Charlotte (1816-1855), Emily (1818-1848), and Anne (1820-1849) Brontë were born in Thornton, England, the three out of six children of Maria and Patrick Brontë, who was an Anglican clergyman. Shortly after Anne was born, the family moved to Haworth. Only a few months later, their mother died, and their aunt came to take care of them. In 1824, Charlotte, Emily, and their two older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, were sent to study at the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge. The harsh conditions affected their health, and the following year, both Maria and Elizabeth died of tuberculosis. Charlotte and Emily returned home, where Charlotte, who now became the eldest, took the mother role to her younger siblings. They were homeschooled and earned most of their education from books from their father’s library. Being isolated from other children, the Brontës spent their time in writing and inventing an imaginary Kingdome called Glass Town. Charlotte, who wrote her first poem at 13, gathered her and her siblings’ compositions and published them in a homemade magazine called Branwell’s Blackwood’s Magazine. Over time, Charlotte and her older brother, Branwell (Patrick), created their own world called Angria. While Charlotte went to study at Roe Head school in Mirfield, Emily and Anne invented another world called Gondal. In 1833, at 17, Charlotte returned to Roe Head as a teacher. During this time, she wrote poems to express her loneliness. In 1835, Emily joined her at Roe Head as a student but returned home after a few months. Later, Anne took her place at the school. In 1839, Charlotte and Anne began to work as governesses. That was a traumatic experience for Anne, who later detailed the event in her novel Agnes Grey. In 1842, Charlotte and Emily traveled to Brussels to improve their French, but they had to return early than planned following their aunt’s death. Later, Charlotte returned to Brussels to teach for two more years. Two of her novels – The Professor and Villette – were inspired by her time there. During all this time, the Brontë Sisters continued writing, and in 1846 they self-published a joint collection of their poems under the pseudonyms Currer (Charlotte), Ellis (Emily), and Acton (Anne) Bell. Later that year, they sent to publishers in London a package containing manuscripts by each sister – Charlotte’s The Professor, Emily’s Wuthering Heights, and Anne’s Agnes Grey. Although The Professor was not published, Charlotte sent another manuscript, Jane Eyre. All three sisters published their novels in 1847; while Jane Eyre received immediate success, Anne’s Agnes Grey was surpassed by her sister’s passionate drama. In 1848, at 28, Anne published her second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. At the time, Charlotte worked on her second manuscript, but stopped following the death of her three lasting siblings. First, her older brother Branwell died of chronic bronchitis and marasmus; then Emily died of pulmonary tuberculosis, and the following year, Anne died from pulmonary tuberculosis. Eventually, Charlotte resumed her writings, and in 1849, published her second novel, Shirley, followed by her third, Villette (1853). She then married Arthur Nicholls, her father’s curate, and soon became pregnant. Her health declined, and she died with her unborn child only three weeks before her 39th birthday. Despite the early and tragic deaths of the three Brontë sisters, they published together six novels (Charlotte – 3, Anne – 2, Emily – 1) and hundreds of poems, leaving a significant mark on the Victorian literature world that continues to this day. Their books were adapted into films, TV series, music, dances, operas, and stage productions. Read more...

Born Edith Newbold Jones in New York City into a wealthy and socialite family. From 4 to 10, she traveled with her family throughout Europe, was educated by governesses and private tutors, and became fluent in French, German, and Italian. After returning to the US, she used her father’s library to further her knowledge. From an early age, she wrote fiction and poetry, and at 11, she tried to complete her first novel. At 15, she published her first work under a pseudonym, a translation of a German poem. That same year, she wrote her first novella, Fast and Loose. The following year, she published her first poetry collection, titled Verses. She continued to publish her poems in various newspapers and magazines. At 17, after coming out as a debutante to society, she stopped publishing for almost a decade, dedicating her time to the social events of the upper class, which she later used as inspiration for her work. At 23, she married Edward Robbins Wharton. The couple settled in Newport, RI, and took annual vacations in Europe, mainly in Italy, which was her favorite. At the time, she returned to writing, combining it with her love to design; in 1897, she co-authored the design and architecture book The Decoration of Houses. In 1889, at 27, Wharton published the poem The Last Giustiniani, followed by the short story Mrs. Manstey’s View. In 1902, the Whartons bought The Mount estate in Lenox, MA, where she designed its interior and gardens. There, with the right setting, she wrote some of her best-known works, including the best-seller The House of Mirth in 1905 and Ethan Frome in 1911. In her writing, she used the physical space of the house to mirror the relationship between its inhabitants and their emotions. She dealt with topics such as individual and social fulfillment, the desire for freedom, old money vs. new money, and repressed sexuality, criticizing the mannerisms of the golden-age high society and reviling its hypocrisies. At the time, Wharton and her husband’s relationship disintegrated, and they divorced in 1913. Afterward, she moved permanently to France. When WWI broke out, Wharton founded several humanitarian organizations, established hostels for refugees, living facilities for tuberculosis sufferers, workshops for unemployed seamstresses, and schools for refugee children. In 1916, amid the war, she received the French Legion of Honor for her charitable work. She also contributed her writing skills by publishing testimonies from the French frontline. The war did not prevent Wharton from writing original materials, and between 1914-1918, she published two novels, two short story collections, and a non-fictional book titled Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort. In 1920, Wharton published her most famous work, the novel The Age of Innocence, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, becoming the first woman to win the award. Throughout her life, Wharton published over 50 books, including 18 novels, 7 novellas, 85 short stories, 3 poetry collections, an autobiography, and a dozen books on travel and design. She died of a stroke at the age of 75. Read more...

Willa Sibert Cather was born near Winchester, Virginia, the eldest of seven children. At nine, the family moved to frontier Nebraska, settling in the town of Red Cloud. There, she began attending school and became an avid reader and writer, publishing in the local newspaper. After graduating at 16, she attended the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, aspiring to become a physician. Cather wrote essays, which got published in the Nebraska State Journal and the Lincoln Courier, served as the editor of the university’s student newspaper, and as literary editor of her class yearbook. Realizing she wanted to become a writer, she changed from science to English, graduating in 1895 with a Bachelor of Arts. The following year, at 23, Cather moved to Pittsburgh, where she wrote for the women’s magazine Home Monthly, publishing journalistic pieces, poetry, and short stories; among them was Tommy, the Unsentimental. In 1897, she worked as a telegraph editor and music critic for the Pittsburgh Leader and contributed some of her own poems and short stories. At the time, she also worked as a Latin, English, and Algebra teacher in several high schools, serving as head of the English department at Allegheny High School. In 1903, at 30, Cather published her first poetry collection, April Twilights, followed by her first short stories collection, The Troll Garden, featuring some of her most renowned stories, such as Paul’s Case, The Sculptor’s Funeral, and A Wagner Matinee. In 1906, she moved to NYC after receiving an editorial position at McClure’s. There, she met her lifelong friend and domestic partner, the editor Edith Lewis. In 1912, at 39, she published her first novel, Alexander’s Bridge. Within less than a decade, she published three more books that together often referred to as Cather’s “Prairie Trilogy” – O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918). In these books, Cather demonstrated her distinctive use of plainspoken language that authentically portrays the lives of ordinary people. Cather’s most significant acclaim came in 1922 after publishing the WW1 novel One of Ours, for which she won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize. Her success continued in her next three novels, A Lost Lady (1923), The Professor’s House (1925), My Mortal Enemy (1926), and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927). Cather became known for portrayals of the frontier, pioneering settlers, and their relationships with the western landscapes, often drawing inspiration from her own experiences and the people she encountered while growing up in Nebraska. Despite her commercial success, she was criticized and dismissed for being nostalgic and overdramatic and for not addressing contemporary issues. In 1931, her Shadows on the Rock was the most-read novel in the US; the 1932 Obscure Destinies collection included one of her most-known stories, Neighbour Rosicky, and the novel: Lucy Gayheart, published in 1935, was a bestseller. Overall she wrote 12 novels, two poetry books, and seven short story collections (three were published post-mortem). She died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 73. Read more...

