Thursday, August 06, 2015

Are these the greatest books by women you’ll never read?

Only 10 of the 78 writers in a new book about unpublished literary masterpieces are women, but there are many female novelists whose lost texts should be remembered

Angela Carter planned a novel, Adela: a Romance, inspired by Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.
Angela Carter planned a novel, Adela: a Romance, inspired by Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Photograph: Mike Laye/Corbis
Given the relative critical neglect suffered by the published writings of women, it’s no surprise that in a new book about ‘unpublished masterpieces’, few of the “lost” literary works featured are by women. But it is still astonishing that, of 78 texts discussed by Bernard Richards and others in The Greatest Books You’ll Never Read, just 10 are by women writers – including Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft and Sylvia Plath.

Women’s literary history is peculiarly haunted by phantom texts that never reached completion, or simply disappeared. The stories of many of these works testify to the challenges women have faced in composing, or completing, literary works, as some examples from the novel genre alone – none of them discussed by Richards – may show.
More

No comments: