Danielle Fernandes Dominique Schuelein-Steel is an American writer, best known for her romance novels. She is the bestselling living author and one of the best-selling fiction authors of all time, with over 800 million copies sold. As of 2021, she has written 190 books, including over 140 novels.
Doris May Lessing was a British novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia, where she remained until moving in 1949 to London, England. Her novels include The Grass Is Singing (1950), the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence (1952–1969), The Golden Notebook (1962), The Good Terrorist (1985), and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979–1983).
Alice de Salisbury, also known as Alice de Windsor was a mistress of King Edward III of England. As a result of his patronage, she became the wealthiest and most influential woman in the country. She was widely despised and accused of taking advantage of the old king.
Jacquetta of Luxembourg was a prominent figure in the Wars of the Roses. Through her short-lived first marriage to the Duke of Bedford, brother of King Henry V, she was firmly allied to the House of Lancaster. However, following the emphatic Lancastrian defeat at the Battle of Towton, she and her second husband Richard Woodville sided closely with the House of York. Three years after the battle and the accession of Edward IV of England, Jacquetta's eldest daughter Elizabeth Woodville married him and became queen consort of England. Jacquetta bore Woodville 14 children and stood trial on charges of witchcraft, of which she was exonerated.
A governess is a woman employed as a private tutor, who teaches and trains a child or children in their home. A governess often lives in the same residence as the children she is teaching. In contrast to a nanny, the primary role of a governess is teaching, rather than meeting the physical needs of children; hence a governess is usually in charge of school-aged children, rather than babies.
Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, known by her pen names Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm, is an American writer of speculative fiction. As Hobb, she is best known for her fantasy novels set in the Realm of the Elderlings, which comprise the Farseer, Liveship Traders and Tawny Man trilogies, the Rain WildChronicles, and the Fitz and the Fool trilogy. Lindholm's writing includes the urban fantasy novel Wizard of the Pigeons and science fiction short stories, among other works. As of 2018, her fiction has been translated into 22 languages and sold more than 4 million copies.
Martha "Patsy" Randolph was the eldest daughter of Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, and his wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson. She was born at Monticello, near Charlottesville, Virginia.
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian specializing in early America and the history of women, and a professor at Harvard University. Her approach to history has been described as a tribute to "the silent work of ordinary people". Ulrich has also been a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient. Her most famous book, A Midwife’s Tale, was later the basis for a PBS documentary film.
Gail Carson Levine is an American author of young adult books. Her first novel, Ella Enchanted, received a Newbery Honor in 1998.
Elizabeth Griffith was an 18th-century Welsh-born dramatist, fiction writer, essayist and actress, who lived and worked in Ireland.
Gail Godwin is an American novelist and short story writer. Godwin has written 14 novels, two short story collections, three non-fiction books, and ten libretti. Her primary literary accomplishments are her novels, which have included five best-sellers and three finalists for the National Book Award. Most of her books are realistic fiction novels that follow a character's psychological and intellectual development, often based on themes taken from Godwin's own life.
The Women's Room is the debut novel by American feminist author Marilyn French, published in 1977. It launched French as a major participant in the feminist movement and, while French states it is not autobiographical, the book reflects many autobiographical elements. For example, French, like the main character, Mira, was married and divorced, and then attended Harvard where she obtained a Ph.D. in English Literature. Despite the connection of The Women's Room to the feminist movement, French stated in a 1977 interview with The New York Times: "The Women's Room is not about the women's movement ... but about women's lives today."
Mary Virginia Terhune, also known by her penname Marion Harland, was an American author who was prolific and bestselling in both fiction and non-fiction genres. Born in Amelia County, Virginia, she began her career writing articles at the age of 14, using various pennames until 1853, when she settled on Marion Harland. Her first novel Alone was published in 1854 and became an "emphatic success" following its second printing the next year. For fifteen years she was a prolific writer of best-selling women's novels, classified then as "plantation fiction", as well as writing numerous serial works, short stories, and essays for magazines.
The Family of Pascual Duarte is a 1942 novel written by Spanish Nobel laureate Camilo José Cela. The first two editions created an uproar and in less than a year it was banned. A new Spanish edition was revised in 1943 in December of that year.
The Four-Gated City, published in 1969, is the concluding novel in British Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing's five-volume, semi-autobiographical series The Children of Violence, which she began, in 1952, with Martha Quest. In The Four-Gated City Lessing moves the setting from Zambesia, a fictionalized version of Southern Rhodesia, to London. Martha "is integrally part of the social history of the time - the Cold War, the Aldermaston Marches, Swinging London, the deepening of poverty and social anarchy." The novel extends into science fiction, depicting a dystopian future following the destruction of Britain.
Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949 (1994) was the first volume of Doris Lessing's autobiography, covering the period of her life from birth in 1919 to leaving Southern Rhodesia in 1949.
The Cater Street Hangman is a crime novel by Anne Perry. It is the first in a series which features the husband-and-wife team of Thomas and Charlotte Pitt.
Martha Quest (1952) is the second novel of British Nobel Prize in Literature-winner Doris Lessing, and the first of the five-volume semi-autobiographical Children of Violence series, which traces Martha Quest’s life to middle age. The other volumes in The Children of Violence are A Proper Marriage (1954), A Ripple from the Storm (1958), Landlocked (1965), and The Four-Gated City (1969).
Landlocked (1965) is the fourth novel in British Nobel Prize in Literature-winner Doris Lessing five volume, semi-autobiographical, series, Children of Violence. The first volume is Martha Quest (1952), and the others are, A Proper Marriage (1954), A Ripple from the Storm (1958), and The Four-Gated City (1969). The Children of Violence series, follows the life of protagonist Martha Quest "from girlhood to middle age".
The Children of Violence is a sequence of five semi-autobiographical novels by British Nobel Prize in Literature-winner Doris Lessing: Martha Quest (1952), A Proper Marriage (1954), A Ripple from the Storm (1958), Landlocked (1965), and The Four-Gated City (1969). The novels "are strongly influenced by Lessing's rejection of a domestic family role and her involvement with communism." Lessing identified the series as a bildungsroman.