Helen Beatrix Potter was born in London, England, into a wealthy family. She was homeschooled, spent lots of her time outdoors, looked after her pets, such as rabbits, cats, and mice, and collected butterflies, which she studied and drew. From a young age, she was drawn to fairy tales and fantasy, incorporating her two loves by illustrating stories featuring her own pets. As Potter got older, especially during her family’s annual vacation in Scotland and the Lake District, she became interested in natural science, collecting fossils, exploring insects, and painting them. Over time, Potter focused on mycology – the study of fungi; she drew and wrote a paper on spore germination, which she presented to the Linnean Society in 1897. Later in life, she donated her mycological drawings to the Armitt Museum and Library in Ambleside, which mycologists still use to identify fungi. In her 20s, Potter, who wanted to become financially independent, began to sell holiday cards she designed, often featuring small animals like rabbits and mice. In 1890, a printing company bought some of her drawings of Benjamin Bunny to illustrate the rhyme book A Happy Pair. Afterward, she sold more illustrations for children’s books. Inspired by the successes, Potter decided to publish her own illustrated stories. She took an illustrated letter she sent to the son of her former governess and formed it into a book titled The Tale of Peter Rabbit. After she couldn’t find any buyers, she self-published it in 1901, but the following year, it was published commercially by Frederick Warne & Company. The story, which was about “four little rabbits whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter,” depicted the rural countryside by combining high-quality illustrations with simple prose. The book was printed as a small size book so that even small children could hold it. It was an immediate success, and within a year, Potter converted illustrated letters into two tale books, The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin and The Tailor of Gloucester. During her lifetime, Potter wrote over 60 books, including 23 children’s tales, which sold millions of copies. The last tale book published in her lifetime was Cecily Parsley’s Nursery Rhymes in 1922. From the get-go, Potter anticipated her characters’ commercial potential. In 1903, she patented a Peter Rabbit doll and developed various merchandise, including figurines, board games, china tea sets, and baby blankets. It made Potter and her publisher a fortune, and she had the income that allowed her the autonomy that initiated this enterprise. In 1905, at 39, Potter bought the Hill Top Farm Near Sawrey in the Lake District. She learned Fell farming techniques, raised livestock, including chickens, cows, and pigs, and bred Herdwick sheep. A few years later, Potter bought Castle Farm across the road and resided there. Most books she wrote in this period reflect her interest and engagement with rural life, including The Tale of Ginger and Pickles and The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse. In 1913, Potter married her solicitor William Heelis and became more involved with village life, establishing Nursing Trust for local villages and serving in numerous committees regarding rural issues. Throughout her life, Potter was a devoted conservationist and supported the National Trust’s efforts to preserve land from being destroyed by the increasing development of the time. She conserved and restored farms, and as an authority on the traditional Lakeland crafts, she always ensured that the restored farmhouses had antique Lakeland furniture. She died at 77 of complications from pneumonia. Read more...

