Having a hard time finding feminist classics? I've got you. Classic literature is a treasure of feminist texts. You just need to know where to look. Here are 10 book recommendations for everyone who would like to read classics and wants to read beyond the canon. Sure, some of these titles are very well known, and for good reason. Some hidden classics or more recent publications are also mentioned.

 

 1. Beloved by Toni Morrison

Discover Toni Morrison’s most iconic work in this Pulitzer-prize winning novel that exemplifies her powerful and important place in contemporary American literature.

It is the mid-1800s and as slavery looks to be coming to an end, Sethe is haunted by the violent trauma it wrought on her former enslaved life at Sweet Home, Kentucky... (read more)

2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Jane Eyre ranks as one of the greatest and most perennially popular works of English fiction. Although the poor but plucky heroine is outwardly of plain appearance, she possesses an indomitable spirit, a sharp wit and great courage.

She is forced to battle against the exigencies of a cruel guardian, a harsh employer and a rigid social order... (read more)

3. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

‘What conditions are necessary for the creation of works of art?’ Security, confidence, independence, a degree of prosperity – a room of one’s own. All things denied to most women around the world living in Virginia Woolf’s time, and before her time, and since (read more...)

 

4. Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

The revolutionary writings of Audre Lorde gave voice to those 'outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women'. Uncompromising, angry and yet full of hope, this collection of her essential prose - essays, speeches, letters, interviews - explores race, sexuality, poetry, friendship (read more...)

 

5. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a powerful and sometimes violent novel of expectation, love, oppression, sin, religion and betrayal. It portrays the disintegration of the marriage of Helen Huntingdon, the mysterious ‘tenant’ of the title, and her dissolute, alcoholic husband. Defying convention, Helen leaves her husband to protect their young son from his father’s influence ... (read more)

 

6. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

 

A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, the Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance and silence through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown (read more...)

 

7. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

On a trip to the South of France, the shy heroine of Rebecca falls in love with Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower. Although his proposal comes as a surprise, she happily agrees to marry him. But as they arrive at her husband's home, Manderley, (read more...)

8. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Jane Austen’s sardonic humour lays bare the stratagems, the hypocrisy and the poignancy inherent in the struggle of two very different sisters to achieve respectability. Sense and Sensibility is a delightful comedy of manners in which the sisters Elinor and Marianne represent these two qualities... (read more)

9. Orlando by Virginia Woolf

As his tale begins, Orlando is a passionate sixteen-year-old nobleman whose days are spent in rowdy revelry, filled with the colorful delights of Queen Elizabeth I’s court. By the close, three centuries have passed, and he will have transformed into a thirty-six-year-old woman in the year 1928. Orlando’s journey is also an internal one (read more...)

 

10. In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez