FFL Reading Challenge: A Classic Written by a Woman

One of the prompts on the FFL reading challenge this year is a classic written by a woman. As an English major, I could list a hundred off the top of my head, which would include just about every book ever written by a Bronte or an Austen or an Alcott. However, there are so many great classics written by woman to choose from.

I have a lot of friends who set goals to only read books by women or something like that every year, and I always scoff at them because I read a a TON of books by women every year without even thinking about it. I just read books I’m interested in, and women write the kind of books I like, apparently. However, it cannot be denied that the majority of major classics were written by men. Think Charles Dickens and George Orwell and EM Forster and Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck and F Scott Fitzgerald and William Shakespeare. So perhaps committing to reading a classic by a woman really will help you widen your reading breadth and discover something new.

On this list are some of my favorite books of all time, including Emma by Jane Austen (though all her books are great) and House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (it’s like a literary Gossip Girl!) I’m also a big fan of Villette, which is a lesser-known classic by a Bronte sister.  Some more child-centric classics on this list include Little Women, The Outsiders, and Mary Poppins. Whatever your interests, there is a book on this list for you!

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Villette by Charlotte Bronte

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Emma by Jane Austen

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgens Burnett

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

Middlemarch by George Eliot

The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck

House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery

The Outsiders by SE Hinton

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Mary Poppins by PL Travers

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe