Edmonton. Hillenbrand is a very good writer and the descriptions of the races were exciting. I was cheering Seabiscuit on.

>26 susanna.fraser: I started The Guns of August years ago and was fascinated by it, but have never finished it. I loved A Distant Mirror though. Her scholarship is tremendous.

I read Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren. Ms Lindgren is certainly an icon in her country of Sweden and Pippi has been read in Sweden for many generations. It isn't as loved anymore in the US as it was during my childhood.

I finished The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories by Sarah Orne Jewett (1896). Our unnamed narrator, a woman writer of a certain age, spends a summer in small fishing village on the Maine coast. This serene and lovely little collection of pieces was exactly the right book at the right time for me. It reminded me in a way of Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford, where women seem to play a larger role in daily life. So glad to have found this quiet American classic, full of simple truths and wisdom, and a wonderful picture of small-town life in America at the end of the 19th century.

I read Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie that definitely fits this category. I've read it at least once before this and recently saw the excellent Kenneth Branagh movie version.

I've also read Death on the Nile this month. I have not seen the movie yet, but plan to watch it this weekend.

>33 staci426: I recently watched the movie and enjoyed it.

COMPLETED An Accursed Race by Mrs Gaskell, an account of the Cagots, an oppressed minority living in Spain and France, how they were treated, and their eventual emancipation in the 19th century.

>34 Kristelh: That's good to hear. My brother recently saw it and said it was horrible, so I was nervous. But he's not an Agatha Cristie fan, so I was hoping that's probably why he didn't like it.

>36 staci426: I am not an expert. A good movie for me is one that is not too violent, not to full of sexual content and so I am probably not the best judge but I did enjoy it.

The June thread is up: https://www.librarything.com/topic/341761

Anne of Green Gables / L. M. Montgomery
4 stars

Anne is 11-years old and an orphan when she is brought to middle-aged siblings Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert on Prince Edward Island. They had sent word that they wanted a boy to help with the chores, but there was a miscommunication and they ended up with a girl. They hadn’t the heart to send back the chatty girl who wormed her way into their hearts, despite all the foibles she made along the way.

This was a reread. I read it as a teenager. For this reread, I listened to an audio version. The CBC mini-series from the mid-80s with Megan Follows is one of my all-time favourite movies. Because of that, there was no way I could picture anything else but the characters in that movie as I listened to the book. But that’s ok by me. The book had a few additional happenings that they didn’t put in the movie and the movie expanded on some of the happenings in the book. I don’t know how anyone could not help but love Anne. (Well, to be honest, I’d probably have a harder time of it in real life – as an adult, anyway; I’m sure as a kid, I would have loved her.)

>39 LibraryCin: That's one of my all-time favorite movies, too! It was so well cast. And of course, the scenery was beautiful!

>39 LibraryCin: I know I read several of the Green Gables books and several of the What Katy Did books as a tween but at this distance they are all blurred together.

>41 Robertgreaves: The "What Katy Did" books... I think I had one that had been my mom's or my grandma's, but I don't remember if I ever read it!

>40 cbl_tn: I think it helped that I was around Anne's age in the movie when it first aired. I was either 1985 or 86, which would have put me at 12 or 13 years old. (Unless it aired in December, at which point I would have been 13 or 14!).

ETA: And CBC used to air the movie annually, and I watched every year... :-)

I have finished Aufstand der Fischer von St. Barbara which is considered a modern classic of "Neue Sachlichkeit" In Germany.

I have finished The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas by Gertrude Stein. It was on my to read list last year for the classic that scares you category of the Classics Challenge, so I'm very pleased to have read it. In the end it wasn't too scary.

I finished a re-read of And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. It is a classic mystery by a classic mystery writer, and the way that the characters were introduced at the beginning was sheer genius! Note: the imagery/descriptions in the nursery poem "Ten Little Indians" (which is also the books original title) and the accompanying figurines are cringeworthy and examples of their time.

I have finished Sylvia's Lovers which was heavy going because of the Yorkshire dialect that everyone speaks. An interesting story nonetheless.

I have finished my read of Excellent Women by Barbara Pym. I thoroughly enjoyed this light, amusing story and will be looking for more books by this author.

>48 DeltaQueen50: What treats you have in store.

I'm also reading The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer. While there are some cringeworthy/inaccurate mentions of African Americans and members of the LGBTQ community, the immediacy of her drawing on Freud and Masters & Johnson (to name a few) reports brings to light the importance they played in the late 60's research on gender identity.

What is still so awfully prevalent is the negative view girls and women still have of their bodies, 52 years later. Only now magnified by social media instead of the pages of glossy magazines.

I've had Rebecca on my list for a long time and finally watched the netflix version, so I started reading it last week and finished yesterday.

Starting The Saga of Gosta Berling by Selma Lagerlöf, translated by Paul Norlen. This was Lagerlöf's first novel, published in 1891. She was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I've read Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick by Zora Neale Hurston, edited by Genevieve West, which contains 21 short pieces, mainly stories, which Hurston wrote during the Harlem Renaissance. Most of the pieces are set in either Harlem or in Easton, Florida, where Hurston grew up. They feature a lot of dialect, and many have religious connections. Some are numbered lists; this is why I'm calling them pieces instead of stories. Ms. West discovered these stories in publications, mainly magazines, of the period or in manuscript form in archives.

I've finished two British modern classics from the 1930s and enjoyed both:

The Curate's Wife by E. H. Young, 1934
Poor Caroline, Winifred Holtby, 1931

I listened to Death on the Nile which I very much enjoyed.
Find my comments here.
https://www.librarything.com/work/29995/reviews/216433193

I have read 4 out of the 9 stories in Standing Her Ground: Classic Short Stories by Trailblaziing Women, edited by Harriet Sanders. I had planned to read all of them this month, but having just read three other books of short stories, want to read something else. I read "The Mortal Immortal" by Mary Shelley, "The Manchester Marriage" by Elizabeth Gaskell, "A Pair of Silk Stockings" by Kate Chopin, and "Sister Josepha" by Alice Dunbar Nelson. The only author I had read any short stories of before is Kate Chopin; I do not think "A Pair of Silk Stockings" is one of her better stories. The authors I did not read include Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, and Winifred Holtby; I have already read the stories included here by Willa Cather and Katherine Mansfield, and the only author I have not read at all is Winifred Holtby.

COMPLETED The Saga of Gosta Berling by Selma Lagerlof

I changed my mind and read all of the stories in Standing Her Ground >56 sallylou61:

I finished and enjoyed very much The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy.

>59 marell: One of my sentimental favorite books!

While I haven't written and posted my review yet, I finished Germaine Greer a couple of days ago. Some of her insights are still sadly relevant, but wow! her contempt for her subject matter, British (mostly) housewives from the 1960's is appalling. Very different feeling from Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique written almost a decade earlier.