The responses to this stupid tweet claiming that before J. K. Rowling was published, women authors were unheard of are amazing. This is actually a great list of iconic female authors, and achievements of women in writing throughout history:
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While there are books that paved the way, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein is considered the first science fiction book on the basis that ‘science’ wasn’t exactly what we’d recognize as science in 1666.
But I am interested in reading her book.
For more great female sci-fi/fantasy authors of recent decades, there’s:-
– P.C. Hodgell, author of the Chronicles of the Kencyrath
– Julian May, author of the Saga of Pliocene Exile, Intervention, the Galactic Milieu Trilogy, the Trillium series and the Rampart Worlds series
– Anne McCaffrey, author of the Dragonriders of Pern series, the Tower and the Hive series, the Crystal Singer trilogy and short story collections like Get Off The Unicorn
– Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, who co-authored the Dragonlance novels among many other works
– Ursula K Le Guin, author of the Earthsea pentalogy
ALL OF THESE pre-dated Rowling as successful female authors in the science fiction/fantasy arena by at least a decade. They have been succeeded by a whole slew of modern female authors in these genres, just as they were themselves successors to a great many female authors who came before them.
Rowling, however wealthy and popular she has become, contributed literally nothing in terms of acceptance of female authorship – she was heavily preceded on that score.