Women Who Wrote: Stories and Poems from Audacious Literary Mavens

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) is best known for her cherished novel, Little Women, which she wrote in two parts. The first volume, alternately titled Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, was published in 1868, and the second volume, Good Wives, was published in 1869. Though Alcott penned her first novel at age seventeen, it went unpublished for nearly 150 years until two researchers at Harvard University stumbled across the handwritten manuscript in 1997. She also published numerous short stories, novelettes, and articles for the Atlantic Monthly.

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, at Steventon near Basingstoke, England, the seventh child of the rector of the parish. She lived with her family at Steventon until they moved to Bath when her father retired in 1801. After his death in 1805, she moved around with her mother; in 1809, they settled in Chawton, near Alton, Hampshire. Here she remained, except for a few visits to London, until in May 1817 she moved to Winchester to be near her doctor. There she died on July 18, 1817. As a girl Jane Austen wrote stories, including burlesques of popular romances. Her works were only published after much revision, four novels being published in her lifetime. These are Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816). Two other novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, were published posthumously in 1818 with a biographical notice by her brother, Henry Austen, the first formal announcement of her authorship. At the time of her death, she was working on a new novel, Sanditon, a fragmentary draft of which survives.

Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters whose novels became classics of English literature. Brontë’s works were revolutionary for their time, reflecting an unblinking truthfulness about love and relationships—an uncommon literary subject in Victorian-era England. While Jane Eyrewas, and continues to be, Charlotte Brontë’s most popular work, she published numerous works during her short life, including juvenilia, poetry, and the novels Shirley and Villette. Charlotte Brontë died in 1855, outliving both of her sisters, Anne and Emily. Collectively, the Brontë novels are considered literary standards that continue to influence modern writers.

Emily Jane Brontë (July 30, 1818—December 19, 1848) was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third eldest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother Branwell. She wrote under the pen name Ellis Bell.