Here are 100 books that Jill fans have personally recommended if you like
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I fell in love with Victorian literature after reading Jane Eyre when I was thirteen years old. Since then, I’ve worked my way through Victorian book after Victorian book, and my own novel, The Secrets of Hartwood Hall, is a love letter to Victorian fiction.One of my key interests within Victorian literature has always been its exploration of gender and gender roles. There are so many fantastic Victorian proto-feminist novels, and while some are still remembered and read, many more have been largely forgotten. These are just a few of my favourite proto-feminist Victorian novels, all of which are very underrated and very much worth a read!
Hester, which came out in 1883, follows two central figures: Miss Catherine, an older woman who runs a bank – in itself quite a surprise to find in a Victorian novel – and Hester, her young relation, who is bored with her dull, ladylike life and wants something more.
What she really wants is to work, as Catherine does, but Catherine is determined that the bank will pass to a man. The novel focuses on their strained relationship – strained partly because they are so very alike. There’s so much I love about Hester, but I especially enjoy how it undermines and undercuts Victorian tropes about the novel and what is and isn’t a happy ending for a female character. It’s an absolutely fascinating read.
Margaret Oliphant is one of the great Victorian novelists and "Hester" is a masterpiece of psychological realism published in 1883. In exploring the difficulty of understanding human nature, it is also a compulsive story of financial and sexual risk-taking that inevitably results in a searing climax.
"Hester" tells the story of the ageing but powerful Catherine Vernon, and her conflict with the young and determined Hester, whose growing attachment to Edward, Catherine's favourite, spells disaster for all concerned.
Catherine Vernon, jilted in her youth, has risen to power in a man's world as head of the family bank. She thinks…
I fell in love with Victorian literature after reading Jane Eyre when I was thirteen years old. Since then, I’ve worked my way through Victorian book after Victorian book, and my own novel, The Secrets of Hartwood Hall, is a love letter to Victorian fiction.One of my key interests within Victorian literature has always been its exploration of gender and gender roles. There are so many fantastic Victorian proto-feminist novels, and while some are still remembered and read, many more have been largely forgotten. These are just a few of my favourite proto-feminist Victorian novels, all of which are very underrated and very much worth a read!
Published in 1848, The Half Sisters is the story of two sisters, Alice and Bianca, who grow up without knowing of the other’s existence.
Alice is middle-class, legitimate, and respectable, and goes on to have the life Victorian women were meant to have – namely, marriage. She is also bored and unhappy. Meanwhile, her sister Bianca, who is working-class, illegitimate, and definitively not respectable, chooses a different path.
Keen to make a career for herself, she becomes an actress, and throughout the novel passionately defends women’s right to work. The novel is engaging and accessible, though often forgotten now, and I love how it fantastically examines the different options open – and, indeed, closed – to women in the Victorian period.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.
This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank…
I have been writing books for a while (don’t make me tell you how long), but mostly novels, and mostly not with dads in them. This finally changed around the time my own lovable, unusual dad died in 2018. I knew I had to write about him and figured I would do this in fiction. But when I really dug into the family secrets my dad kept—and discovered details he didn’t know himself until his last years—I knew I’d need to turn to writing a memoir instead. That got me reading and rereading about all the other vivid, maddening dads who were waiting there on my shelves.
That’s right—Charles Dickens! I laughed, I cried, I stomped my feet.
I’ve been in a Dickens reading group since the pandemic and am constantly amazed by how funny he is. His scenes are so colorful and alive that they play like brilliant movies in your brain. In other works, Dickens has some saccharine father-daughter pairs who can induce an eye roll, but in this book his bone-chilling father made me sit up.
The icy-hearted Paul Dombey dotes on his sweet but feeble young son while completely ignoring his adorable and kind little daughter, who barely gets any scraps of his affection. We daughters read on, waiting for the Scrooge-like Dombey to learn his lesson over the course of the novel. Don’t ignore your daughters, dammit!—Oh, did I say that aloud?
'There's no writing against such power as this - one has no chance' William Makepeace Thackeray
A compelling depiction of a man imprisoned by his own pride, Dombey and Son explores the devastating effects of emotional deprivation on a dysfunctional family. Paul Dombey runs his household as he runs his business: coldly, calculatingly and commercially. The only person he cares for is his little son, while his motherless daughter Florence is merely a 'base coin that couldn't be invested'. As Dombey's callousness extends to others, including his defiant second wife Edith, he sows the seeds of his own destruction.
As a young doctor, Carl Holman has experienced the horrors of World War I and the death of his lover, a fellow officer. Back home after the War, he befriends a young jazz musician who he hopes will become a companion he can share his life with. But this is…
I left my hometown of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, at age 18 to attend university in Manhattan, where I started my career in journalism and the media. Since then, I’ve lived in Berlin, Germany; Hong Kong; and now Copenhagen, Denmark, generally moving to advance my career and explore new worlds. Whenever you move to a new place and establish yourself in a new culture, there’s always a learning curve. Helping other women (and men!) adapt to their new environment is why I started the “How to Live in Denmark” podcast, which has now been running for more than 10 years.
