George Sand
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil
1 July 1804 – 8 June 1876
French novelist, memoirist and journalist. One of the most popular writers in Europe
in her lifetime, being more renowned than either Victor Hugo or Honoré de Balzac
in England in the 1830s and 1840s, Sand is recognised as one of the most notable writers of the European Romantic era, with more than 50 volumes of various works to her credit, including tales, plays and political texts, alongside her 70 novels.
Like her great-grandmother, Louise Dupin, whom she admired, George Sand stood up for women, advocated passion, castigated marriage and fought against the prejudices
of a conservative society
...
George Eliot
Mary Ann Evans
22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880
English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–63), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–72) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England; most of her works are set there. Her works are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place and detailed depiction of the countryside.
Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language
Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf
20 November 1858 – 16 March 1940
Swedish author, she published her first novel, Gösta Berling's Saga, at the age of 33. She was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature,
which she was awarded in 1909.
Additionally, she was the first woman to be granted a membership in the Swedish Academy in 1914
Grazia Maria Cosima Damiana Deledda
27 September 1871 – 15 August 1936
Italian writer who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926
"for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life
on her native island [i.e. Sardinia] and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general".
She was the first Italian woman to receive the prize, and only the second woman
in general after Selma Lagerlöf was awarded hers in 1909
Sigrid Undset
20 May 1882 – 10 June 1949
Danish-born Norwegian novelist, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928.
Born in Denmark and raised in Norway, Undset had her first books of historical fiction published in 1907. She fled Norway for the United States in 1940 because of her opposition to Nazi Germany and the German invasion and occupation of Norway, but returned after World War II ended in 1945.
Her best-known work is Kristin Lavransdatter, a trilogy about life in Norway in the Middle Ages, portrayed through the experiences of a woman from birth until death. Its three volumes were published between 1920 and 1922
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning
13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989
English novelist, biographer and playwright. Her parents were actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and his wife, actress Muriel Beaumont.
Her grandfather was George du Maurier, a writer and cartoonist.
Although du Maurier is classed as a romantic novelist, her stories have been described as "moody and resonant" with overtones of the paranormal. Her bestselling works were not at first taken seriously by critics, but they have since earned an enduring reputation for narrative craft. Many have been successfully adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca, Frenchman's Creek, My Cousin Rachel and Jamaica Inn, and the short stories "The Birds" and "Don't Look Now". Du Maurier spent much of her life in Cornwall, where most of her works are set. As her fame increased, she became more reclusive
Astrid Anna Emilia Lindgren
14 November 1907 – 28 January 2002
Swedish writer of fiction and screenplays.She is best known for several children's book series, featuring Pippi Longstocking, Emil of Lönneberga, Karlsson-on-the-Roof, and the Six Bullerby Children, and for the children's fantasy novels Mio, My Son, Ronia the Robber's Daughter, and The Brothers Lionheart. Lindgren worked on the Children's Literature Editorial Board at the Rabén & Sjögren publishing house in Stockholm and wrote more than 30 books for children. In January 2017, she was calculated to be the world's 18th most translated author. Lindgren had by 2010 sold roughly 167 million books worldwide. In 1994, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "her unique authorship dedicated to the rights of children and respect for their individuality."
Tove Marika Jansson
9 August 1914 – 27 June 2001
Swedish-speaking Finnish author, novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author. Brought up by artistic parents, Jansson studied art from 1930 to 1938 in Stockholm, Helsinki and Paris. Her first solo art exhibition was in 1943. At the same time, she was writing short stories and articles for publication, as well as creating the graphics for book covers and other purposes. She continued to work as an artist and a writer for the rest of her life.
Jansson wrote the Moomin books for children, starting in 1945 with The Moomins and the Great Flood. The next two books, Comet in Moominland and Finn Family Moomintroll, published in 1946 and 1948 respectively, were highly successful in sales, adding to sales of the first book. For her work as a children's writer she received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1966.
The Moomins also spun off to a comic strip, initially created by Jansson herself, and in 2016 Jansson was included in The Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame.
Starting with the semi-autobiographical Bildhuggarens dotter in 1968, Jansson wrote six novels, including the admired Sommarboken, and five books of short stories for adults
Dame Jean Iris Murdoch
15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999
Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her first published novel, Under the Net (1954), was selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Her 1978 novel The Sea, the Sea won the Booker Prize. In 1987, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked Murdoch twelfth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Her other books include The Bell (1958), A Severed Head (1961), The Red and the Green (1965), The Nice and the Good (1968), The Black Prince (1973), Henry and Cato (1976), The Philosopher's Pupil (1983), The Good Apprentice (1985), The Book and the Brotherhood (1987), The Message to the Planet (1989), and The Green Knight (1993).
As a philosopher, Murdoch's best known work is The Sovereignty of Good (1970). She was married for 43 years, until her death, to the literary critic and author John Bayley
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018
American author best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the Earthsea fantasy series. She was first published in 1959, and her literary career spanned nearly sixty years, producing more than twenty novels and over a hundred short stories, in addition to poetry, literary criticism, translations, and children's books.
Le Guin's writing was enormously influential in the field of speculative fiction, and has been the subject of intense critical attention. She received numerous accolades, including eight Hugos, six Nebulas, and twenty-two Locus Awards, and in 2003 became the second woman honored as a Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The U.S. Library of Congress named her a Living Legend in 2000, and in 2014, she won the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Le Guin influenced many other authors, including Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, David Mitchell, Neil Gaiman, and Iain Banks. After her death in 2018, critic John Clute wrote that Le Guin had "presided over American science fiction for nearly half a century", while author Michael Chabon referred to her as the "greatest American writer of her generation"
