Women's Worlds: The Mcgraw-Hill Anthology of Women's Writing » (1st Edition)

Women’s Worlds, a new anthology of women’s writing, makes available a broad range of women’s voices from across time, across classes, and across the globe in a slimmer, more flexible, and more affordable format. This new anthology includes selections from the 14th through the 21st centuries, from the first text by a woman published in English (Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Divine Love) to selections by contemporary writers like Barbara Kingsolver, Alison Bechdel, and Zadie Smith. The selections are drawn from Britain and North America, but also from Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Middle East, and the Caribbean—wherever English is spoken. While classics of fiction, poetry, and drama are provided, the text also includes essays, song lyrics, letters, diary entries—even excerpts from domestic handbooks and a graphic memoir—to represent the full range of women’s voices. And Cultural Coordinates essays provide insights into customs and costumes from purdah to life before the Pill. To expand the choice of novels instructors wish to assign, McGraw-Hill also offers works from Library of Women's Literature at a discount.

List of Illustrations

General Introduction

THE FOURTEENTH THROUGH SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES

A Historical Overview, 1300-1700

Women's Place in Society: The Dispossessed

Owning Their Words: Women's Writing, 1300-1700

Timeline

Julian of Norwich (c. 1342–c. 1416; England)

From Revelation of Divine Love

Chapter 3 The illness thus obtained from God

Chapter 5 God is all that is good

Chapter 59 Wickedness is transformed into blessedness

Chapter 60 We are brought back and fulfilled by our Mother Jesus

Margery Kempe (c. 1373–c. 1438; England)

From The Book of Margery Kempe

Chapter 1 Margery’s First Vision

Chapter 11 Margery Reaches a Settlement with Her Husband

Chapter 46 Margery’s encounter with the Mayor of Leicester

Anne Askew (c. 1521–1546; England)

The Ballad Which Anne Askew Made and Sang when She Was in Newgate

From The Latter Examination

The Sum of my Examination afore the King’s Council at Greenwich

Cultural Coordinates: Needlework

Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603; England)

The Dread of Future Woes

A Song Made by Her Majesty

Isabella Whitney (c. 1540s–c. 1578; England)

The Manner of Her Will, and What She Left to London and to All Those In It, At Her Departing

Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (1561–1621; England)

A Dialogue Between Two Shepherds. Thenot and Piers, in Praise of Astraea

Aemilia Lanyer (1569–1645; England)

From Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum /

To the Virtuous Reader

Eve’s Apology in Defence of Women

The Description of Cooke-ham

Cultural Coordinates: Household Space

Lady Margaret Cunningham (c. 1580–c. 1622; Scotland)

From A Part of the Life of Lady Margaret Cuninghame, Daughter of the Earl of Glencairn, That She Had with Her First Husband, the Master of Evandale

[An account of domestic abuse]

Lady Mary Wroth (c. 1586–c. 1651; England)

From Pamphilia to Amphilanthus:

1 [When night’s black mantle could most darkness prove]

13 [Cloyed with the torments of a tedious night]

15 [Dear famish not what you yourself gave food]

16 [Am I thus conquered]

22 [Come darkest night]

25 [Like to the Indians, scorched with the sun]

Lady Anne Clifford (1590–1676; England)

From The Diary of Lady Anne Clifford (1616–1619):

February 1616 [Meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury]

March 1616 [A refusal to capitulate]

April 1616 [From London to Knole]

May 1616 [Her mother dies]

Cultural Coordinates: Scolds

Dorothy Leigh (Active c. 1616; England)

From The Mothers Blessing:

To My Beloved Sons, George, John, and William Leigh, All Things Pertaining to Life and Godliness

Chapter 2, The First Cause of Writing Is a Motherly Affection

Chapter 13, It Is Great Folly For a Man to Mislike His Own Choice

Elizabeth Brooke Jocelin (c. 1595–1622; England)

From The Mother’s Legacy to Her Unborn Child

Epistle Dedicatory: To My Truly Loving and Most Dearly Loved Husband, Turrell Jocelin

Cultural Coordinates: Women’s Community in Childbirth Rooms (illus.)

Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672; England, American colonies)

From The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America

The Prologue

The Author to Her Book

Before the Birth of one of her Children

In Memory of my Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet

Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House

To My Dear and Loving Husband

Margaret Fell Fox (1614–1702; England)

From Women’s Speaking Justified

[The Church of Christ Is a Woman]

Lady Anne Halkett (c. 1622–1699; England)

From Memoirs:

[Her mother threatens to disown her]

Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623–1674; England)

From Philosophical and Physical Opinions

Epistle: To the most famously learned

From Philosophical Letters: or, Modest Reflections

Letter XXXVI [Other Creatures May Be as Wise as Men]

Mary Boyle Rich (c. 1624–1678; Ireland, England)

From Diary

[Events of 1624-43, Including a Complicated Romantic Affair]

Cultural Coordinates: Women’s Spiritual Diaries (illus.)

Elizabeth Cavendish Egerton (1626–1663; England)

From Loose Papers

When I Lost My Dear Girl Kate

Katherine Fowler Philips (c. 1631–1664; England)

A Married State

Upon the Double Murder of K. Charles I

On the Death of My First and Dearest Child, Hector Philips

Friendship’s Mystery, To My Dearest Lucasia

To My Excellent Lucasia, On Our Friendship

Orinda to Lucasia

Mary Rowlandson (c. 1637–1711; England, American colonies)

From A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

The First Remove

The Third Remove

From The Twentieth Remove

Aphra Behn (c. 1640–1689; England)

The Rover

Cultural Coordinates: Restoration Actresses (illus.)

Anne Killigrew (c. 1660–1685; England)

A Farewell to Worldly Joys

Upon the Saying That My Verses Were Made by Another

The Discontent

Anne Finch (1661–1720; England)

A Letter to Daphnis

The Introduction

Ardelia to Melancholy

To the Nightingale

The Apology

A Nocturnal Reverie

Cultural Coordinates: Menstruation and Misogyny

Jane Sharp (Active c. 1671; England)

From The Midwives Book

Of the Fashion and Greatness of the Womb, and of the Parts It Is Made Of

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

TIMELINE: EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762; England)

From Turkish Embassy Letters

Letter XXVII [A Visit to a Turkish Bath]

Letter XLI [Sultana Halfise]

Eliza Haywood (c.1693–1756; England)

The Dangers of Tea

Mary Leapor (1722–1746: England)

Crumble Hall

An Essay on Woman

The Headache

Mercy Otis Warren (1728–1814; United States)

An Address to the Inhabitants of the United States

Janet Schaw (c. 1734–1801; Scotland)

From Journal of a Lady of Quality: Being a Narrative of a Journey from Scotland to the West Indies

[Society in Antigua]

[A Visit to Olovaze]

Cultural Coordinates: At Sea (illus.)

Mary Collier (Active 1739–1760; England)

The Woman’s Labour

Anna Laetitia Akin Barbauld (1743–1825; England)

The Rights of Woman

To a Little Invisible Being Who Is Expected Soon to Become Visible

Washing-Day

Abigail Adams (1744–1818; United States)

From The Adams Family Correspondence

[The Nature of Woman’s Experience]

[Remember the Ladies]

[Education in the New Republic]

Cultural Coordinates: Bluestockings (illus.)

Hannah More (1745–1833; England)

From Strictures on a Modern System of Female Education

Chapter 1, An Address to Women of Rank and Fortune

The Black Slave Trade

The White Slave Trade

Cultural Coordinates: The Hoop-Petticoat (illus.)

Frances Burney (d’Arblay) (1752–1840; England)

From The Early Journals and Letters of Frances Burney

[A Young Writer’s Diary]

[The Publication of Evelina]

From Diary and Letters of Madame d’Arblay

[Life at Court of George III]

From Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World

Letter X [Evelina arrives in London]

Letter XI [Evelina at the Ball]

Letter XII [A Trip to Ranelagh]

Letter XV [A Dangerous Walk in Vauxhall]

Cultural Coordinates: Shopping (illus.)

Phillis Wheatley (c. 1754–1784; United States)

On Being Brought from Africa to America

On the Death of the Reverend Mr. George Whitefield

To S. M. a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works

To the Excellent George Washington

Jane Cave (Active c. 1786; England)

Written by the Desire of a Lady, on an Angry, Petulant Kitchen-Maid

Written a Few Hours Before the Birth of a Child

Eliza Fay (1756–1816; England)

From Original Letters from India

Letter XIV [Madras]

Letters XV–XVI, XX [Calcutta]

Mary Darby Robinson (1758–1800; England)

London’s Summer Morning

January, 1795

Cultural Coordinates: Prostitution (illus.)