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born at her family’s homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts (nowadays the home of the Emily Dickinson Museum). She received her early education at a one-room primary school and later attended Amherst Academy. From an early age, she was troubled by the prospect of death, especially following the death of her second cousin and a close friend in 1844, resulting in her being sent to relatives in Boston to recuperate. After graduation, Dickinson went to study at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley but returned home after only ten months. During her 20s, her mother suffered from various chronic illnesses, and Dickinson took on all domestic responsibilities and became more and more reclusive. 1855 was the last time Dickinson left her hometown when she traveled to Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia; afterward, she rarely left town and confined herself to her homestead and her brother’s house next door. She started writing poetry when she was 11 but received validation only when she was 18 when a family friend read her poems and encouraged her to write. In the sanctuary of her home, withdrawn from the outside world, Dickinson’s writing flourished; between 1858 to 1865, she had her most productive period, in which she wrote about 800 poems, making clean copies of her work and assembling them in 40 booklets, today known as her fascicles. During this period, Dickinson was corresponding with Samuel Bowles, the owner and editor-in-chief of the Springfield Republican, to whom she sent dozens of letters and nearly fifty poems, and he published a few of them in his newspaper. Dickinson also befriended the literary critic and radical abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson following an article he published in 1862 encouraging young writers to publish their work. In 1866, Dickinson’s solitude worsened, and she rarely left her homestead and even talked to her visitors through the door without seeing them. However, she was very expressive in her notes and letters to her family and friends. Although she continued to write poetry, her productivity declined, and she stopped assembling her work into the booklets. In 1874, her father died, and her mother suffered a stroke, and over the next few years, more friends and family members died, including her mother, nephew, and beloved dog. These occurrences affected Dickinson’s mental and physical health, and in November 1885, she had to be confined to her bed for several months until she died at 55. Though she wrote thousands of poems and letters, only ten were published during her life, most anonymously and some without her consent. A few years before she died, she made her sister Lavinia swear to burn her papers after her death. Lavinia kept her promise and burned most of Dickinson’s correspondence, but after she found a collection of about 1800 of her poems and recognized their worth, she set her mind to editing and publishing them. In 1890, four years after she died, Dickinson’s first collection was published and received critical and financial success. Her second collection was published the following year, running through five editions within two years. Since then, Dickinson’s work has remained continuously in print; but it wasn’t until 1955, with Thomas H. Johnson’s Dickinson’s Complete Poems, that her poems were published as they were initially written, without editing and altering. A fruitful writer throughout three decades, the themes of Dickinson’s poems changed over time. From conventional and sentimental in her early work, she became more versatile and wrote about various themes, including love, identity, life, death, and immortality, as in one of her most famous poems, “Because I did not stop for Death.” Her work is known for the unique use of metaphors and “flower language” to symbolize topics such as prudence, youth, and poetry, but its real distinction is its structure. In her writing style, Dickinson challenged conventions by ignoring the rules of grammar and syntax and using line braking, punctuation, and capitalization in unfamiliar ways. It created a sort of off-rhymes that formed into an enigmatic and haunting personal voice that made her one of the most important and influential poets of the 19th century and American literature at large. Read more...

Bertha Sophie Felicitas Freifrau von Suttner was born in Prague, then in the kingdom of Bohemia, part of the Austrian Empire. Her father was from an aristocratic family, and her mother was of an untitled nobility, so Bertha was not considered part of the Austrian high nobility because of her “mixed” descent. Soon after she was born, her father died, and she and her mother moved to Brno to live with her maternal family. There, Bertha was introduced to literature and philosophy by her cousin Elvira. She also studied French, Italian, and English and became an accomplished pianist and singer. In 1856, after her mother gambled all their money, they moved to Vienna for a few years before relocating to Klosterneuburg, where Bertha published her first work, the novella Erdenträume im Monde. Due to their financial situation, Bertha tried to become an opera singer and took intensive vocal lessons. However, her stage fright impacted her performance, and she couldn’t secure a job. In 1873, at 30, Bertha began to work as the governess of the four girls of the von Suttner family. She and the girls had a close connection, and later she used the nickname they gave her, “Boulotte” (fatty), as her pseudonym B. Oulot. During that time, she developed a romantic relationship with the girl’s elder brother, Arthur Gundaccar von Suttner. In 1876, encouraged by her employers, who opposed her relationship with their son, Bertha applied and accepted a position as Alfred Nobel’s secretary-housekeeper at his Paris residence. After only one week, she returned to Vienna to secretly marry von Suttner. They eloped to Georgia and settled in Kutaisi, where they lived in poverty and worked as music and language teachers to the children of the local aristocracy. To