One of the reasons I like this book is because the author is a man writing about a woman’s inner thoughts and, unusually, doing a very good job.
The time and place: London, the 1890s. Single women are known as “the odd women,” the leftovers. Dr. Rhoda Nunn starts a school to train these women in secretarial skills (back then, most secretaries were men) so that they won’t be dependent on relatives or forced into unhappy marriages. Rhoda herself is proudly unmarried and independent – until she meets an absolutely wonderful man. Will she give up her advocacy for “odd women” and marry the man she loves?
(Warning: this book is out of copyright, so shoddy rip-offs are being sold on Amazon. Make sure you get a legit copy.)
`there are half a million more women than men in this unhappy country of ours . . . So many odd women - no making a pair with them.'
The idea of the superfluity of unmarried women was one the `New Woman' novels of the 1890s sought to challenge. But in The Odd Women (1893) Gissing satirizes the prevailing literary image of the `New Woman' and makes the point that unmarried women were generally viewed less as noble and romantic figures than as `odd' and marginal in relation to the ideal of womanhood itself. Set in grimy, fog-ridden London, these…
I grew up rebelling against the roles I was expected to take on as a girl. I grew up not knowing that girls could fall in love with girls. I grew up with a strong sense of injustice and a desire to do something about it. The books on my list all feature strong female protagonists experiencing and/or taking on injustices of one kind or another. They are written by interesting women who write brilliantly. Some of the books are dear to me because nature provides comfort and strength beneath the chaos of human chatter, as it does for me.
I read this book before I’d found words to describe the impact on my teenage self of living in a patriarchal world that didn’t allow me to do things I wanted to because I was a girl—and that insisted I do things I didn’t want to. I read it before I’d heard the word feminist used other than as an insult. But the essentially feminist spirit of the novel touched me deeply.
I raced through the book, hoping that this single mother who’d fled an alcoholic and abusive husband with her child would make it out alive, that she’d find her people, and that she’d get justice. Years later, I saw the book described as the first feminist novel, and for good reason—written in Victorian England, no less.
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'
A beautiful edition of Anne Bronte's most enduring novel, to accompany her sisters' greatest books in Penguin Clothbound Classics.
Gilbert Markham is deeply intrigued by Helen Graham, a beautiful and secretive young woman who has moved into nearby Wildfell Hall with her young son. He is quick to offer Helen his friendship, but when her reclusive behaviour becomes the subject of local gossip and speculation, Gilbert begins to wonder whether his trust in her has been misplaced. It is only when she allows Gilbert to read her diary that the…
At the age of seven, already a devoted bookworm, I came upon a large stack of early-20th century children's magazines filled with stories, poems, and especially fairy tales, some the classic kind, and some weird, scary or unfamiliar. I don't know where those dog-eared, well-thumbed annuals came from, or what happened to them afterward – they were lost or given away when our family moved, I suppose. But I have never forgotten them, or the effect they had on my imagination and longings. I've been searching for those long-lost tales ever since... and it finally led me to decide I would just have to write a few of my own.
The 19th-century Scottish writer George MacDonald is said to be the father of the modern fairy tale, inspiring C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and many others. I chose The Light Princess because I find it his most charming tale: it's about a princess under a wicked spell who has been made weightless, unable to obey the laws of gravity. As in all good fairy tales, a prince eventually comes along to drag her back down to earth. He must sacrifice himself for her, but in the end, it is she who rescues him – from a feminist perspective, a most gratifying conclusion.
George MacDonald (1824-1905), the great nineteenth-century innovator of modern fantasy, influenced not only C. S. Lewis but also such literary masters as Charles Williams and J. R. R. Tolkien. Though his longer fairy tales Lilith and Phantastes are particularly famous, much of MacDonald’s best fantasy writing is found in his shorter stories. In this volume editor Glenn Sadler has compiled some of MacDonald’s finest short works―marvelous fairy tales and stories certain to delight readers familiar with MacDonald and those about to meet him for the first time.
Burne’s been hiding out in the forest since deserting the King’s Guard. Each time he tries to return to the village, he begins to panic. And then one day, he encounters a handsome stranger picking flowers and hides behind a tree instead of talking.
I first became fascinated by the portrayal of female criminals when I wrote a novel, The Ghost of Lily Painter, based on the first women to be executed at Holloway Prison in London in 1903. Holloway was the most infamous female jail in Europe and shortly before it closed down in 2016, I was given access to the prison archives. That led to Bad Girls, nominated for the Orwell Prize, and it also led to the discovery of a forgotten criminal aristocracy - the women who were once so notorious they were Public Enemy No.1.
There aren’t many novels featuring professional female crooks, and Anna Freeman’s gripping story, set in London during the Great Smog of 1952, portrays a really believable all-female gang. Florrie Palmer is torn between her allegiance to the Cutters, led by her mother, and a desire to go straight. It’s a suspenseful, atmospheric read, and partly inspired by the real Forty Elephants.
'Think Patrick Hamilton meets Peaky Blinders with a feminist twist' Metro
'Utterly transporting, read and lose yourself completely' Stylist
'A cinematic, rogueish, and utterly entertaining page-turner by the queen of feisty historical women. Goes down in one jewel-fisted slug' Abigail Tarttelin, author of DEAD GIRLS
'My mum always said, a fistful of rings is as good as a knuckleduster'
The Great Smog descends on London overnight; a leadership feud breaks out amongst a gang of female thieves who have terrorized the city for years; and Florrie, the girl who is set to inherit the bloody crown, falls in love with…
I am a French novelist, the author of fifteen novels, many of which are memoirs, so I am considered a specialist of "autofiction" in France, of fiction written about oneself. But I also love writing about others, as you can see in my novel on David Hockney. Beauvoir, Sarraute and Ernaux were my models, Laurens and Appanah are my colleagues. Three of the books I picked would be called memoirs in the States, and the other two novels. In France, they are in the same category. All these women write beautifully about childhood and womanhood. I love their writing because it is both intimate and universal, full of emotion, but in a very sober and precise style.
Abandonment and the end of love terrify me. In The Woman Destroyed, the happy diary of a fifty-year-old woman turns into a descent into hell when Beauvoir's narrator finds out that her husband is having an affair and is actually leaving her. Beauvoir wrote it in order to send a feminist message to women in the fifties, to convince them to get a job and define their identity outside their family life. I wonder, however, whether the intensity of the grief we feel in that novella wasn't experienced by Beauvoir herself the summer when her American lover, the novelist Nelson Algren, broke up their transcontinental passion of four years.
First published in 1967, this book consists of three short novellas on the theme of women's vulnerability - in the first, to the process of ageing, in the second to loneliness, and, in the third, to the growing indifference of a loved one.
THE WOMAN DESTROYED is a collection of three stories, each an exquisite and passionate study of a woman trapped by circumstances, trying to rebuild her life.
In the first story, 'The Age of Discretion', a successful scholar fast approaching middle age faces a double shock - her son's abandonment of the career she has chosen for him…
I was raised to believe that I could do everything a man could do, just as Ginger Rodgers did, “backwards and in high heels.” My discovery that social expectations and boundaries for women were vastly different than those for men came as an enormous shock, and struck me as deeply, tragically unfair. I take strength from women in history, as well as from fictional female characters, who passionately pursue roles in a man’s world that are considered transgressive or forbidden. As a glass-ceiling-shattering female film and television director I take inspiration from women who have the gritty determination to live on their own terms. And then tell it as they lived it.
I read The Golden Notebook when I was in my early twenties, facing the elation and terror of life as an adult. I remember vividly the state of excitement and awe in which I read it. Here was a writer who thought the unthinkable about the experience of being a woman in a man’s world, and fearlessly wrote it down in all its raw beauty.
To this day, if a friend of mine is in trouble, The Golden Notebook is the gift I give them, saying, “This book changed my life. “
One of the most important books of the growing feminist movement of the 1950s, The Golden Notebook was brought to the attention of a wider public by the Nobel Prize award to Doris Lessing in 2007.
Author Anna Wulf attempts to overcome writer’s block by writing a comprehensive "golden notebook" that draws together the preoccupations of her life, each of which is examined in a different notebook: sources of her creative inspiration in a black book, communism in a red book, the breakdown of her marriage in a yellow book, and day-to-day emotions and dreams in a blue book. Anna’s…
This delightful fable about the Golden Age of Broadway unfolds the warm story of Artie, a young rehearsal pianist, Joe, a visionary director, and Carrie, his crackerjack Girl Friday, as they shepherd a production of a musical version of A Midsummer Night's Dream towards opening night.
As a reader and an author, I prefer young adult novels because they tend to focus more on character growth and development than other genres, but I’m particularly drawn to both historical and fantasy period pieces in books and film. The medieval ages especially, with their castles and feudalistic way of life, have always fascinated me. This fascination was largely filled by reading and watching fairy tales and novel adaptations while growing up. Nowadays, I gravitate toward retellings like a moth to the flame, as I get to relive stories that have a special place in my heart in a fresh new way.
This atmospheric novel, a retelling of The Island of Doctor Moreau, is a perfect blend of gothic romance and haunting mystery. It’s beautifully written, well-paced, and filled with unexpected twists. I love the feminist theme presented through the main character, Juliet, who is independent despite the hardships she endures, is not dissuaded from pursuing her passion for science even though it wasn’t proper for a woman to do so at the time. There is also an underlying theme throughout the book that expertly juxtaposes sanity and madness, eliciting the question of where the line should be drawn.
For fans of Libba Bray, this first book in a gothic suspense trilogy is inspired by H. G. Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau and has been hailed by New York Times bestseller Carrie Ryan as having "beautiful writing, breakneck pacing, a pulse-pounding mystery, and an irresistible romance."
Following accusations that her scientist father gruesomely experimented on animals, sixteen-year-old Juliet watched as her family and her genteel life in London crumbled around her—and only recently has she managed to piece her world back together. But when Juliet learns her father is still alive and working on a remote tropical island,…