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797; England)

From A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects

Author’s Introduction

Chapter 2, The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed

Chapter 9, Of the Pernicious Effects Which Arise from the Unnatural Distinctions Established in Society

Cultural Coordinates: Breastfeeding and the Wet Nurse

Janet Little (1759–1813; Scotland)

Given to a Lady Who Asked Me to Write a Poem

Maria Edgeworth (1767–1849; Ireland, England)

From Letters for Literary Ladies

Letters of Julia and Caroline

Dorothy Wordsworth (1771–1855; England)

From The Grasmere Journals

[A Brother’s Departure, May 14, 1800]

[Daffodils, April 1802]

[Good Friday, April 16, 1802]

[William Marries, September 24, 1802]

Mary Birkett (1774–1817; Ireland)

A Poem on the African Slave Trade

Cultural Coordinates: The Tea Table (illus.)

Mary Prince (1788–c. 1833; Bermuda, Turk Islands, Antigua, England)

The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself

Elizabeth Hands (Active 1789; England)

Written, Originally Extempore, on Seeing a Mad Heifer Run through the Village Where the Author Lives

A Poem on the Supposition of the Book Having Been Published and Read

Anna Maria Falconbridge (Active 1790s; England)

From Two Voyages to Sierra Leone

[A Trip to Bance Island]

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

TIMELINE: NINETEENTH CENTURY

Cultural Coordinates: The First Australian Woman Writer

Susanna Rowson (1762–1824; England, United States)

Charlotte Temple

Cultural Coordinates: The Corset, or Why Heroines Faint so Often (illus.)

Jane Austen (1775–1817; England)

From Northanger Abbey

Chapters 4–5 [Catherine and Isabella Become Friends]

Library of Women’s Literature: Pride and Prejudice

Cultural Coordinates: Cassandra’s Sketch and “Gentle Jane” (illus.)

Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789–1867; United States)

Cacoethes Scribendi

Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney (1791–1865; United States)

To a Shred of Linen

Unspoken Language

Eve

Felicia Dorothea Brown Hemans (1793–1835; England)

England’s Dead

Bring Flowers

Casabianca

Mary Shelley (1797–1851; England, Italy)

From Frankenstein

Chapters 11-17 [The Monster’s Narrative]

Sojourner Truth (c.1797–1883; United States)

From The Narrative of Sojourner Truth

Her Birth and Parentage

Accommodations

Her Brothers and Sisters

Sojourner Truth’s “Ar’n’t I a Woman” Speech (as reported in the Anti-Slavery Bugle)

Sojourner Truth’s “Ar’n’t I a Woman” Speech (as recorded in Reminiscences of Frances D. Gage)

Cultural Coordinates: Cartes de Visite (illus.)

Harriet Martineau (1802–1876; England)

From Morals of Slavery

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880; United States)

From An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans

Preface

Chapter 1, Brief History of Negro Slavery—Its Inevitable Effect upon All Concerned in It

From Letters from New York

Letter XXXIV [Women’s Rights]

Susanna Moodie (1803–1885; Canada)

From Roughing it in the Bush

[The Adventures of One Night]

Cultural Coordinates: How Did They Do It? The Mechanics of Writing (illus.)

Angelina Grimké (Weld) (1805–1879; United States)

From Appeal to the Christian Women of the South

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861; England, Italy)

From Sonnets from the Portuguese

XIV [If thou must love me, let it be for nought]

XLIII [How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.]

From Aurora Leigh

Book I [Aurora’s Education]

Frances Dana Gage (1808–1880; United States)

Tales of Truth, No.1

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850; United States)

From Summer on the Lakes

Summer on the Lakes

To a Friend

Chapter 1 [Gateway to the West: Niagara Falls]

A Short Essay on Critics

From Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Preface

[Woman, Present and Future]

Cultural Coordinates: Niagara Falls (illus.)

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865; England)

The Three Eras of Libbie Marsh

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896; United States)

From Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Chapter 1, In Which the Reader is Introduced to a Man of Humanity

Chapter 5, Showing the Feelings of Living Property on Changing Owners

Chapter 7, The Mother’s Struggle

Chapter 14, Evangeline

Chapter 22, “The Grass Withereth—The Flower Fadeth”

Chapter 32, Dark Places

Chapter 40, The Martyr

Cultural Coordinates: The Realism of Stereotypes (illus.)

Frances (Fanny) Locke Osgood (1811–1850; United States)

Ellen Learning to Walk

The Little Hand

He Bade Me Be Happy

Forgive and Forget

A Reply

Cultural Coordinates: The Invention of the Ladies’ Magazine: Godey’s Lady’s Book (illus.)

