Fantastic British Women

[drasecretcampus]

Who have I missed? Who have I included in error

Comments

[steepholm]

I'll start the bidding with Hope Mirrlees.

[steepholm]

Also, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Mary Butts.

[drasecretcampus]

I suspect there are a lot of those mainstream (between wars?) women I simply have forgotten or never knew. Need to sit down with a Virago catalogue

[steepholm]

Mrs Molesworth.

[sabethea]

What's the critera for being included? I always have trouble with what counts as sci fi.

[drasecretcampus]

My interest is primarily sf, but I have a catholic definition and so for now I want to include utopian/dystopian fiction, supernatural/paranormal horror, the gothic tradition, the fantastic, fantasy and related genres. I've hesitated, but for now I've not included Ann Radcliffe; I think I have the wrong Bronte on this list (Wuthering Heights was Emily; but they all did the fantasy world stuff) ... But then there's a gothic heart to Jane Eyre. I want to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Possibly nothing will.

[sabethea]

Gothic? Then you have to have Mrs Radcliffe, surely? After all, she's the gothic basis for Northanger Abbey (which is why I've read several of her books. I acknowledge as a writer she's not brilliant, but fuck it all, she inspired Jane Austen, which works for me ;) )

[drasecretcampus]

I hesitate (ahem) because it's the uncanny rather than marvellous gothic (Scooby Doo, not Buffy). On the other hand, it makes it's closer to to SF.

OTOH I have no memory if I've ever read any.

There's a raft therefore who are missing - Edgeworths and such. She's on the list...

[steepholm]

Susan Hill (for The Woman in Black).

[sabethea]

I'd make a vast plea for Susan Cooper. She's more fantasy, but she's bloody amazing. (I am now paranoid she's not British, but her books are.)

Phillipa Pierce? (Tom's Midnight Garden) Jill Murphy? (The Worst Witch)

I am slightly pissed, so totally up for reminders that my suggestions are unBritish/not sci fi/not anything appropriate. :-)

[drasecretcampus]

I haven't had the time to sit down with a list of children's writers and work out which would fit. Pretty well all of them. Blyton? Lively? Bawden? Gets very grey very quickly. It might be that for them I need a tighter sf/gothic definition.

I think I read three of The Dark is Rising sequence, all in the last year. I don't recall them from thirty years back. Nor Garner, for that matter, though I knew the name.

[drasecretcampus]

At the moment wide - born in Britain irrespective of current residence or active in Britain. I may trim later (I have Zoline but not Le Guin)