supplement their income, both worked as writers, he covered the Russo-Turkish War, and Bertha contributed to the Austrian press and began working on her first novel, Es Löwos, published in 1906. In 1882, the couple moved to Tbilisi, where Bertha focused on her writing. The following year, she published her first significant political work, Inventarium einer Seele (Inventory of the Soul), claiming that world peace is inevitable because of technological advancement. In 1885, at 42, the Suttners returned to Austria, living in Harmannsdorf Castle in Burgschleinitz-Kühnring. For the next few years, she continued to work mainly as a journalist, writing primarily about peace and war issues. In 1889, Bertha published the pacifist novel Die Waffen nieder! (Lay Down Your Arms!). The book was translated into 12 languages and published in 37 editions, making her a leading figure in the peace movement. She used her rising status to promote pacifist ideas by any means possible. Among her many actions, she founded and chaired the German Peace Society, established the international pacifist journal Die Waffen nieder!, helped to fund the establishment of the Bern Peace Bureau, presented Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria a petition to establish an International Court of Justice, and participated in the First Hague Convention in 1899. To support herself financially, she continued to write novels in which she incorporated her pacifistic ideas. In 1904, 61 years Bertha embarked on a seven months tour across the US to promote universal peace and to attend the International Peace Congress in Boston. Her main argument was that the right to peace needs to be enshrined in international law, as it is an evolutionary necessity. In 1905, Bertha and her comrade Tobias Asser were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their contribution to developing an international order based on peace rather than war. She became the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the second female Nobel laureate (after Marie Curie), and the first Austrian laureate. She continued to campaign for international peace and against armament, and in 1911, at 68, Bertha was appointed a member of the advisory council of the Carnegie Peace Foundation. During the last months of her life, she worked on organizing the next Peace Conference, intended to take place in September 1914. She died of cancer in June of that year at 71. The conference was canceled; ironically, a week after it was supposed to take place, the heir to the Austria-Hungary throne, Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated, an event that triggered WWI. Read more...

Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf was born in her family estate Mårbacka in Värmland, Sweden. She was a quiet child who spent most of her time reading and listening to her grandmother’s fairy tales and fantasy stories. From an early age, Lagerlöf wrote poetry but didn’t publish it. She received her early education at home and, at 24, left for Stockholm to attend the Royal Women’s Superior Training Academy and became a teacher. In 1885, at 27, Lagerlöf began to work as a country schoolteacher. There, she developed her story-telling skills to teach her students about the different countries in the religious scriptures. At the time, she began to work on a novel. In 1890, She submitted her first chapters to a magazine literary competition and won first prize – a publishing contract for a book. The following year, she published her first novel Gösta Berling’s Saga. Although it later became one of Swedish literature’s greatest classics, in the beginning, it went unnoticed and received few reviews. That changed when its Danish translation received critical acclaim, and Lagerlöf gained acknowledgment for her work. With the financial support of the philanthropic feminist Fredrika Limnell, Lagerlöf could concentrate on her writing, and by 1895 she stopped teaching. Together with her friend and companion Sophie Elkan, Lagerlöf made two journeys that influenced her literary future. While in Italy, she heard a legend about a Christ Child figure that was replaced with a false version. This story inspired her 1897 novel Antikrists Mirakler (The Miracles of the Antichrist). In 1900, her visit to Jerusalem resulted in her most acclaimed work, a two-volume book titled Jerusalem, about several generations of pilgrims who moved to the holy land. Published in 1901, the book became a best seller in Sweden and abroad, and Lagerlöf was compared to Homer and Shakespeare. In 1902, at 44, Lagerlöf accepted the National Teachers’ Association’s request to write a geography book for children. Published in 1906, Nils Holgerssons Underbara Resa Genom Sverige (The Wonderful Adventures of Nils) follows a boy from the southernmost part of Sweden who travels across the country on a back of a goose. By mixing historical and geographical facts, Lagerlöf created an educational adventure story appealing to children and adults. The two-part novel became Lagerlöf’s most famous work, and it has been translated into over 30 languages and adapted into various films and TV shows worldwide. On 10 December 1909, 51 years old Lagerlöf was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first female Nobel laureate in Literature. Over the years, Lagerlöf became involved with the women’s suffrage movement and was a speaker for the National Association for Women’s Suffrage while continuing to publish her work. However, the outbreak of WWI disturbed her deeply, and during those years, she focused her time and effort on raising funds for charitable causes, especially for refugee children. When the war ended, Lagerlöf returned to writing and published the novel Mårbacka in 1922, named after her childhood home; this book was the first of three autobiographical books. Three years later, she began publishing her historical trilogy – Löwensköldska Ringen (1925), Charlotte Löwensköld (1927), and Anna Svärd (1928). When WWII erupted, Lagerlöf’s creativity once again declined. In March 1940, she suffered a stroke and died a few days later at 81. Read more...

Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire, England, the seventh child and second daughter out of eight. Her father was a rector and encouraged all his children to acquire an education. At 8, Austen and her older sister Cassandra were sent to a boarding school but returned home after four years since the tuition fee became too expensive for the family. Austen continued to study with her father and siblings and used her father’s extensive library. From a young age, Austen wrote and played in home productions with her siblings. Her father, who supported his daughters’ creativity and interest in writing, provided them with paper, writing, and drawing tools. By age 12, she wrote stories, verses, and poems and began exploring prose, parody, comedy, and novels. Today known as Juvenilia, this early work had accumulated in three manuscript notebooks titled Volume the First, Volume the Second, and Volume the Third. At 19, she wrote her first mature work, an epistolary novella called Lady Susan (which became Northanger Abbey). In the next few years, she continued to develop her writing style with the novels Elinor and Marianne (which became Sense and Sensibility) and First Impressions (which became Pride and Prejudice), which got rejected by a publisher in 1797. Four years later, she sold “Susan” for £10, but the publisher never printed it, and only a year before she died, Austen managed to purchase it back. In 1801, following her father’s retirement, the family moved to Bath. There, she began to work on the novel The Watsons, which she never completed. The relocation and her father’s death in 1805 affected Austen’s spirit and creativity, and she didn’t write for a decade. After a few years of moving from one place to another, Austen, her sister, and her mother moved to a cottage in Chawton, Hampshire, in 1809. The stability and tranquil environment inspired 34 years old Austen to renew her writing, and in the next six years, she was more productive than ever, revisiting her previous novels and writing new ones. In 1811, she anonymously published her first novel, Sense and Sensibility; the author was referred to as “a lady.” In 1813, Pride and Prejudice was published, followed by Mansfield Park in 1814 and Emma in 1815. That same year, she began to work on Persuasion, but by the time she finished, her health had declined from what is considered today as Addison’s Disease. Despite her illness, Austen continued to write, and she worked on a new novel titled Sanditon, which remained unfinished as she became too sick to write. She died at the age of 41. A few months after her death, her brother published Austen’s last two finished novels – Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. He added a Biographical Notice, revealing her name for the first time as the author of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma. Both reviewers and readers praised Austen’s novels for their combination of entertainment and morality. In her writing, she withdrew from the romantic melodrama that was common at the time and created a new style of domestic realism. She emphasized women’s dependence on marriage as the only way to secure economic security and social status. She used humor and wit to portray strong female characters, explore gender relations and women’s individualism, and interpret and criticize the gentry class and country life. All of Austen’s novels, including the three that were published posthumous and the two that she never completed, became classics worldwide and were adapted into hundreds of movies, TV shows, and plays and were the basis of dozens of sequels, prequels, and interpretations. Read more...

Mary Wollstonecraft was born in London, England, the second of seven children. The family’s financial situation was unstable, and her father was abusive toward her mother. At 19, she found her way out of her home and took a position as a lady’s companion to a widow living in Bath. After two years, she got called back home to assist her ill mother. As soon as her mother died, Wollstonecraft moved in with her friend, the educator, and illustrator, Fanny (Frances) Blood. The two had envisioned a female utopia in which they meant to support each other financially and emotionally. Wollstonecraft, her sisters, and Blood established a school in Newington Green to make a living. Later, she detailed her teaching experiences in the pamphlet Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, published in 1787. Not long after, Blood became sick, and Wollstonecraft nursed her until she died in 1785. Afterward, the school closed, and she moved to Ireland to serve as governess for the Kingsborough family. After three years, she returned to London and decided to earn a living as a writer, an uncommon profession for a woman at the time. She befriended Joseph Johnson, a publisher of radical texts, and worked for him first as a translator and later as a regular contributor to his paper, the Analytical Review. He also published her first works, including the novel Mary: A Fiction; and the children’s book Original Stories from Real Life, both published in 1788. In 1790, at 31, she published a political pamphlet titled Vindication of the Rights of Men in response to MP Edmund Burke’s critique of the French Revolution. Two years later, she published her most famous work – A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. In this groundbreaking essay, Wollstonecraft argued that women must receive education equally to men, asserting that women are more than mere wives, rather companions to their husbands, and their education is essential to the nation because they are the ones who educate the children. Although the essay aroused controversy, it didn’t lead to reforms or further interest. That same year, Wollstonecraft moved to Paris to witness firsthand the French Revolution. There, she met Captain Gilbert Imlay, an American timber merchant, and in 1794, she had her first child, Fanny. While caring for her newborn, she wrote and published the critique essay An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution. Shortly afterward, Imlay left her, and she followed him back to London. In their attempt to reunite, she joined him on a business trip to Scandinavia, documenting her accounts in Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. In 1796, on their return to London, Wollstonecraft and Imlay separated for good. She rejoined Johnson and became part of his radical group of friends, one of them was the philosopher William Godwin. Within a few months, she became pregnant, and the couple got married so their child would be legitimate. Suffering from post-partum infection, Wollstonecraft died 11 days after giving birth to her second child, who became the prominent novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. By the time she died at 38, she had published 10 of her works, and seven more were published posthumously. Although her legacy has been almost forgotten for nearly a century, her name was brought back by writers of the modern feminist movement, such as Virginia Woolf and Emma Goldman, who embraced her life story and achievements. The interest in her work increased during the 1960s and 1970s with the rise of feminist criticism in academia. Today, Wollstonecraft is considered one of the founding feminist philosophers. Read more...

Naomi Rebekah Wolf was born and raised in San Francisco, California. She studied English literature at Yale University and then at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. During her college years, Wolf encountered class hierarchy for the first time, as well as sexism and antisemitism. These experiences influenced her views and writing in her future career. When she presented a feminist theory as her doctoral thesis, her tutor rejected her proposal and told her that her subject does not exist. Wolf did not complete her Ph.D. at the time but formed her writing into her first book, The Beauty Myth. Published in 1991, Wolf’s book challenged beauty norms, the unrealistic standards of beauty, and the cosmetics industry for its women’s exploitation. This ground-breaking book became an international bestseller and was nominated by The New York Times as one of the 70 Most Significant Books of the Century. At 29, Wolf became a leading spokeswoman for what was later referred to as The Third Wave of the Feminist Movement. Two years later, Wolf published her second book, Fire with Fire: The New Female Power and How to Use It, in which she wrote on women’s empowerment and sexual liberation. Following its release, she began writing for various publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, exploring in her essays a wide range of topics, from abortions and suppressed sexuality to ISIS and Edward Snowden. In 1996, at the age of 34, Wolf was asked to advise on women issues in President Clinton’s re-election campaign and to give her input on reaching female voters. She was not paid for her contribution but was called on again as a formal consultant in Al Gore’s bid in the 2000 presidential election. In 1997, Wolf published her third book Promiscuities: A Secret History of Female Desire, in which she argued that schools need to teach about sex rather than encouraging abstinence. In the same year, she co-founded the Board of The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership – a non-profit organization dedicated to developing young women’s professional skills and training them in ethical leadership. In the next two decades, Wolf published ten more books. Read more...