Fanny Fern (Sara Payson Willis Parton) (1811–1872; United States)

Hints to Young Wives

Mrs. Stowe’s Uncle Tom

Shall Women Vote?

The Working Girls of New York

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902; United States)

Declaration of Sentiments

The Solitude of Self

Cultural Coordinates: The Seneca Falls Convention, July 19–20, 1848 (illus.)

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855; England)

[We wove a web in childhood]

Library of Women’s Literature: Jane Eyre

Cultural Coordinates: Phrenology (illus.)

Emily Brontë (1818–1848; England)

A.G.A: To the Bluebell

Song [O between distress and pleasure]

Love and Friendship

[Shall Earth no more inspire thee]

A.G. to G.S.

To Imagination

[No coward soul is mine]

Women Composers of Hymns, 1840–1899

Sarah Fuller Flower Adams (1805–1848; England)

Nearer, My God, to Thee

Anne Brontë (1820–1849; England)

The Narrow Way

Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910; United States)

Battle Hymn of the Republic

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894; England)

In the Bleak Midwinter

Katharine Lee Bates (1859–1929; United States)

O Beautiful for Spacious Skies

Harriet Jacobs (c. 1813–1897; United States)

From Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself

Preface by the Author

Introduction by the Editor

Chapter 1, Childhood

Chapter 2, The New Master and Mistress

Chapter 5, The Trials of Girlhood

Chapter 10, A Perilous Passage in the Slave Girl’s Life

Chapter 21, The Loophole of Retreat

Chapter 41, Free at Last

Cultural Coordinates: Reward for the Capture of Harriet Jacobs (illus.)

Susan Warner (1819–1885; United States)

From The Wide, Wide World

Chapter 1 [Ellen and Her Mother]

Chapter 3 [Ellen Goes Shopping]

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) (1819–1880; England)

Silly Novels by Lady Novelists

Cultural Coordinates: Spirit Rappers and Spiritualism (illus.)

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910; England)

From Cassandra

II [Intellect]

IV [Moral Activity and Marriage]

VII [The Dying Woman]

Mary Boykin Chesnut (1823–1886; United States)

From Civil War Journal

February 18, 1861 [I wanted them to fight and stop talking]

February 19, 1861 [We have to meet tremendous odds]

Harriet E. Wilson (1825?–1900?; United States)

From Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black

Preface

Chapter 1, Mag Smith, My Mother

Chapter 2, My Father’s Death

Chapter 3, A New Home for Me

Catherine Helen Spence (1825–1910; Australia)

From Clara Morison

Chapter 8, At Service

Frances E. W. Harper (1825–1911; United Sates)

Eliza Harris

The Slave Mother

Aunt Chloe’s Politics

The Two Offers

Woman’s Political Future

Dinah Mulock Craik (1826–1887; England)

From A Woman’s Thoughts About Women

Chapter 1, Something to Do

Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885; United States)

My Tenants

September

The Victory of Patience

Chance

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886; United States)

6 [Frequently the woods are pink]

14 [One Sister have I in our house]

216 [Safe in their Alabaster Chambers]

241 [I like a look of Agony]

249 [Wild Nights---Wild Nights!]

252 [I can wade Grief]

258 [There’s a certain Slant of light]

280 [I felt a Funeral, in my brain]

288 [I’m Nobody! Who are you?]

341 [After great pain, a formal feeling comes]

365 [Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat?]

441 [This is my letter to the World]

444 [It feels shame to be Alive]

579 [I had been hungry, all the Years]

656 [The name—of it—is Autumn]

709 [Publication—is the Auction]

754 [My Life has stood—a Loaded Gun]

812 [A light exists in Spring]

912 [Peace is a fiction of our Faith]

986 [A narrow Fellow in the Grass]

1101 [Between the form of Life and Life]

1129 [Tell all the Truth but tell it slant]

1263 [There is no Frigate like a Book]

1580 [We shun it ere it comes]

Letters

To Susan Gilbert (Dickinson), early June 1852

To T. W. Higginson, 7 June 1862

To T. W. Higginson, February 1885

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894; England)

A Birthday

A Better Resurrection

Goblin Market

In an Artist’s Studio

Rebecca Harding Davis (1831–1910; United States)

Life in the Iron-Mills

Anna Leonowens (1831–1914; England, Colonial: India, Thailand, and Canada)

From The Romance of the Harem

Chapter 2, Tuptim: A Tragedy of the Harem

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888; United States)

