The Essential Feminist Classics

Including: Susan B. Anthony Simone de Beauvoir W.E.B. Du Bois Hélène Cixous Betty Friedan Charlotte Perkins Gilman Emma Goldman Guerrilla Girls Ding Ling • Audre Lorde John Stuart Mill Christine de Pizan Adrienne Rich Margaret Sanger Huda Shaarawi • Sojourner Truth Mary Wollstonecraft Virginia Woolf The Essential Feminist Reader is the first anthology to present the full scope of feminist history. Prizewinning historian Estelle B. Freedman brings decades of teaching experience and scholarship to her selections, which span more than five centuries. Moving beyond standard texts by English and American thinkers, this collection features primary source material from around the globe, including short works of fiction and drama, political manifestos, and the work of less well-known writers. Freedman’s cogent Introduction assesses the challenges facing feminism, while her accessible, lively commentary contextualizes each piece. The Essential Feminist Reader is a vital addition to feminist scholarship, and an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the history of women.

Including: Susan B. Anthony Simone de Beauvoir W.E.B. Du Bois Hélène Cixous Betty Friedan Charlotte Perkins Gilman Emma Goldman Guerrilla Girls Ding Ling • Audre Lorde John Stuart Mill Christine de Pizan Adrienne Rich Margaret Sanger Huda Shaarawi • Sojourner Truth Mary Wollstonecraft Virginia Woolf The Essential Feminist Reader is the first anthology to present the full scope of feminist history. Prizewinning historian Estelle B. Freedman brings decades of teaching experience and scholarship to her selections, which span more than five centuries. Moving beyond standard texts by English and American thinkers, this collection features primary source material from around the globe, including short works of fiction and drama, political manifestos, and the work of less well-known writers. Freedman’s cogent Introduction assesses the challenges facing feminism, while her accessible, lively commentary contextualizes each piece. The Essential Feminist Reader is a vital addition to feminist scholarship, and an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the history of women.

A Room of One’s Own is an essay written by Virginia Woolf. It was published in 1929 and is based on two lectures given by the author in 1928 at two colleges for women at Cambridge. In this famous essay, Woolf addressed the status of women, and women artists in particular. In this essay, the author also asserts that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write. According to Woolf, women’s creativity has been curtailed due to centuries of prejudice and financial and educational disadvantages. To emphasize her view, she offers the example of an imaginary gifted but uneducated sister of William Shakespeare, who, discouraged from all eventually kills herself. Woolf celebrates the work of women who have overcome that tradition and become writers, including Jane Austen, George Eliot, and the Brontë sisters, Anne, Charlotte, and Emily. In the final section Woolf suggests that great minds are neutral and argues that intellectual freedom requires financial freedom. The author entreats her audience to write not only fiction but poetry, criticism, and scholarly works as well.

DigiCat presents to you this unique collection of feminist masterpieces - from fictional protagonists who influenced generations of young women to the real heroines of the past, their life stories and their legacy. Fiction: Camilla (Fanny Burney) Maria; Or, The Wrongs of Woman (Mary Wollstonecraft) Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë) The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne) Lady Macbeth of the Mzinsk District (Nikolai Leskov) Hester (Margaret Oliphant) Life in the Iron Mills (Rebecca Davis) Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) The Portrait of a Lady (Henry James) Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy) Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy) North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell) The Yellow Wallpaper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman) Herland (Charlotte Perkins Gilman) A Doll's House (Henrik Ibsen) Hedda Gabler (Henrik Ibsen) The Awakening (Kate Chopin) The Woman Who Did (Grant Allen) Miss Cayley's Adventures (Grant Allen) New Amazonia (Elizabeth Corbett) A Girl of the Limberlost (Gene Stratton-Porter) The Iron Woman (Margaret Deland) My Ántonia (Willa Cather) The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton) Summer (Edith Wharton) Sister Carrie (Theodore Dreiser) Sisters (Ada Cambridge) Hagar (Mary Johnston) Samantha on the Woman Question (Marietta Holley) The Precipice (Elia Wilkinson Peattie) To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf) Miss Lulu Bett (Zona Gale) Lady Chatterley's Lover (D. H. Lawrence) The Enchanted April (Elizabeth von Arnim) Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell) Emily of New Moon (Lucy Maud Montgomery) Memoirs: Madame Vigée Lebrun Jane Austen Caroline Herschel Mrs. Seacole Elizabeth Cady Stanton Emmeline Pankhurst Biographies: Lucretia Sappho Aspasia of Cyrus Portia Octavia Cleopatra Julia Domna Zenobia Valeria Hypatia Roswitha the Nun Marie de France Mechthild of Magdeburg Joan of Arc Catharine of Arragon Anne Boleyn Queen Elizabeth Mary, Queen of Scots Queen Anne Maria Theresa Marie Antoinette Madame de Stael Augustina Saragoza Charlotte Brontë Florence Nightingale Harriet Tubman

DigiCat presents to you this meticulously edited collection of feminist masterpieces - from fictional protagonists who influenced generations of young women to the real heroines of the past, their life stories and their legacy. Fiction: Camilla (Fanny Burney) Maria; Or, The Wrongs of Woman (Mary Wollstonecraft) Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë) The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne) Lady Macbeth of the Mzinsk District (Nikolai Leskov) Hester (Margaret Oliphant) Life in the Iron Mills (Rebecca Davis) Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) The Portrait of a Lady (Henry James) Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy) Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy) North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell) The Yellow Wallpaper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman) Herland (Charlotte Perkins Gilman) A Doll's House (Henrik Ibsen) Hedda Gabler (Henrik Ibsen) The Awakening (Kate Chopin) The Woman Who Did (Grant Allen) Miss Cayley's Adventures (Grant Allen) New Amazonia (Elizabeth Corbett) A Girl of the Limberlost (Gene Stratton-Porter) The Iron Woman (Margaret Deland) My Ántonia (Willa Cather) The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton) Summer (Edith Wharton) Sister Carrie (Theodore Dreiser) Sisters (Ada Cambridge) Hagar (Mary Johnston) Samantha on the Woman Question (Marietta Holley) The Precipice (Elia Wilkinson Peattie) To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf) Miss Lulu Bett (Zona Gale) Lady Chatterley's Lover (D. H. Lawrence) The Enchanted April (Elizabeth von Arnim) Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell) Emily of New Moon (Lucy Maud Montgomery) Memoirs: Madame Vigée Lebrun Jane Austen Caroline Herschel Mrs. Seacole Elizabeth Cady Stanton Emmeline Pankhurst Biographies: Lucretia Sappho Aspasia of Cyrus Portia Octavia Cleopatra Julia Domna Zenobia Valeria Hypatia Roswitha the Nun Marie de France Mechthild of Magdeburg Joan of Arc Catharine of Arragon Anne Boleyn Queen Elizabeth Mary, Queen of Scots Queen Anne Maria Theresa Marie Antoinette Madame de Stael Augustina Saragoza Charlotte Brontë Florence Nightingale Harriet Tubman

'A joyous multiplicity of writings incorporating collective manifestos, poetry, fiction, and autobiography... endlessly fascinating' Catherine Taylor, Financial Times 'A tour de force of feminist thinking, spanning seven centuries and multiple continents' Jennifer Thomson, Review 31 'The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing rounds up the voices of women from across history to discuss the meaning and practice of feminism. This is a book that every person should read: the multiplicity of voices from various times and spaces allows women of the past alongside women of the present to be noisy about why feminism matters. It is a collective masterpiece' Helen Carr, BBC History, Books of the Year 'Bulging with brilliant and exciting writing. Its vast sweep takes us from the 15th century, when Christine de Pizan, a court writer in medieval France, imagined a City of Ladies where women would be safe from harassment, through to the present day, with work by Maggie Nelson, Eileen Myles, Rachel Cusk, Deborah Levy and Lola Olufemi' Rachel Cooke, Observer Edited with an Introduction by Hannah Dawson

"Women are very slow to rouse, but once they are aroused, once they are determined, nothing on earth and nothing in heaven will make women give way; it is impossible." Emmeline Pankhurst, born in 1858, was a British political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement who helped women win the right to vote. Pankhurst's militant tactics made her many admirers and foes alike. Tired of weak and non-violent demands for women enfranchisement, Pankhurst decided to attract attention of authorities by adopting arson as a method. Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an all-women suffrage advocacy organization dedicated to "deeds, not words". Pankhurst, her daughters, and other WSPU activists received repeated prison sentences, where they staged hunger strikes to secure better conditions. Emmeline fought till the end, sacrificed comfort lifestyle and her family, risked her own life number of time. She dedicated herself to the cause completely and did everything for her ideals and beliefs in a just and equal society. Emmeline Pankhurst died in 1928, shortly before women were given full voting rights. This edition brings to you the powerful autobiography of this courageous woman in celebration of the undying spirit of freedom, equality and woman power. In 1999 Time named Pankhurst as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating "she shaped an idea of women for our time; she shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back". She was widely criticized for her militant tactics, and historians disagree about their effectiveness, but her work is recognized as a crucial element in achieving women's suffrage in Britain.

How have ideas about white women figured in the history of racism? Vron Ware argues that they have been central, and that feminism has, in many ways, developed as a political movement within racist societies. Dissecting the different meanings of femininity and womanhood, Beyond the Pale examines the political connections between black and white women, both within contemporary racism and feminism, as well as in historical examples like the anti-slavery movement and the British campaign against lynching in the United States. Beyond the Pale is a major contribution to anti-racist work, confronting the historical meanings of whiteness as a way of overcoming the moralism that so often infuses anti-racist movements.