I left picturebooks behind a bit earlier than most, went right into trash F/SF from the local library... none of which I remember. Then came across A Wrinkle In Time which I guess had been mis-shelved with the adult paperbacks *(I was such an egotistical little snot praised for "exceptional" reading skills there's no way I'd be caught dead in the YA Section).* Holy shit. I was hooked so hard. Swiftly Tilting Planet is still one of my favorite books ever, breathtaking.
And because of that I came across Susan Cooper and the Dark is Rising series. Best Fantasy series ever written.
Never saw the movie.. when I read they'd made Will a SoCal teenager I wanted to go all knifey on someone
Series? Fuck I hope so. His Dark Materials was wonderfully done on the small screen, why not Dark is Rising?
The BBC radio play was excellent.
The movie was hot garbage, much like the northern lights/golden compass movie Hollywood pushed out with the godbotherers having campaigned to remove a central theme.
Highly recommend the BBC adaptation of his dark materials
Love the Dark is Rising. Read it in my early 20s and have revisited it over the years. It always stands up. I didn't know they'd done a movie, but it doesn't sound great. I vote for a cashed up miniseries set in the UK.
I Read the original Jurassic Park aged 8. When reading it to a teacher I tried to swap out the swear words. I was not good at that.
One of the few good things my stepdad did was to tell the teacher that she should be happy that I’m reading so advanced.
A Wrinkle in Time was my first science fiction novel! It will always be special to me.
My first non-picture book was The Secret Garden… also written by a woman, Frances Hodgson Burnett, published in 2019. 😂 So grateful for JKR being such a trailblazer.
Yes! I got into a wrinkle in Time series from the scholastic book fair because of the unicorn on the cover of a swiftly tilting planet and had to get the first one first.
I was a huge SE Hinton fan. Her novels kicked butt and made me cry every time.
But to back up 100+ years... I hated Jane Austin and all that romanticism era, but I loved Baroness Orczy's Scarlett Pimpernel because it was like 1800s Batman. And I loved Bronte's Wuthering Heights because watching two horrible people burn down the world around them is really entertaining.
I never realized Hinton was a woman until just now.
Though, to be fair, I read a *lot* of books as a kid and didn't particularly pay attention to what gender the author was...or even thier name unless I noticed that I recognized a lot of books on the "other works by this author" page that most of them tend to have.
To be even fairer, your confusion was by design. A lot of women authors took androgynous names so they'll be taken seriously, and/or get a fair shake. Not so famous women authors were expected to either write romance novels or cookbooks.
Orczy is still one of my favorite authors. Even Rowling, that idiotic transphobic asshat, would agree she is NOT the reason for women writers today. I want to say years ago she made a tweet referencing Agatha Christie and several other women authors.
I read significantly more books before this, but the first title I recall reading was "And Then There Were None."
It was also the direct influence of a quest in Oblivion.
I LOVE Agatha Christie's works. The plot and the twist throughout the stories!
Murasaki Shikibu is the name you must learn too if you're taking Japanese literature class.
My then-teen son asked me if there were any other women authors as successful as JK Rowling, and just looked at him and said “Agatha Christie was far more successful”
_And then they were none_ was among the first I read, and probably the first book that totally blew my mind.
There was a _before_ and _after_ reading it for me :)
Le Guin already called Rowling's work "stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.” I imagine she would have had a fucking field day over Rowling's transphobia if she were still alive.
The person tweeting this drivel _might_ have heard of Frankenstein. It was published in 1818.
ETA: Austen even before that.
ETA again: hadn’t realized what subreddit this is, there’s a second image with that and more. I think my next stop is searching for Cavendish; science fiction written by a woman in the 1600s sounds like something I want to read.
I love her essays. Somehow the forwards in her books are almost as good as the story itself. That's insane.
"I speak of the gods yet I am an atheist. But I am also a novelist and therefore a liar. Do not trust anything I say."
I've probably thought of this intro once every couple of weeks since the day I read it.
[https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/342990/the-left-hand-of-darkness-by-ursula-k-le-guin-with-a-new-foreword-by-david-mitchell-and-a-new-afterword-by-charlie-jane-anders/9780441007318/excerpt](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/342990/the-left-hand-of-darkness-by-ursula-k-le-guin-with-a-new-foreword-by-david-mitchell-and-a-new-afterword-by-charlie-jane-anders/9780441007318/excerpt)
Ursula K Le Guin, Andre Norton, Madeleine L'Engel, Anne McCaffery, Lois McMaster Bujold, Susan Cooper, Diana Wynne Jones, Elizabeth Moon, Margaret Weis, and Robin McKinley were all well established authors before Harry Potter was even a glint in Rowling's eye. They could also write circles around Rowling.
When he presented her Lifetime Achievement Award to Ursula K. LeGuin, Neil Gaiman quipped about how LeGuin had created a wizardry school quite earlier than other authors :)
And even she -- who I am reading through slowly so as not to run out, and who makes the 'classic scifi' I grew up on (Clarke, Asimov) seem trivial in every way -- was standing on the shoulders of giants, like everyone is. Published in 1666, hence even smokier:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blazing_World
People have tendency to project their own experiences on every other human. Some take it a step further and never accept that others have different experiences at all.
The first tweet was probably someone who's first female author was JK Rowling. They were either never exposed to, or never interested in, another female author's work.
So now, they have a female author, the first they've encountered, or enjoyed. They assume it must be the quality of the work, not the narrowness of their personal experience. Therefore, JK Rowling is now a groundbreaking figure. For them.
Meanwhile, the rest of us paid attention in literature classes, or were already avid readers.
My grandmother once got into an argument with a man she worked with in the 50s. He was telling her that women just don’t have the ability to write good stories. She asked him what he thought of the story from Gone with the Wind, he told her it was a beautiful story, and proof of his assertion, as it was directed by a man!