A Double Tragedy: An Actor’s Story

Library of Women’s Literature: Little Women

Hannah Crafts (Active 1850s, United States)

From The Bondswoman’s Narrative

Preface

Chapter 1, In Childhood

Isabella Beeton (1836–1865; England)

From Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management

[Sample Recipes]: Lark Pie (An Entrée), Boiled Asparagus, Christmas Plum Pudding (Very Good)

[Sample Bills of Fare]: Plain Family Dinners for January

[Sample Sections from “Household Management”]: Duties of the Valet, The Wet-Nurse

Cultural Coordinates: Level Measures (illus)

Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (c. 1844–1891; Paiute: United States)

From Life Among the Piutes

Chapter 1, First Meeting of Piutes and Whites

Emma Lazarus (1849–1887; United States)

In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport

1492

The New Colossus

Cultural Coordinates: The Sewing Machine (illus)

Sarah Orne Jewett (1849–1909; United States)

A White Heron

Kate Chopin (1850–1904; United States)

The Awakening

Rosa Praed (1851–1935; Australia)

From Policy and Passion

An Australian Explorer

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852–1930; United States)

A Poetess

Pandita Ramabai Saraswati (1858–1922; India)

From The High Caste Hindu Woman

Chapter 5 [Suttee]

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935; United States)

The Yellow Wallpaper

Cultural Coordinates: Nervousness and the Rest Cure

Mary Kingsley (1862–1900; England)

From Travels in West Africa

[A West African River and a Canoe]

THE TWENTIETH THROUGH THE TWENTY–FIRST CENTURIES

TIMELINE: TWENTIETH–TWENTY-FIRST CENTURIES

Annie Besant (1847–1933; England, India)

From A Nation’s Rights

[The Foundations of Rights]

Cultural Coordinates: The Bra (illus.)

Edith Wharton (1862–1937; United States, France)

Roman Fever

Library of Women’s Literature: The House of Mirth

Edith Maud Eaton (Sui Sin Far) (1865–1914; United States)

In the Land of the Free

Cultural Coordinates: Chinese Women and U.S. Immigration

Cornelia Sorabji (1866–1954; India, England)

From India Calling

Chapter 2, Preparation and Equipment: in India and England

Katherine Mayo (1867–1940; United States)

From Mother India

Chapter 8, Mother India

Cultural Coordinates: The Memsahib (illus)

Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945; United States)

Jordan’s End

Willa Cather (1873–1947; United States)

A Wagner Matinee

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946; United States, France)

Ada

Preciosilla

Susie Asado

From Patriarchal Poetry

[Their origin and their history]

Cultural Coordinates: Two Women Writers in Paris, Never Meeting (illus.)

Alice Dunbar–Nelson (1875–1935; United States)

Sister Josepha

I Sit and Sew

Zitkala Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) (1876–1938; Sioux: United States)

From School Days of an Indian Girl

The Cutting of My Long Hair

Why I Am a Pagan

Cultural Coordinates: Indian Boarding Schools (illus.)

Margaret Cousins (1875–1954; Ireland, India)

From The Awakening of Asian Womanhood

Chapter 2, Indian Womanhood: A National Asset

Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949; India)

The Gift of India

The Indian Gypsy

Bangle-sellers

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880–1932; India)

Sultana’s Dream

Cultural Coordinates: Purdah (illus.)

Mourning Dove (Humishuma/Christine Quintasket) (1882?–1936; Colville-Okanaga: United States)

From Cogwea, the Half-Blood

[The Indian Dancers]

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941; England)

Kew Gardens

Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street

Library of Women’s Literature: Mrs. Dalloway

From A Room of One's Own

[Shakespeare’s Sister]

[Peroration: Women Write!]

A Haunted House

Susan Glaspell (1876–1948; United States)

Trifles

Anzia Yezierska (c. 1885–1921; Poland/Russia, United States)

Soap and Water

Cultural Coordinates: Sweatshops (illus)

Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) (1885–1962; Denmark, Kenya)

The Blank Page

H. D. [Hilda Doolittle] (1886–1961; United States, Switzerland)

From The Walls Do Not Fall

9 [Thoth, Hermes, the stylus]

10 [But we fight for life]

From Tribute to the Angels

8 [Now polish the crucible]

9 [Bitter, bitter jewel]

11 [O swiftly, re-light the flame]

12 [Swiftly re-light the flame]

13 [“What is the jewel colour?” ]

19 [We see her visible and actual]

