Celebrating Women in Literature

March is internationally known as Women’s History Month. This is a time designated to celebrate and commemorate the vital role of women throughout history, as well as in our modern society. To honour this special date, we believe it is important to recognize the impact of women in literature. Therefore, we present to you the life stories of some of the most impactful writers throughout time.

Mary Shelley (1797-1851)

Mary Shelley was born on August 30, 1797, in London. She was the daughter of philosopher and writer William Godwin and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who died shortly after giving birth to Mary. When Mary was four, William remarried Mary Jane Clairmont, who brought her children along with her.

Although Mary Jane did not believe Mary should receive an education, living in a literary household gave Mary multiple educational opportunities. From an early age, she developed a great literary interest, reading many books in her father’s extensive library. She would also spend the time writing stories and when she was around 10 years old, she published her first poem through her father’s company.

This literary affinity only increased when, in 1912, Mary Jane sent Mary to Scotland to stay with William Baxter and his family for two years. It was during this time that, in a visit home, she met Percy Bysshe Shelley, a student of her father’s who would later turn out to be her husband.

In 1914, when Mary returned to England for good, she began a relationship with Percy, although he was married. The couple travelled through Europe for some time, struggling financially and facing the loss of their first child in February 1915. Some months later, they moved to Bishopsgate, where Mary gave birth to her son, William.

One summer, the three of them went to Switzerland to visit Lord Byron along with other guests. To pass the time, Byron suggested they should each try writing their own horror story. This is how Mary’s work for Frankenstein, her most famous novel, began.

However, the finished piece was not published until 1818, when it debuted as a novel by an anonymous author. As Percy Shelley had written the introduction, many believed he was the author of Frankenstein. Still, the novel was a tremendous success and is now considered a milestone work of Romantic and Gothic literature.

After the publishing of her novel, Mary and her family moved to Italy, where they faced many tragic years. Two more of her children died, making Percy Florence, her son born in 1819, the only one to live into adulthood. In 1822, Mary’s husband drowned while out sailing, leaving her widowed at 24.

After Percy’s death, she continued writing novels, including Valperga and the science fiction tale The Last Man. She also spent many years promoting her late husband’s poetry. The last period of Mary’s life was spent in retirement before she died of brain cancer on February 1, 1851.

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

Virginia Woolf, originally Adeline Virginia Stephen, was born on January 25, 1882, in London. Her father, Leslie Stephen, was a literary figure and editor, while her mother, Julia Jackson, had many social and artistic connections. This meant that, from an early age, Virginia was exposed to the wonders of the literary world. By age nine, she was running a family newspaper, the Hyde Park Gate News, in which she documented many of her family’s anecdotes.

As a young girl, Virginia was characterised by her curiosity and light-hearted nature. However, the many traumas she faced during childhood permanently changed her. She was sexually abused by her half-brothers, which she wrote about in her essays. She also faced her mother’s death in 1895, who was followed by Virginia’s half-sister in 1897. Then, in 1904, her father died, leading her into a nervous breakdown and brief hospitalisation.

While dealing with her losses, Virginia studied German, Greek and Latin at the Ladies’ Department of King’s College London, where she was introduced to several radical feminists. In 1905, after finishing her studies, she began her career as a writer working for The Times Literary Supplement. A year later, her brother Thoby died after a family trip to Greece.

Around this time, the house in Hyde Park Gate was sold, and one was purchased in the Bloomsbury area of London. While living there, Virginia met various members of the Bloomsbury Group, an association of intellectuals and artists. One of them was Leonard Woolf, who became quite close to Virginia, and eventually became her husband in 1912.

Long before meeting Leonard, Virginia experimented with her first novel, which she called Melymbrosia. She worked on it for 9 years before releasing it in 1915 as The Voyage Out. Shortly after, the Woolfs established their own publishing house, Hogarth Press, through which Virginia and Leonard published some of their writing.

In 1919, the Woolfs purchased a cottage, while Virginia published her second novel, Night and Day. A few years later, Jacob’s Room, a novel based on her brother Thoby, was published by Hogarth. She then met author and landscape gardener Vita Sackville-West, in whom Virginia found a muse and a romantic partner. Her groundbreaking novel Orlando, released in 1928, was inspired by Vita. This work gave Virginia a great popularity boost, as well as significant critical praise.

In the following years, Virginia continued writing various titles, including A Room of One’s Own, The Waves, and The Years, the last novel published in her lifetime. She also spoke at colleges, wrote important essays, and self-published many short stories.

Despite the success, Virginia still struggled with depression and dramatic mood swings. The start of the Second World War had a significant toll on her. Thus, after her home in London was bombed in 1940, Virginia could not deal with the despair. On March 28, 1941, Virginia committed suicide.

Toni Morrison (1931-2019)

Toni Morrison was born on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio as Chloe Anthony Wofford. In her household, storytelling, songs and tales were always present. In fact, Morrison credited her parents for her love of reading and music.

She pursued this interest in high school, where she studied Latin and European Literature. In 1949, she graduated with honours from Lorain High School. Then, at Howard University, she continued her education, majoring in English and minoring in classics. After graduating from Howard, Morrison got her master’s degree at Cornell University.

Once she was done with her studies, she moved to Houston to teach at Texas Southern University. However, her time there was short, as just two years later, she returned to Howard as an English professor.

During this time, she met Harold Morrison, an architect from Jamaica living in the United States. In 1958, the couple got married and welcomed their first child three years later. After her son’s birth, Morrison continued working at Howard and joined a writers’ group she met on campus. This is how she began working on her first novel.

In 1965, Morrison entered Random House working as a fiction editor. While working at the publishing company, Morrison published her first work, The Bluest Eye, in 1970. This novel was followed by Sula, which was nominated for the National Book Award. Her third novel, Song of Solomon, was highly praised and won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

This success inspired Morrison to become a full-time writer. She left her job as an editor and focused solely on writing. In 1987, she released her most critically acclaimed book yet: Beloved. This novel was a bestseller for 25 weeks and also won her multiple awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

She then returned to teaching, becoming a professor at Princeton University. However, she did not stop writing, and instead continued to produce distinguished works. Morrison also established a workshop at the University to help writers and performers.

In 1993, Morrison became the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Some years later, the National Endowment for the Humanities chose her to give the Jefferson Lecture, and she received the National Book Foundation’s Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. All these great honours, along with her extraordinary literary works, make Morrison an inspirational role for many writers.

For the following 20 years, Morrison continued writing both fiction and non-fiction books, influencing countless artists along the way. She also explored other fields, co-producing a movie adaptation of Beloved and being a guest curator at the Louvre museum in Paris. In 2019, Morrison passed away from complications of pneumonia.

Bibliography

Alexander, K. L. (n.d.). Biography: Toni Morrison. National Women's History Museum. Retrieved March 17, 2022, from https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/toni-morrison

Buck, P. S. (2018, January 19). Toni Morrison - Books, Beloved & Quotes. Biography. Retrieved March 17, 2022, from https://www.biography.com/writer/toni-morrison

Mary Shelley - Life, Frankenstein & Books. (2017, April 27). Biography. Retrieved March 17, 2022, from https://www.biography.com/writer/mary-shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. (n.d.). Poetry Foundation. Retrieved March 17, 2022, from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mary-wollstonecraft-shelley

Morrison, T. (2022, February 14). Toni Morrison | Biography, Books, Beloved, The Bluest Eye, & Facts. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved March 17, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Toni-Morrison

Reid, P. (2022, January 21). Virginia Woolf | Biography, Books, Death, & Facts. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved March 17, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Virginia-Woolf

Woolf, V. (2017, July 20). Virginia Woolf - Quotes, Books & Life. Biography. Retrieved March 17, 2022, from https://www.biography.com/writer/virginia-woolf