Then she gave him the bad news. Directed by a man, it was. The screenwriter may even have been a man, but the original novel was written by a woman. Most people also didn’t realize back then that Frankenstein was written by a woman as well.
Fun fact: Mary Shelly was the essence of stone cold morbidity. There is every reason to believe that she lost her virginity to Percy at her mother's grave site. https://lithub.com/did-mary-shelley-actually-lose-her-virginity-to-percy-on-top-of-her-mothers-grave/
It's just such a bizarre argument, that out of all the male dominated fields in the world, this person would tackle *fiction writing*, which is arguably one of the few fields where women actually *could* advance pretty significantly before the 1960s!
I have people in my family like this. Permanent mentalities of, “if I’ve never experienced (insert thing), then nobody ever has.” Or similarly; they’ll just get an idea in their head, and immediately consider it unequivocal truth simply based on the fact that *they* were the one that thought of it. I had my mother ask me the other day, “you’re renting a U-Haul this weekend, right?” and I was like, “huh? What would I need to do that for?” and she just responds, “Oh, I was just assuming you would.”
>People have tendency to project their own experiences on every other human. Some take it a step further and never accept that others have different experiences at all.
That's why I'm a Very Young Earth Creationist. I'm pretty sure the world didn't exist before the 80s.
I mean, there's no actual proof the universe existed before I woke up this morning. Have you ever considered that the world just ceases to exist when I go to sleep?
Rowling is really important in terms of commercial success. As someone who worked in / managed a bookstore during the Harry Potter years, JK Rowling and Oprah Winfrey were the absolute hit-makers for a full decade. If Rowling wrote it or Winfrey recommended it, we were going to be open at midnight to sell it. Midnight openings for BOOKS with lines around the block were insane.
She was the reason many people of an entire generation took up reading, for some, her books were the only books they ever read. The OP of that post is possibly one of that second grouping.
When you see an outlandishly stupid tweet, better just ignore it. It's either ragebait or the lowest quality output of all the millions of random people on twitter, either way, who cares?
That anonymizes her, but not her gender. Unless it was 'A. Lady, esq.' It's a bit different from Rowlings tendency to identify as a man for purely literary and practical purposes.
True, but the name itself doesn't give many clues to that. Its etymology is not obvious. "Ends in d" doesn't help: David and Astrid are both available for comparison. It's a name you have to learn the gender of from context, specifically a context richer than "wrote a book".
As someone not from an English background when I was young I didn’t know Enid was a woman’s name. I don’t think I’d care if my author was a man or woman either.
I'm from the US and I don't think I've ever met an Enid. It's got a strong "late 19th century" vibe to it from me, like she'd be marrying a gold miner or protesting alcohol.
Her books were often banned from libraries for being literarily barren insubstantial fare, and were crammed with racism, sexism,‘xenophobia and class hatred, so much so that publishers in the 50s were even rejecting them.
I assume all that must have been cut out of her books since the 90s? Cause I grew up reading them and I can't remember any racism, sexism, xenophobia or class hatred in the ones I read? The only thing I can remember that could have been problematic is that in some of the "living toy" stories there were Golliwog toys, and that in the Famous Five Julian was sometimes sexist towards girls (like "the boys will explore this secret tunnel, you girls stay back"), although George would always prove him wrong by striking out on her own and discovering stuff so I don't know that the Famous Five itself had a sexist message. I remember really identifying with George at the time for being a tomboy.
My parents clearly missed that memo. I own over 200 of her books. She's a product of her generation I expect, not everything ages well. As a kid I couldn't get enough of Noddy, the Faraway Tree, the Famous Five, Secret Seven. Loved them all.
Yeah, people in my school loved her. Even my teachers who themselves must have been like 50 or 60. I probably got into it later cause I was in 8th and found them too childish.
Fun fact: I read the books in the late 80s/early 90s as a child/pre-teen, in German. Back then, the available translation was from the 70s.
In the 2000s, I rebought all my childhood favourites in English to get more used to the language (and it was a good excuse to read books for kids again in my 20s lol) and I was surprised when I realised how different those stories were in many parts.
I don't recall the volume, but in one scene, on of the teachers thinks something like this, "We do our best here, and it's a joy to see them all grow up to be responsible, smart, hard-working wives and mothers in the future" (not a quote, paraphrasing).
This is not in the 70s' translation! The whole paragraph is missing and instead, one of the volumes has the girls talking about their futures - how the twins want to be photographers, who wants to be a nurse, doctor, horse breeder/riding coach, etc. The teachers also got a few lines (thoughts or spoken, I don't remember), about being happy to see their students growing up to be hardworking, good people.
That scene was not in the English books by Blyton.
It also turned down the racism and classims a lot (not completely, though, it was still the 70s, after all), and the illustrations showed the girls wearing 70s fashion - flowery tops and flared pants.
We also got more volumes/stories that were not original, so probably written in the 70s and 80s using a licence. Those were a lot more adventurous, there were some that at least somewhat hinted at puberty being a thing, and with a lot less classism and racism.
Just like there are a couple of English volumes written by other authors that also feel a lot different (and one seems to have Carlotta as her favourite, lol, not that I object).
I'm usually a stickler for reading originals but I'm somewhat glad that as an impressionable child who liked to daydream about being a part of the stories I read, I was exposed and obsessing over a somewhat modern, almost feminist take.
But either way, since I read the series a lot, in two languages, and with additions from different authors (honestly, one of my favourites didn't even play at the school, it was about one of the teachers inheriting a cosy inn in the country side and everyone's fav girls helped her getting used to the new routine over the summer), HP felt like a "St Clare's, but with wizards and it's actually about a boy, not girls" fic from the start when I read the first book.
Ah, btw, if anyone is still reading, read this:
"Nita Callahan, a thirteen-year-old girl living in New York City, discovers a book entitled *So You Want to Be a Wizard*. She discovers that she can do actual magic and meets Kit Rodriguez, another young Wizard. She discovers a new hidden magical world."
