I thought I’d do a series of posts on women I count among my writing foremothers.
I’m not planning long essays, just my idiosyncratic encounters with their writing: a scene or a detail from which I consciously learned something about writing or about life, or perhaps an approach to writing, or storytelling, or language. Some of the writers are extremely well-known and it’s no surprise that they figure among my foremothers. Others may be less recognized.
I hope you enjoy these glimpses into a writer’s reading life!

Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965): The Glass Slipper (1955) (PDF)

Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924): The Secret Garden (1911) (PDF)

Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957): Little House on the Prairie series (1932-1943) (PDF)

L. M. Montgomery (1874-1942): Anne of Green Gables (1908) (PDF)

Georgette Heyer (1902-1974): Devil’s Cub (1932); A Civil Contract (1961) (PDF)

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865): North and South (1854-1855) (PDF)

Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006): Wild Seed (1980) (PDF)

Susan Cooper (1935 – ): Silver on the Tree (1977) (PDF)

Dorothy Gilman (1923-2012): The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (1966) (PDF)

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941): The Voyage Out (1915) (PDF)

Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007): A Wrinkle in Time (1962) (PDF)