A vivid and provocative literary criticism of famous women writers from Virginia Woolf to Zelda Fitzgerald by a “gifted miniaturist biographer” (Joyce Carol Oates)
The novelist and essayist Elizabeth Hardwick is one of contemporary America’s most brilliant writers, and Seduction and Betrayal, in which she considers the careers of women writers as well as the larger question of the presence of women in literature,...

The commanding voice of Morrison's essays, speeches and reviews offers compelling insights into family, history, other writers and politics. The pieces span from 1971, when Morrison was an editor at Random House, to 2002, the year she won the Nobel Prize, and range from book introductions to thoughts on the nature of writing and reflections on 9/11.--From publisher description.

"From the award-winning biographer of Chaucer, the story of his most popular and scandalous character, from the Middle Ages to #MeToo Ever since her triumphant debut in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognizably real woman in English literature, has obsessed readers-from Shakespeare to James Joyce, Voltaire to Pasolini, Dryden to Zadie Smith. Few literary characters have led such colorful lives or matched...

"With her golden lasso and her bullet-deflecting bracelets, Wonder Woman is a beloved icon of female strength in a world of male superheroes. But this close look at her history portrays a complicated heroine who is more than just a female Superman. The original Wonder Woman was ahead of her time, advocating female superiority and the benefits of matriarchy in the 1940s. At the same time, her creator filled the comics with titillating bondage imagery,...

With the publication of her first novel, "The Joy Luck Club", in 1989, Amy Tan was immediately recognized as a major contemporary novelist. Her work has received a great deal of attention and acclaim from feminist critics for its focus on issues of matrilineage and the ultimate triumph over female victimization. Enhanced by a chronology, bibliography, notes on the contributors, and a introductory essay by noted literature professor Harold Bloom.

A selection of essays on a variety of issues about literature and American culture.

Heroines from literature come to life and visit Anne-Marie's bed and breakfast, where she tries not to interfere with their lives in fear it will change the outcome of their novels.