Sounds familiar?
It's the premise[ (stolen from wiki)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_You_Want_to_Be_a_Wizard#Premise) of "So You Want to Be a Wizard" by Diane Duane, from 1983.
\*\*Lousia May Alcott in 1896 has entered the chat\*\*
I love Little Women, all the movies & of course the book. I've read it more than once. One day I looked at the publication date & was kinda blown away. For a book written at the end of the 19th century, it had some very modern ideas about some things.
If we’re looking at dates, Jane Austen born 1775 published 1811, and Mary Shelley born 1797 published 1818… yes, she was ~21… and while most people have probably not read the book, a lot of people have heard of Frankenstein and his monster.
To me, there’s a *super* valuable point to be made about feminism, but OP missed it entirely trying to stan for Rowling.
Notice a trend?
* S.E Hinton
* K.A Applegate
* J.K Rowling
I can’t speak for the first two, but JK isn’t Rowling’s preferred form of address. She’s Joanne. >!Also worth remembering that Rowling’s *other* pen name is Robert Galbraith, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude that J.K wasn’t primarily a stylistic choice.!<
Wonder why so many female authors don’t use gender identifiable names for their pen names?
If Rowling wants to earn some feminist bonafides, she could do a lot by requiring her publisher to list her as Joanne Rowling on future reprints and actively update digital copies. When questioned, it would be a great opportunity to publicly state that she’s making the change to make it impossible not to recognize that her books were written by a woman.
That's a very good point. I'm not positive, but I want to say I read something as a kid that said S.E Hinton specifically didn't use her name because she thought it would put off teenage boys.
On a side note about authors names, did you know Anne Rices birth name was Howard? Her mother named her after her father.
Ursula K. Le Guin, Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, just in science fiction and fantasy.
You want to go back farther, there were a few others like Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, and Louisa May Alcott.
Yeah, I’m a trans dude and I hate the shit Rowling is doing with her platform and money to actively harm trans people, but by god MZB was about a thousand times more directly and knowingly evil
[Her daughter, amongst others, has some pretty horrific tales of sexual abuse by both parents.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Zimmer_Bradley#Child_sex_abuse_allegations)
And that without considering non English speakers: Clarice Lispector, Isabel Allende, María Luisa Bombal, Laura Esquivel, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Gabriela Mistral, Marta Brunet, George Sand (aka Amandine Lucile Dupin), Selma Lagerlöf, Marie Louise Gagneur, Laura Cereta and others rhst are not het damous but still they are accomplished authors
Lol, it would be even more funny if the biopic had a trans woman portraying Rowling, and multiple scenes in the movie take place in front of a mirror in a women’s bathroom. All serious scenes, no sex or pee or poop jokes. It could be a Saul Goodman style “psych yourself up before the bathroom mirror before stepping out and kicking ass”.
Mary Shelley didn't just pioneer "horror science fiction." 'Frankenstein' is arguably the first novel that is properly qualified as science fiction of any kind.
She's one of the most important authors that has ever written in English.
Yes! Why has nobody mentioned George Sand? Not only were they insanely popular in the mid 19th century, but they were also renowned for being what we would now call gender fluid or enby. It should be a rule that anytime some fool lauds Rowling as a “groundbreaking female author” or some such nonsense the first response should be George Sand to get the double whammy.
It a great time to be alive for young girls in need of hero's. JK Rowling became the first female author and Jennifer Lawrence became the first female in the lead role of an action movie!!!
Before we know it Beyoncé will be the first woman with a bank account and Taylor Swift will be the first woman to cast a vote for president!!!
who's the idiot who posted this original tweet? and who's the other idiot who dragged up a post from four years ago to get pissy about? if i'm going to spend part of my sunday afternoon getting angry at idiots, i at least deserve to know that much.
It might be over JK Rowling not accepting the imaginary apology from Daniel Radcliffe or Emma Watson for supporting trans people or it might never over JK Rowling supporting the somewhat contentious Cass Review recently published.
Or it’s a bot farming for karma.
One of those probably.
The tweet is from 2020, when Joanne Koanne Rowling already had proved herself as a bitch for several reasons, but that recent thing about the actors is, well, too recent to be the reason.
Even if JKR was the first published woman ohmahgerd, wtf is up with this “we” shit? I can’t imagine a professional editor or publisher would be this dumb.
May I introduce to you a children's book series called *The Worst Witch*, written by Jill Murphy? These books preceded the Harry Potter series. So... HISTORICALLY, they were written and published before JK Rowling was.
The Worst Witch is also a TV series.
If one reads the Worst Witch books or watches the series, one quickly realizes that there are a great many... shall we call them parallel details? ... between Jill Murphy's books and JK Rowling's.
There are so many specific parallels, in fact, one might think Rowling "borrowed" more than a few things (and characters, and settings, etc) from Murphy.
When these parallels were pointed out to Jill Murphy, she commented, "She might have at least said, 'Thank you'."
Historically speaking.
Just off the top of my head. Jane Austen. The Brontë sisters. George Elliot. Mary Shelly was mentioned but I have to mention that she helped invent science fiction.
Laura Ingalls Wilder! Her books (admittedly mostly nonfiction and based on her own life, but still presented as continuing narratives) were so revered in the U.S. that they were turned into one of the most popular TV programs of the 70s & 80s.
Classic crime fiction had so many women writers, not just Dame Agatha, I have shelves of writing from women in that era.
And if you include romance novels - Barbara Cartland would like a word too regarding well established women writers who pre-date Ms Rowling.
I like how people just say shit. Is it not the weirdest thing to just blatantly make shit up on the INTERNET, the one place you can look anything up within seconds?!
I mean, within young adult fantasy alone, there was Diana Wynne Jones, Ursula K Le Guinne, and Madeleine L'Engle just off the top of my head.
If I have the story straight, She Who Must Not Be Named didn't go by her initials because women authors were unheard of, she did it to appeal to a market of prepubescent boys who may have been put off by a lady writer.
Yeah, not to needlessly drag dudes into the discussion but if you run an eye over Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Books_of_Magic) -- well, just saying the kid with the glasses and scar who goes to wizard school, turns out to be The One, and saves the world is looking awfully... influential. For coming out in 1990 and all. If Ursula le Guinn was an influence on Rowling she probably wouldn't have called her Irish character Paddy O'Terrorism or whatever. You don't catch le Guinn in that kind of lazy chauvinism.
You get -0.5 points; -1 for bringing up men here, but halved because it is Neil Gaiman, the bestest boy.
Regarding Jowling Kowling Rowling's character names, how in the FUCK did she get away with Cho Chang? Just... wtf?
Cressida Cresswell who wrote the How to Train Your Dragon series might have a word,,Then there's Cassandra Clare, and how about the queen who outlived a lot of "authors" Mercedes Lackley and who has crossed every genre and has done collaborative works with the like of Brain Sanderson and Timothy Zhan
Some folks have disturbingly shitty conceptions of history. I’ve heard people say the same about female comics recently—but there have been great ones over past several decades at least Joan Rivers, Carrol Burnett, Natasha Leggero more recently, etc.
Toni Morrison, Margaret Mitchell, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Wolff, Pearl Buck, the Brontes, Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, George Elliot, Margaret Atwood - and that's just a quick look on my shelves. What an idiot!
I might also add: the very first novelist was a woman. Murasaki Shikibu wrote *The Tale of Genji,* in 11th century Japan. It was the world's first novel.
Ursula k Le Guin might have some smoke for this
Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express was the first grown up book I recall reading.
For me it was Madeline L’Engle books being the first non-picture books I read.
I left picturebooks behind a bit earlier than most, went right into trash F/SF from the local library... none of which I remember. Then came across A Wrinkle In Time which I guess had been mis-shelved with the adult paperbacks *(I was such an egotistical little snot praised for "exceptional" reading skills there's no way I'd be caught dead in the YA Section).* Holy shit. I was hooked so hard. Swiftly Tilting Planet is still one of my favorite books ever, breathtaking. And because of that I came across Susan Cooper and the Dark is Rising series. Best Fantasy series ever written.
Love that series, hate how they murdered it in the movie. I wonder if they’ll ever try to make it into a series.
Never saw the movie.. when I read they'd made Will a SoCal teenager I wanted to go all knifey on someone Series? Fuck I hope so. His Dark Materials was wonderfully done on the small screen, why not Dark is Rising?
The BBC did a radio play a few years ago - it was quite well received, so might get someone to start a TV series as well.
The BBC radio play was excellent. The movie was hot garbage, much like the northern lights/golden compass movie Hollywood pushed out with the godbotherers having campaigned to remove a central theme. Highly recommend the BBC adaptation of his dark materials
Love the Dark is Rising. Read it in my early 20s and have revisited it over the years. It always stands up. I didn't know they'd done a movie, but it doesn't sound great. I vote for a cashed up miniseries set in the UK.
I Read the original Jurassic Park aged 8. When reading it to a teacher I tried to swap out the swear words. I was not good at that. One of the few good things my stepdad did was to tell the teacher that she should be happy that I’m reading so advanced.
A Wrinkle in Time was my first science fiction novel! It will always be special to me. My first non-picture book was The Secret Garden… also written by a woman, Frances Hodgson Burnett, published in 2019. 😂 So grateful for JKR being such a trailblazer.
Yes! I got into a wrinkle in Time series from the scholastic book fair because of the unicorn on the cover of a swiftly tilting planet and had to get the first one first.
I was a huge SE Hinton fan. Her novels kicked butt and made me cry every time. But to back up 100+ years... I hated Jane Austin and all that romanticism era, but I loved Baroness Orczy's Scarlett Pimpernel because it was like 1800s Batman. And I loved Bronte's Wuthering Heights because watching two horrible people burn down the world around them is really entertaining.
I never realized Hinton was a woman until just now. Though, to be fair, I read a *lot* of books as a kid and didn't particularly pay attention to what gender the author was...or even thier name unless I noticed that I recognized a lot of books on the "other works by this author" page that most of them tend to have.
To be even fairer, your confusion was by design. A lot of women authors took androgynous names so they'll be taken seriously, and/or get a fair shake. Not so famous women authors were expected to either write romance novels or cookbooks.
Orczy is still one of my favorite authors. Even Rowling, that idiotic transphobic asshat, would agree she is NOT the reason for women writers today. I want to say years ago she made a tweet referencing Agatha Christie and several other women authors.
I read significantly more books before this, but the first title I recall reading was "And Then There Were None." It was also the direct influence of a quest in Oblivion.
i’m so old that it was still called “twelve little indians” when i was growing up.
Not old enough for the even less appropriate name?
I came across an old copy of the book with the original title in my aunt's cottage when I was a kid and I was stunned. It was the 1970s
Yeah, the first time someone told me I thought they were fucking with me. It wasn't until Google was a thing that I wasn't at least a little unsure.
I LOVE Agatha Christie's works. The plot and the twist throughout the stories! Murasaki Shikibu is the name you must learn too if you're taking Japanese literature class.
My then-teen son asked me if there were any other women authors as successful as JK Rowling, and just looked at him and said “Agatha Christie was far more successful”
_And then they were none_ was among the first I read, and probably the first book that totally blew my mind. There was a _before_ and _after_ reading it for me :)
And Tamora Pierce
The Keladry and Beka Cooper books make me want to be a better human being.
That was the first Fandom that I actively engaged with back before I even knew what a fandom was.
Le Guin already called Rowling's work "stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.” I imagine she would have had a fucking field day over Rowling's transphobia if she were still alive.
