299 Women Who Shaped World History

Born: June 16, 1938, Lockport, New York, U.S.Joyce Carol Oates is an American author, known for the descriptive violence in her portrayals of American life. Born in Lockport, New York, Oates was educated at Syracuse University, the University of Wisconsin, and Rice University. She taught at the University of Detroit from 1961 to 1967 and […]

Born: July 15, 1919, Dublin, IrelandDied: February 8, 1999, Oxford, Oxfordshire, EnglandIris (Jean) Murdoch was a British writer and philosopher, born in Dublin, Ireland, and educated at the University of Oxford. In 1948 she was appointed a fellow and tutor in philosophy at Oxford. Murdoch’s first published book, Sartre, Romantic Rationalist (1953), is a study

Born: c. 978, Kyoto, JapanDied: c. 1014, KyotoMurasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, one of her country’s greatest writers, and the author of what is generally considered the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji (first trans. by Arthur Waley in 6 volumes, 1925-32). Little is known about the author (including her real name), except

Born: July 10, 1931, Wingham, Ontario, Canada Alice Munro is a Canadian writer, known for stories focusing on the emotional lives of the inhabitants of rural Canada. Her tales, often set in southwestern Ontario, where she spent her childhood, are characteristically written from the point of view of a young or adolescent girl and address

Born: February 18, 1931, Lorain, Ohio, U.S. Toni Morrison is an American writer, whose works deal with the black experience and celebrate the black community. Morrison’s work features mythic elements, sharp observation, compassion, and poetic language and is often concerned with the relationship between the individual and society. In 1993 she won the Nobel Prize

Born: 1904, Nihalpur, IndiaDied: 1948Subhadra Kumari Chauhan was a prominent poetess in India, whose writings used to be very emotionally charged. She was born in 1904 at the Nihalpur village in Allahabad district. But after her wedding to Thakur Laxman Singh of Khandwa, Chauhan shifted to Jabalpur in the year 1919. Here, Subhadra Kumari Chauhan

Born: April 7, 1889, Vicuña, ChileDied: January 10, 1957, Hempstead, New York, U.S.Gabriela Mistral, pseudonym of Lucila Godoy de Alcayaga was a Chilean poet and stateswoman, who in 1945 became the first Latin American and the first female poet to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Born in Vicuña, Mistral became a noted educator. She

Born: Dec 10, 1925, Chechlnik, Ukraine, U.S.S.R.Died: Dec 9, 1977, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian novelist and short-story writer, widely recognized as one of the most important modern writers. She was born in Chechel’nik, Ukraine, and emigrated with her family to northeastern Brazil when she was two months old. In 1937

Born: 1084, Jinan, Shandong province, ChinaDied: after 1155, Jinhua, Zhejiang province Li Qingzhao or Li Ch’ingchao was the best-known female poet writing in China prior to the 20th century. She wrote primarily in a poetic form known as the song lyric (ci or tz’u) in which new words were composed for singing to familiar melodies.

Born: June 24, 1941, Sliven, BulgariaJulia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-born French psychoanalyst and literary theorist, who, drawing on Freudian psychoanalysis and structuralist linguistics, has analyzed the relationship between language, society and the self.In Semeiotiké (1969) she argues that the self is not a stable, autonomous entity, but the product of language. Consequently, those elements that

Died: after 630 One of the greatest Arab poets, Al-Khansa was famous for her elegies. The deaths of two of her kinsmen-her brother Mu’awiyah and her half-brother Sakhr, both of whom had been tribal heads and had been killed in tribal raids sometime before the advent of Islam-threw al-Khansa’ into deep mourning. Her elegies on

Born: c. 1373Died: c. 1440 Margery Kempe was an English mystic and religious writer. She was born at Lynn, Norfolk, the daughter of its mayor, John Burnham. In 1393, she married a local official, John Kempe; they had 14 children. For six months after the birth of her first child, she suffered a mental disorder.

Born: 1907, Farrukhabad, IndiaDied: 1987 She is a well known Hindi poet of the Chhayavaad generation, the times when every poet used to incorporate romanticism in his poetry. She is more often called the modern Meera. Well, we are talking about the famous Mahadevi Varma, who achieved the Jnanpith award in the year 1982.Mahadevi was

Born: June 27, 1880, Tuscumbia, Alabama, U.S.Died: June 1, 1968, Westport, Connecticut Helen Adams Keller was an American author and lecturer, who, having overcome considerable physical handicaps, served as an inspiration for other afflicted people. She was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama. When 19 months old, she was stricken with an acute illness that left her

Born: Nov 29, 1843, LondonDied: Dec 8, 1932 Jekyll was an English landscape architect who was the most successful advocate of the natural garden and who brought to the theories of her colleague William Robinson a cultivated sensibility he lacked.Born of a prosperous family, Jekyll was educated in music and painting and travelled in the