Classics by Women Writers

Though women have been writing great books for centuries, historically men have dominated the canon of classic literature. We are happy to report that this state of affairs has changed, and even happier to be featuring twenty-three classic works by some brilliant writers, from Lucia Berlin’s funny, affecting tale of a woman’s quirky connection to an unreliable handyman; to Zora Neale Hurston’s first published story about a young black man’s thwarted desire to leave his small Florida town; to Amy Lowell’s sensory ode, full of longing and introspection, to the vernal equinox; to Grace Paley’s indelible story about a woman, who upon bumping into her ex-husband at the library, becomes the sort of person she wants to be simply by returning her long-overdue novels. In her essay “Hours in a Library” Virginia Woolf wrote, “New books may be more stimulating and in some ways more suggestive than the old, but they do not give us that absolute certainty of delight which breathes through us when we come again [to the classics].” May that delight infuse you as you curl up with these enduring stories, poems, and essays.