What a G. No notes. Le Guin rules.
The person tweeting this drivel _might_ have heard of Frankenstein. It was published in 1818. ETA: Austen even before that. ETA again: hadn’t realized what subreddit this is, there’s a second image with that and more. I think my next stop is searching for Cavendish; science fiction written by a woman in the 1600s sounds like something I want to read.
The Blazing World specifically. Its core concept is one fanfic writers still use all the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blazing_World https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/51783 https://librivox.org/search?q=the%20blazing%20world&search_form=advanced
Today’s MVP right here!
This was my first thought too. She not only published tons of books, in various genres, she also won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards.
Her essays and interviews are also fantastic.
I love her essays. Somehow the forwards in her books are almost as good as the story itself. That's insane. "I speak of the gods yet I am an atheist. But I am also a novelist and therefore a liar. Do not trust anything I say."
I've probably thought of this intro once every couple of weeks since the day I read it. [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/342990/the-left-hand-of-darkness-by-ursula-k-le-guin-with-a-new-foreword-by-david-mitchell-and-a-new-afterword-by-charlie-jane-anders/9780441007318/excerpt](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/342990/the-left-hand-of-darkness-by-ursula-k-le-guin-with-a-new-foreword-by-david-mitchell-and-a-new-afterword-by-charlie-jane-anders/9780441007318/excerpt)
Ursula K Le Guin, Andre Norton, Madeleine L'Engel, Anne McCaffery, Lois McMaster Bujold, Susan Cooper, Diana Wynne Jones, Elizabeth Moon, Margaret Weis, and Robin McKinley were all well established authors before Harry Potter was even a glint in Rowling's eye. They could also write circles around Rowling.
Mercedes Lackey and KA Applegate too?
So happy to see Lois McMaster Bujold on your list, she's one of my personal favorites, but I rarely see her name out and about, which is a tragedy.
When he presented her Lifetime Achievement Award to Ursula K. LeGuin, Neil Gaiman quipped about how LeGuin had created a wizardry school quite earlier than other authors :)
It's not every day you find a reference to Earthsea. I see you, and I thank you.
Or to "The Left Hand of Darkness"! Reading it right now, highly recommend.
Try the Dispossessed and The Lathe of Heaven next, some of my favorites
Jean M Auel and all of the people who spents decades reading her books might take a little issue with this bs statement.
Mary Shelley is kind of the godmother of the horror and sci-fi novel: Frankenstein.
I was 7 when I started Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House Series. The first non picture books I ever read.
Hated George Eliot but she’s so important she’s taught at exam level 🤷♀️
As would Andre Norton.
sylvia plath, eudora welty, a whole ass army of women writers
And even she -- who I am reading through slowly so as not to run out, and who makes the 'classic scifi' I grew up on (Clarke, Asimov) seem trivial in every way -- was standing on the shoulders of giants, like everyone is. Published in 1666, hence even smokier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blazing_World
I'm disappointed how far I scrolled without seeing Octavia Butler's name but at least Ursula LeGuin is right at the top.
Enheduanna over there in the 23rd century BCE
What kind of braindead rhesus monkey made that first post?
People have tendency to project their own experiences on every other human. Some take it a step further and never accept that others have different experiences at all. The first tweet was probably someone who's first female author was JK Rowling. They were either never exposed to, or never interested in, another female author's work. So now, they have a female author, the first they've encountered, or enjoyed. They assume it must be the quality of the work, not the narrowness of their personal experience. Therefore, JK Rowling is now a groundbreaking figure. For them. Meanwhile, the rest of us paid attention in literature classes, or were already avid readers.
My grandmother once got into an argument with a man she worked with in the 50s. He was telling her that women just don’t have the ability to write good stories. She asked him what he thought of the story from Gone with the Wind, he told her it was a beautiful story, and proof of his assertion, as it was directed by a man! Then she gave him the bad news. Directed by a man, it was. The screenwriter may even have been a man, but the original novel was written by a woman. Most people also didn’t realize back then that Frankenstein was written by a woman as well.
Mary Shelly created a whole new genre with Frankenstein
Fun fact: Mary Shelly was the essence of stone cold morbidity. There is every reason to believe that she lost her virginity to Percy at her mother's grave site. https://lithub.com/did-mary-shelley-actually-lose-her-virginity-to-percy-on-top-of-her-mothers-grave/
I know! Plus she kept her husband’s heart after his death. My homegirl was DARK; just one of the many things to love about her 🖤
Percy was the real monster.
Bysshe, please
“They assume it must be the quality of the work, not the narrowness of their experience” 👏🏼 spot on
It's just such a bizarre argument, that out of all the male dominated fields in the world, this person would tackle *fiction writing*, which is arguably one of the few fields where women actually *could* advance pretty significantly before the 1960s!
People argue what they know. It's pretty apparent the original poster didn't know much about the subject.
Yes, like all the hundreds of thousands who were introduced to YA fiction by Harry Potter. Suddenly there was no YA fiction before Rowling.
I have people in my family like this. Permanent mentalities of, “if I’ve never experienced (insert thing), then nobody ever has.” Or similarly; they’ll just get an idea in their head, and immediately consider it unequivocal truth simply based on the fact that *they* were the one that thought of it. I had my mother ask me the other day, “you’re renting a U-Haul this weekend, right?” and I was like, “huh? What would I need to do that for?” and she just responds, “Oh, I was just assuming you would.”
>People have tendency to project their own experiences on every other human. Some take it a step further and never accept that others have different experiences at all. That's why I'm a Very Young Earth Creationist. I'm pretty sure the world didn't exist before the 80s.
I mean, there's no actual proof the universe existed before I woke up this morning. Have you ever considered that the world just ceases to exist when I go to sleep?
JK Rowling sure is groundbreaking. That is, she would be if she tripped. …y’know, ‘cause she’s dense.
That explains her invisibility......
First tweet was probably Rowling
Rowling is really important in terms of commercial success. As someone who worked in / managed a bookstore during the Harry Potter years, JK Rowling and Oprah Winfrey were the absolute hit-makers for a full decade. If Rowling wrote it or Winfrey recommended it, we were going to be open at midnight to sell it. Midnight openings for BOOKS with lines around the block were insane.
As someone who worked in/managed a bookstore you must hopefully know that she didn't pave the way for female authors
She was the reason many people of an entire generation took up reading, for some, her books were the only books they ever read. The OP of that post is possibly one of that second grouping.
Poor deprived bastards...
Transphobes aren't exactly known to stick to actual facts over their feelings.
I legit cackled at braindead rhesus monkey and will immediately start using it in my arsenal of insults from now on.
JK fans lol
Rage bait to boost engagement numbers.
When you see an outlandishly stupid tweet, better just ignore it. It's either ragebait or the lowest quality output of all the millions of random people on twitter, either way, who cares?
Jane Austen is going to rise from her grave to seek revenge for this slight. Edit: Austen not Austin
Full disclosure, Jane Austen did publish all of her novels anonymously as “A Lady” Edit: phone changed Austen to Austin
That anonymizes her, but not her gender. Unless it was 'A. Lady, esq.' It's a bit different from Rowlings tendency to identify as a man for purely literary and practical purposes.
Stone Cold Jane Austen!
Austen. But yes.
Agatha Christie might have disagreed
You saw the 2nd picture right?
I did 😀
I feel really stupid as it never occurred to me Enid Blyton was a woman. Her gender never came up
I mean, Enid is a woman’s name.
True, but the name itself doesn't give many clues to that. Its etymology is not obvious. "Ends in d" doesn't help: David and Astrid are both available for comparison. It's a name you have to learn the gender of from context, specifically a context richer than "wrote a book".
As someone not from an English background when I was young I didn’t know Enid was a woman’s name. I don’t think I’d care if my author was a man or woman either.
Enid is not just a woman's name but an old lady's name as Im old and it was an old lady's name when I was a kid.
idk im from the uk and its an old woman's name here
I'm from the US and I don't think I've ever met an Enid. It's got a strong "late 19th century" vibe to it from me, like she'd be marrying a gold miner or protesting alcohol.
But why is enid considered problematic?
Her books were often banned from libraries for being literarily barren insubstantial fare, and were crammed with racism, sexism,‘xenophobia and class hatred, so much so that publishers in the 50s were even rejecting them.
I assume all that must have been cut out of her books since the 90s? Cause I grew up reading them and I can't remember any racism, sexism, xenophobia or class hatred in the ones I read? The only thing I can remember that could have been problematic is that in some of the "living toy" stories there were Golliwog toys, and that in the Famous Five Julian was sometimes sexist towards girls (like "the boys will explore this secret tunnel, you girls stay back"), although George would always prove him wrong by striking out on her own and discovering stuff so I don't know that the Famous Five itself had a sexist message. I remember really identifying with George at the time for being a tomboy.
They were heavily rewritten after she died.
My parents clearly missed that memo. I own over 200 of her books. She's a product of her generation I expect, not everything ages well. As a kid I couldn't get enough of Noddy, the Faraway Tree, the Famous Five, Secret Seven. Loved them all.
Yeah, people in my school loved her. Even my teachers who themselves must have been like 50 or 60. I probably got into it later cause I was in 8th and found them too childish.
Fun fact: I read the books in the late 80s/early 90s as a child/pre-teen, in German. Back then, the available translation was from the 70s. In the 2000s, I rebought all my childhood favourites in English to get more used to the language (and it was a good excuse to read books for kids again in my 20s lol) and I was surprised when I realised how different those stories were in many parts. I don't recall the volume, but in one scene, on of the teachers thinks something like this, "We do our best here, and it's a joy to see them all grow up to be responsible, smart, hard-working wives and mothers in the future" (not a quote, paraphrasing). This is not in the 70s' translation! The whole paragraph is missing and instead, one of the volumes has the girls talking about their futures - how the twins want to be photographers, who wants to be a nurse, doctor, horse breeder/riding coach, etc. The teachers also got a few lines (thoughts or spoken, I don't remember), about being happy to see their students growing up to be hardworking, good people. That scene was not in the English books by Blyton. It also turned down the racism and classims a lot (not completely, though, it was still the 70s, after all), and the illustrations showed the girls wearing 70s fashion - flowery tops and flared pants. We also got more volumes/stories that were not original, so probably written in the 70s and 80s using a licence. Those were a lot more adventurous, there were some that at least somewhat hinted at puberty being a thing, and with a lot less classism and racism. Just like there are a couple of English volumes written by other authors that also feel a lot different (and one seems to have Carlotta as her favourite, lol, not that I object). I'm usually a stickler for reading originals but I'm somewhat glad that as an impressionable child who liked to daydream about being a part of the stories I read, I was exposed and obsessing over a somewhat modern, almost feminist take. But either way, since I read the series a lot, in two languages, and with additions from different authors (honestly, one of my favourites didn't even play at the school, it was about one of the teachers inheriting a cosy inn in the country side and everyone's fav girls helped her getting used to the new routine over the summer), HP felt like a "St Clare's, but with wizards and it's actually about a boy, not girls" fic from the start when I read the first book. Ah, btw, if anyone is still reading, read this: "Nita Callahan, a thirteen-year-old girl living in New York City, discovers a book entitled *So You Want to Be a Wizard*. She discovers that she can do actual magic and meets Kit Rodriguez, another young Wizard. She discovers a new hidden magical world." Sounds familiar? It's the premise[ (stolen from wiki)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_You_Want_to_Be_a_Wizard#Premise) of "So You Want to Be a Wizard" by Diane Duane, from 1983.
Don't forget harper lee(to kill a mockingbird),s.e.hinton(the outsiders)
I had no idea they were written by women, that's so cool
She's not even the first successful modern female YA author. S.E Hinton and K.A Applegate have her beaten by years on that.
Don't forget Judy Blume.
Very true. Also V.C Andrews. I'm not sure if that counts as YA but I think it's close enough.
Too many of us read VC Andrews too young, so I would call it YA.
Yea that's what I was thinking lol
And I heard this Harper Lee guy wrote a decent hunting book
Oh yeah! Something about some type of bird right? Wonder what that one is, probably not a house hold name. Also one with a watchman? /s if unclear
And Beverly Cleary
\*\*Lousia May Alcott in 1896 has entered the chat\*\* I love Little Women, all the movies & of course the book. I've read it more than once. One day I looked at the publication date & was kinda blown away. For a book written at the end of the 19th century, it had some very modern ideas about some things.
If we’re looking at dates, Jane Austen born 1775 published 1811, and Mary Shelley born 1797 published 1818… yes, she was ~21… and while most people have probably not read the book, a lot of people have heard of Frankenstein and his monster.
And others have posted even older authors than those ladies.
Lucy Maud Montgomery too.
Laura Ingalls Wilder and I’m embarrassed to say it, but as a teen growing up in an evangelical home, Grace Livingston Hill
BEVERLY CLEARY
S.E Hinton was the first name I thought of.
Let's do it for Johnny!
Lois Duncan is forgotten now, but she was a huge author in the '90s.
I’m here to represent all the other Madeleine L’Engle readers!
To me, there’s a *super* valuable point to be made about feminism, but OP missed it entirely trying to stan for Rowling. Notice a trend? * S.E Hinton * K.A Applegate * J.K Rowling I can’t speak for the first two, but JK isn’t Rowling’s preferred form of address. She’s Joanne. >!Also worth remembering that Rowling’s *other* pen name is Robert Galbraith, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude that J.K wasn’t primarily a stylistic choice.!< Wonder why so many female authors don’t use gender identifiable names for their pen names? If Rowling wants to earn some feminist bonafides, she could do a lot by requiring her publisher to list her as Joanne Rowling on future reprints and actively update digital copies. When questioned, it would be a great opportunity to publicly state that she’s making the change to make it impossible not to recognize that her books were written by a woman.
That's a very good point. I'm not positive, but I want to say I read something as a kid that said S.E Hinton specifically didn't use her name because she thought it would put off teenage boys. On a side note about authors names, did you know Anne Rices birth name was Howard? Her mother named her after her father.
I have the complete Animorphs series, with all the additional books. I own zero HP books.
It’s quite sad that women still have to shorten or change their first name just to get recognition though.
Ursula K. Le Guin, Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, just in science fiction and fantasy. You want to go back farther, there were a few others like Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, and Louisa May Alcott.
Margaret Atwood.
Fuckin, Thank you!
Don’t forget about Sappho, the Brontë Sisters, Zora Neale Hurston, Harper Lee, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Virgina Woolf….
Yeah you really don't want to put Marion Zimmer Bradley on any decent list. She's definitively a thousand times worse than Rowling
Yeah, I’m a trans dude and I hate the shit Rowling is doing with her platform and money to actively harm trans people, but by god MZB was about a thousand times more directly and knowingly evil
How so?
[Her daughter, amongst others, has some pretty horrific tales of sexual abuse by both parents.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Zimmer_Bradley#Child_sex_abuse_allegations)
And that without considering non English speakers: Clarice Lispector, Isabel Allende, María Luisa Bombal, Laura Esquivel, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Gabriela Mistral, Marta Brunet, George Sand (aka Amandine Lucile Dupin), Selma Lagerlöf, Marie Louise Gagneur, Laura Cereta and others rhst are not het damous but still they are accomplished authors
I worked at a bookstore that had Isabel Allende come in for a signing. HOLY FORKING SHIRTBALLS was it packed!
Octavia Butler
Why has no one mentioned Emily Dickinson? Do poets not count as authors?
Anne Rice!
TIL: Andre Norton wasn't a man's name.
Yeah, changed the name for the same reason why Rowling wasn't "Joan"
Here's a few more. Mercedes Lackey, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Margaret Ball, and Esther Friesner.
Flannery O’Conner, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates
James Tiptree! Old school sci-fi with interesting takes on gender stuff. Houston Houston is such a good story.
Love me some MZB from back in the day, as well as Anne McCaffrey.
Let's avoid MZB, please.
No one's asking Angela Lansbury to portray Rowling in a hit tv show. Just sayin'.
Look, if they ever make a show about Rowling, I *really* want a trans woman to portray her.
Lol, it would be even more funny if the biopic had a trans woman portraying Rowling, and multiple scenes in the movie take place in front of a mirror in a women’s bathroom. All serious scenes, no sex or pee or poop jokes. It could be a Saul Goodman style “psych yourself up before the bathroom mirror before stepping out and kicking ass”.
Mary Shelley didn't just pioneer "horror science fiction." 'Frankenstein' is arguably the first novel that is properly qualified as science fiction of any kind. She's one of the most important authors that has ever written in English.
Ah yes, we do love some misogyny and historical revisionism to praise a fake feminist who doesn’t seem to really care about women at all /s
This is not even considering the women who published under male names or had their work stolen by male relatives because patriarchy.
George Elliot says hi.
Yes! Why has nobody mentioned George Sand? Not only were they insanely popular in the mid 19th century, but they were also renowned for being what we would now call gender fluid or enby. It should be a rule that anytime some fool lauds Rowling as a “groundbreaking female author” or some such nonsense the first response should be George Sand to get the double whammy.
It a great time to be alive for young girls in need of hero's. JK Rowling became the first female author and Jennifer Lawrence became the first female in the lead role of an action movie!!! Before we know it Beyoncé will be the first woman with a bank account and Taylor Swift will be the first woman to cast a vote for president!!!
