Fiction
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Ursula K. LeGuin
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Octavia Butler
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Margaret Atwood
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Tui T. Sutherland (J Fic)
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Suzanne Collins (YA)
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Lois Lowry (YA)
Non-Fiction
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Naomi Klein
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Margaret Atwood (Massey Lecture)
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Angela Y. Davis
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Tanya Talaga
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bell hooks
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Robin Wall Kimmerer
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Astrid Lindgren, her books are translated to 95 different languages and sold over 160 million copies. Probably the worlds most beloved children’s book author.
I don’t have ‘best female author of all time’ but I do have favorite writers some of which happen to be female. I don’t usually split them by their sex (nor by their height, distaste for bananas, or whatever) as for me they’re all in the same ‘people who have a great time staining paper with ink making me a happy reader’ league but here it is, in absolutely no order beside the first two, as there is them and then there is all the others:
- Virginia Woolf (the only reason I would love to be able to travel in time is to meet her),
- Jane Austen,
- Edit: (how could I forget) Emily Dickinson!
- Sylvia Plath,
- Shirley Jackson (if you have not already, go read The Haunting of Hill House, it’s considered a classic for reasons),
- la marquise de Sévigné (she wrote letters and they make for a great read, no idea if it’s available in English),
- Margaret Atwood (imho she deserves a Nobel Prize, next to Woolf and Austen),
- Mary Shelley (like mentioned by others already, she well deserves to be read and would still have a lot to teach to some contemporary authors too, imho).
- I love reading Lizza Tuttle. Her horror short stories are different.
- In the same vein, I also quite like Mélanie Fazzi (who is also a translator of some of Tuttle’s stories, btw). But I can’t find that much more female writers in that specific genre (a lot more males do come to my mind).
Being French, I realize I have not listed that many French female writers I would consider a favorite. But they are a few I would consider excellent read nonetheless:
- La comtesse de Ségur (one of my childhood companion next to, say, Verne and Doyle),
- Simone de Beauvoir,
- (very) few pages of Marguerite Duras,
- Fred Vargas.
- To which I would also add Pauline Réage, because I think her ‘Histoire d’O’ is well worth reading for anyone into erotica.
- At one time, I also quite liked Joëlle Wintrebert (scifi) but I have not felt like reading her for a very long time so I could not tell.
Nobody mentioned Margaret Atwood yet! The Handmaid’s Tale is excellent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid’s_Tale
Also Mary Shelley for Frankenstein !
It is a good book (I’m too much of a chicken to watch much of the show).
It is very immersive and a difficult read, but masterful storytelling.
I honestly think it should be required reading.
I tried reading The Handmaid’s Tale several years ago and struggled to get into it, I felt like it kept jumping around but it wasn’t immediately obvious right away. I think I ended up giving up about 25% the way through which I’ve never done with any book. I’d seen the show too which I thought would have helped. Maybe I’ll give it another go sometime.
I read it recently and I liked it but I felt I would have been confused at the beginning had I not seen the show first. The early chapters keep what’s happening kind of mysterious. It’s about a third of the way in we find out about the ritual rape. Like in the show, there are ALOT of flashbacks and the present day story is slow moving
Yeah, I want to say the first half was pretty difficult reading. Very experiential and kinda postmodern. It’s almost like being in shock.
It’s also pretty difficult emotionally.
Amazing that it was written so long ago. I only made it about halfish into the first season of the show.
Probably Agatha Christie
No love for Robin Hobb?
Much, and lindholm
I love her, but maaaaan, I’ve been trying to slog through Ship Of Destiny for MONTHS and like, I just wanna be DONE with the ships and these characters and get back to Fitz and that side of the world. I know, I know, it all ties together, but I don’t care, I’m so done with the pirate stuff.
Keep at it! The end of Ship of Destiny ends up paying off. A lot of Hobb books have that kinda “slow burn” thing going where it feels like a slog til the last 30% of the final part of a trilogy and then it goes super hard
Some people are about to lose their marbles but just going by the numbers: J. K. Rowling.
She authored the 4th best selling single book of all time and the best selling book series of all time, by quite the margin.
I’d say that would be considered “most successful”
“Best” is very subjective
Sure, but when you asking about a specific profession, that seems the most obvious way to interpret that question.
Unless OP just wants to find a nice female author to hang out with (in that case we should probably exclude all the dead ones).
Financial success is a poor measure for the worth of artists of any stripe. If anything, it has an inverse relationship.
Pretty sure a lot of artists that are just scratching by would disagree, but fair enough.
Could also just be to start a discussion or find new authors to check out
Counterpoint: If success is what we base this on, then E. L. James (50 shades of grey) is a very good author.
