Literary Works by Women

Adams, Ansel, 1902-1984, photographer. *Mrs. Teruko Kiyomura* 1943. Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Women have historically faced many obstacles in the publishing industry. However, publishing is not a prerequisite to writing, and the writing of women can be found in a number of surprising places if you know where to look. The research possibilities from this vast array of women's voices are many.

In her novel Journey to Topaz , Japanese American Yoshiko Uchida depicts one aspect of life in a World War II evacuation camp for her eleven-year-old heroine: “One of the worst things about being in camp was that there was no place to go to be alone. Wherever she went, people pressed close—in her own stall, at the mess hall, at school, on the track, even in the latrines and washroom.” (See Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar.)

SAMPLE LCSH: The subdivision “Fiction” can follow more recent subject headings; for example, “Man-woman relationships—Fiction.” Most older literary works do not have any subject headings.

The following terms help locate authors in reference and collective literary works:

Drama by Women to 1900 by Gwenn Davis (Compiled by); Beverly A. Joyce (Compiled by)
ISBN: 0720121027
Published/Created: 1992-01-01
A bibliography consisting of some 2500 entries of published plays, monologues, entertainments for amateur groups, and short sketches intended for performance, this includes works performed both publicly and privately as well as those never produced but written in dramatic form, such as dramatic poems.
Women's Writing 1660-1830 by Jennie Batchelor (Editor); Gillian Dow (Editor)
ISBN: 9781137543813
Published/Created: 2017-01-02
Contributors attend to the achievements of eighteenth-century women writers and the scholars who have devoted their lives to them, and map new directions for the advancement of research in the area. They collectively argue that eighteenth-century women's literary history has a future, and that feminism was, and always should be, at its heart.
Witness, Warning, Prophecy by Teresa Feroli (Editor); Margaret Olofson Thickstun (Editor)
ISBN: 9780866985840
Published/Created: 2018-01-22
The forty texts collected in this volume offer a small but representative sample of Quaker women's tremendous literary output between 1655 and 1700. They include examples of key Quaker literary genres -- proclamations, directives, warnings, sufferings, testimonies, polemic, pleas for toleration -- and showcase a range of literary styles and voices, from eloquent poetry to legal analyses of English canon and civil law. In their varied responses to the core Quaker belief in the indwelling Spirit, these women left a rich literary legacy of an early countercultural movement. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe - The Toronto Series: Volume 60
The Pen Is Ours: a listing of writings by and about African-American women before 1910 with secondary bibliography to the present by Jean Fagan Yellin (Editor); Cynthia D. Bond (Editor)
ISBN: 0195062035
Published/Created: 1991-04-18
This bibliography of writing by and about African-American women provides a much needed research tool to scholars and researchers in the field. The bibliography lists writing by African-American women whose earliest publication appeared before 1910; a supplemental bibliography lists writing published as of 1911.

American Women Writers, 1900-1945 by Laurie Champion; Emmanuel S. Nelson
ISBN: 9781429473248
Published/Created: 2000-01-01
This reference includes alphabetically arranged entries on 58 American women authors who wrote between 1900 and 1945. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and discusses a particular author's biography, her major works and themes, and the critical response to her writings.
Bibliographic Guide to Chicana and Latina Narrative by Kathy S. Leonard
ISBN: 9780313319877
Published/Created: 2003-08-30
There has been a dramatic increase in the amount of narrative work published by Chicana and Latina authors in the past 5 to 10 years. Nonetheless, there has been little attempt to catalog this material. This reference provides convenient access to all forms of narrative written by Chicana and Latina authors from the early 1940s through 2002.
The Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature by Claire Buck (Editor)
ISBN: 0130896659
Published/Created: 1992-10-01
The work of 40 international scholars, this reference features over 5,000 A-to-Z entries on thousands of individual authors from the classical period to the middle ages to the present, detailed descriptions of works, and thematic entries on literary genres used frequently by women.

Database of Canada’s Early Women Writers External
Canada’s Early Women Writers (CEWW) is one of the seed projects for the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory, a larger project based at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton. The mandate for CEWW is ultimately to include “all notable [female] English-language writers active before 1950 who lived in Canada or wrote about Canada, whatever their audience and genre, ranging from travel journalism and scientific writing to poetry and fiction” (CWRC website).
Women Writers Online External
Women Writers Online is a full-text collection of early women’s writing in English, published by the Women Writers Project at Northeastern University.
African American Women Writers of the 19th Century External
African American Women Writers of the 19th Century is a digital collection of some 52 published works by 19th-century black women writers. A part of the Digital Schomburg, this collection provides access to the thought, perspectives and creative abilities of black women as captured in books and pamphlets published prior to 1920.
Victorian Women Writers Project External
The Victorian Women Writers Project (VWWP) began in 1995 at Indiana University and is primarily concerned with the exposure of lesser-known British women writers of the 19th century. The collection represents an array of genres - poetry, novels, children's books, political pamphlets, religious tracts, histories, and more. VWWP contains scores of authors, both prolific and rare.

American Women: Resources from the General Collections

Literary Works by Women