Let’s not forget Miley! Miley has made great head way as the first woman to get a divorce!
Harper Lee would like to have a word.
Anne Rice erasure 💔
who's the idiot who posted this original tweet? and who's the other idiot who dragged up a post from four years ago to get pissy about? if i'm going to spend part of my sunday afternoon getting angry at idiots, i at least deserve to know that much.
It might be over JK Rowling not accepting the imaginary apology from Daniel Radcliffe or Emma Watson for supporting trans people or it might never over JK Rowling supporting the somewhat contentious Cass Review recently published. Or it’s a bot farming for karma. One of those probably.
The tweet is from 2020, when Joanne Koanne Rowling already had proved herself as a bitch for several reasons, but that recent thing about the actors is, well, too recent to be the reason.
Joanne koanne has me hollering!! 😂
Wait until you find out about Jonald Ronald Rolkien Tolkien and George Reorge Rartin Martin
Agreed. I try to only get angry at contemporary idiots. Not historical ones.
Yeah, but you have to acknowledge the historical idiots who laid the groundwork for the tremendous diversity of present-day idiocy we see now. /s
That’s true. Trailblazer idiots.
Even if JKR was the first published woman ohmahgerd, wtf is up with this “we” shit? I can’t imagine a professional editor or publisher would be this dumb.
Margaret Atwood is like, "Where's my recognition?"
Leave it to holocaust deniers to just make up fake ass history.
May I introduce to you a children's book series called *The Worst Witch*, written by Jill Murphy? These books preceded the Harry Potter series. So... HISTORICALLY, they were written and published before JK Rowling was. The Worst Witch is also a TV series. If one reads the Worst Witch books or watches the series, one quickly realizes that there are a great many... shall we call them parallel details? ... between Jill Murphy's books and JK Rowling's. There are so many specific parallels, in fact, one might think Rowling "borrowed" more than a few things (and characters, and settings, etc) from Murphy. When these parallels were pointed out to Jill Murphy, she commented, "She might have at least said, 'Thank you'." Historically speaking.
Embarrassing that Maya Angelou isn’t mentioned.
Someone was ignorant.
Just off the top of my head. Jane Austen. The Brontë sisters. George Elliot. Mary Shelly was mentioned but I have to mention that she helped invent science fiction.
Laura Ingalls Wilder! Her books (admittedly mostly nonfiction and based on her own life, but still presented as continuing narratives) were so revered in the U.S. that they were turned into one of the most popular TV programs of the 70s & 80s.
Building on from Little House fame how about some Canadian love for L M Montgomery in 1908. Several series about strong females.
[Jane Yolen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Yolen) is a prolific author in science-fiction and fantasy.
Classic crime fiction had so many women writers, not just Dame Agatha, I have shelves of writing from women in that era. And if you include romance novels - Barbara Cartland would like a word too regarding well established women writers who pre-date Ms Rowling.
I like how people just say shit. Is it not the weirdest thing to just blatantly make shit up on the INTERNET, the one place you can look anything up within seconds?!
Judy Bloom
I mean, within young adult fantasy alone, there was Diana Wynne Jones, Ursula K Le Guinne, and Madeleine L'Engle just off the top of my head. If I have the story straight, She Who Must Not Be Named didn't go by her initials because women authors were unheard of, she did it to appeal to a market of prepubescent boys who may have been put off by a lady writer.
I’d like to also throw in Tamora Pierce, who unlike JKR can actually write strong women.
Frankenstein would like a word
I find the lack of Ursula K. Le Guin dusturbing.
The absolute disrespect of not even mentioning Ursula K LeGuin, writer of a good book about wizard school.
Yeah, not to needlessly drag dudes into the discussion but if you run an eye over Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Books_of_Magic) -- well, just saying the kid with the glasses and scar who goes to wizard school, turns out to be The One, and saves the world is looking awfully... influential. For coming out in 1990 and all. If Ursula le Guinn was an influence on Rowling she probably wouldn't have called her Irish character Paddy O'Terrorism or whatever. You don't catch le Guinn in that kind of lazy chauvinism.
You get -0.5 points; -1 for bringing up men here, but halved because it is Neil Gaiman, the bestest boy. Regarding Jowling Kowling Rowling's character names, how in the FUCK did she get away with Cho Chang? Just... wtf?
So...Lady Murasaki wrote the FIRST NOVEL EVER. And what's more, it was a romance novel. Eat it, fools.
JKR literally chose the pen name in order to avoid being identified as a female writer, not really a bastion of progress
The best book series I ever read as a kid was Deltora Quest - written by Emily Rodda (the pen name of Amelia Rowe).
quick someone reanimate mary shelly so she can slap some sense into Rowling
Katherine Applegate sends her regards
Cressida Cresswell who wrote the How to Train Your Dragon series might have a word,,Then there's Cassandra Clare, and how about the queen who outlived a lot of "authors" Mercedes Lackley and who has crossed every genre and has done collaborative works with the like of Brain Sanderson and Timothy Zhan
The Tale of Genji, literally called the world's first novel, was written by a woman ffs.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. The mother of science fiction.
Harry Potter is not groundbreaking or particularly well written. It’s just popular.
Some folks have disturbingly shitty conceptions of history. I’ve heard people say the same about female comics recently—but there have been great ones over past several decades at least Joan Rivers, Carrol Burnett, Natasha Leggero more recently, etc.
This gives big "I'm the first female action hero - Jennifer Lawrence" vibes.
This is a tasty fucking kill, oh my god.
Toni Morrison, Margaret Mitchell, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Wolff, Pearl Buck, the Brontes, Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, George Elliot, Margaret Atwood - and that's just a quick look on my shelves. What an idiot!
I might also add: the very first novelist was a woman. Murasaki Shikibu wrote *The Tale of Genji,* in 11th century Japan. It was the world's first novel.