Sure, if you’re talking about insurance salespeople or stockbrokers. But in the creative field, things are a little deeper.
Best is always subjective when it comes to art, but I think she is squarely in the safe zone for wearing the label.
Pfft. Rowling’s sold an estimated 600-650 million books (22 titles). Agatha Christie sold an estimated 2-4 billion books (86 titles).
now do a count per years of release and calculate how many jk rowling would sell if her books were out for the same amount of time?
or is the bible the greatest piece of fiction ever?
Interesting. I guess there is a lot of metrics and rules to apply to make a count. Still, she’s like 2nd?
4th, apparently after Christie, Barbara Cartland, and Danielle Steel. What entertains me is in 5th is Enid Blyton with 800 books!
7th of male and female authors.
Definitely one of the greats. Her characters have a life that is missing in quite a few of the other greats. Her world building and story telling are fantastic, especially considering she didn’t do the kind of historic world building Tolkien engaged in before even telling his stories. J. K. Rowling definitely belongs on the list of great authors in general, not just great female authors.
Is this bait or are you fr rn??? Quit glazing lmao, her works are mid at best and there’s so many better authors (mentioned in this thread so you don’t even have legitimate claim to ignorance) to whom you’re doing a massive disservice by calling JKR “one of the greats.”
Bro really thinks twitter posts about how wizards didn’t know about plumbing centuries after the technology existed and would instead shit on the floor is somehow “fantastic” worldbuilding lmfao 💀does shitting on the floor exist as a major plot point in the series? No?
you are letting your hate for a person obscure the objectivity behind the comments you are replying to.
Average potterhead level of reading comprehension.
I was responding specifically to a claim that JKR is “one of the greats” partly on the basis of her worldbuilding by pointing to a clear example of abysmal worldbuilding she’s done…? If the worldbuilding were really that brilliant, you’d expect some of the newer works set in the wizarding world to receive better than a lukewarm reception. Even before she outed herself as a fascist piece of shit nobody was tripping over themselves to catch Fantastic Beasts, and the general consensus was that her tweets about potter lore were pretty embarrassing.
And yeah, I’ll stand by my claim that her works are mediocre on their own merits (or rather, the lack thereof) and that there’s no shortage of better written material by others in the genre for which she’s famous. Some of these other authors are mentioned in this very thread.
We’re discussing her qualities as an author here, this isn’t about my hatred for her as a person, you’re the one who brought that up. You are letting your nostalgia for an IP’s long-past glory days obscure the objectivity behind the comments you are relying to.It’s just obvious from your way of speaking that this is a rewriting of history, yes you have mentioned some poor world building she has done outside of her literature, that is almost entirely irrelevant to the books she has written.
Calling her works ‘mediocre’ is once again, objectively incorrect and in my opinion (this is an assumption) is fuelled by your own personal feelings towards her.
Cope + Seethe + Potterheads stay losing
see how obvious it was?
The wizards had indoor plumbing starting in the 1700s. Most of the world didn’t have indoor plumbing until the 1800s. It would be hard to read the books and not know Hogwarts had plumbing. Your bad example notwithstanding, yes the wizards are ignorant of a few things that make no sense even though they use magic for every mundane thing, and it makes less sense since children would have to completely rely on their parents for any magical utility until they were pretty much grown. It doesn’t take away from the story, but if she did the worldbuilding like Tolkien, she probably would have noticed this and made small adjustments.
Agatha Christie. While not quite what I like there is no denying her success.
- Rosa Luxemburg: Great German socialist thinker and revolutionary
- Emma Goldman: Lithuanian Jewish Anarchist and feminist thinker
- Voltairine de Cleyre: American Anarchist and political thinker
- Luisa Capetillo : Puerto Rican labor organizer and anarcha-feminist
this list is based.
I don’t read books that often, so I don’t know if she’s necessarily the best but I’d have to say Cornelia Funke. Inkheart, while I have yet to actually finish it, is the only normal book that I remember actually liking. It’s currently the only book I own a copy of that isn’t a manga.
I really liked her Dragon Rider as a kid
Poets are authors too, so I’m tossing mine in for Emily Dickinson
I don’t know about “of all time” but “The Coming Plague” by Laurie Garrett should be required reading.
Toni Morrison
Angela Carter
Virginia Wolfe
Shirley Jackson
Octavia Butler
In terms of books written for children, Gail Carson Levine is a good one. She is famous for Ella Enchanted (the book is very different from the film) and some other fairy tale books. She also wrote books for Disney in the Tinkerbell book series.
On alive authors, I think Nina Allan and Niviaq Korneliussen are worth a try.