20 [Invisible, indivisible Spirit]

21 [There is no rune nor riddle]

23 [We are part of it]

28 [I had been thinking of Gabriel]

35 [So she must have been pleased with us]

36 [Ah (you say), this is Holy wisdom]

39 [But nearer than Guardian Angel]

From The Flowering of the Rod

5 [Satisfied, unsatisfied]

6 [So I would rather drown, remembering]

Marianne Moore (1887–1972; United States)

The Fish

The Paper Nautilus

In Distrust of Merits

Willa Muir (1890–1970; Scotland)

From Imagined Corners

Chapter 3 [Elizabeth Ramsay and Elizabeth Shand]

Jean Rhys (1890–1979; Dominica, England)

Library of Women’s Literature:Wide Sargasso Sea

From Smile, Please

My Mother

Black/White

Carnival

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980; United States)

Virgin Violeta

African American Women’s Blues

Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (1886–1939; United States)

Louisiana Hoodoo Blues

Prove It on Me Blues

Alberta Hunter (1895–1984; United States)

I Got Myself a Workin' Man

You Gotta Reap What You Sow

Bessie Smith (1898?–1937; United States)

Preachin' the Blues

Poor Man's Blues

Cultural Coordinates: A Blues Life: Billie Holiday (illus.)

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960; United States)

Sweat

Nella Larsen (1891–1964; United States)

Sanctuary

Cultural Coordinates: Anti-Lynching Campaigns

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950; United States)

[I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed]

From Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree

I [So she came back into his house again]

X [She had forgotten how the August night]

Justice Denied in Massachusetts

From Fatal Interview

XX [Think not, nor for a moment let your mind]

XXVI [Women have loved before as I love now]

Djuna Barnes (1892–1982; United States)

Mother

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967; United States)

Lady with a Lamp

Cultural Coordinates: Margaret Sanger, Abortion, and Birth Control (illus.)

Meridel LeSueur (1900–1996; United States)

Rite of Ancient Ripening

Eudora Welty (1909–2001; United States)

A Still Moment

Tillie Olsen (1912–2007; United States)

Silences

Attia Hosain (1913–1998; India)

After the Storm

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000; United States)

the mother

a song in the front yard

The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith

The Lovers of the Poor

the white troops had their orders but the Negroes looked like men

Louise Bennett Coverley (1919–2006; Jamaica, Canada)

Homesickness

America

Doris Lessing (1919– ; Colonial: Iran, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, England)

A Sunrise on the Veld

Hisaye Yamamoto (1921– ; United States)

Seventeen Syllables

Nadine Gordimer (1923– ; South Africa)

Town and Country Lovers: One and Two

Denise Levertov (1923–1997; England, United States)

Advent 1966

Tenebrae

Witness

Mitsuye Yamada (1923– ; Japan, United States)

P.O.W.

Cincinnati

Another Model

Mirror Mirror

Beryl Gilroy (1924–2001; Guyana, England)

From Black Teacher

[Inside London Schools]

Anne Ranasinghe (1925– ; Germany, England, Sri Lanka)

Auschwitz from Colombo

Nayantara Sahgal (1927– ; India)

From Prison and Chocolate Cake

[Walking with Gandhi]

Maya Angelou (1928– ; United States)

From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

[Words]

Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye (1928– ; England, Kenya)

From Coming to Birth

Chapter 1 [Lost in the City]

Anne Sexton (1928–1974; United States)

Little Girl, My String Bean, My Lovely Woman

Sylvia’s Death

The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator

Cynthia Ozick (1928– ; United States)

The Shawl

Ursula Le Guin (1929– ; United States)

The Space Crone

Adrienne Rich (1929– ; United States)

Diving into the Wreck

A Woman Dead in her Forties

From Twenty-One Love Poems

I [Wherever in this city, screens flicker]

XI [Every peak is a crater]

It Is the Lesbian in Us . . .

Vesuvius at Home: The Power of Emily Dickinson

Lorraine Hansberry (1930–1965; United States)

Library of Women’s Literature: A Raisin in the Sun

Grace Ogot (1930– ; Kenya)

Elizabeth

Toni Morrison (1931– ; United States)

Recitatif

Library of Women’s Literature: Beloved

Nobel Lecture

Alice Munro (1931– ; Canada)

Dance of the Happy Shades

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963; United States, England)

Metaphors

Daddy

Ariel

Lady Lazarus

Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices

Cultural Coordinates: The Pill (illus.)

Audre Lord