Essential Writers? O rly?

[capriuni]

From the front flyleaf of that volume of Jane Austen I recently bought:

Jane Austen: Seven Novels is part of Barnes & Noble's Library of Essential Writers. Each title in the series presents the finest works--complete and unabridged--from one of the greatest writers in literature [yadda, yadda, yadda]*

Those "essential writers" are all listed on the back flyleaf:

• Jane Austen Seven Novels


• Lewis Carroll Complete Works


• Joseph Conrad Complete Short Stories


• James Fenimore Cooper Five Novels


• Daniel Defoe Five Novels


• Charles Dickens Five Novels


• Alexandre Dumas Three Novels


• Gustave Flaubert Five Novels


• E. M. Forster Four Novels


• Ernest Hemmingway Four Novels


• O. Henry The Fiction


• Jack London Six Novels


• Edgar Allen Poe Fiction and Poetry


• Robert Louis Stevenson Seven Novels


• Bram Stoker Five Novels**


• Leo Tolstoy Three Novels


• Mark Twain Five Novels


• Jules Verne Seven Novels
  
• H. G. Welles Seven Novels


• Oscar Wilde Collected Works

I counted. That's twenty "essential" writers, and only one of them is a woman.

This "library" is being marketed as some sort official starting point for someone looking to fill the gaps in his or her literary education. It would be perfectly reasonable for that hypothetical someone to come away with the idea that "Women don't write 'literature,' except for the one that proves the rule."

Now, granted, women have, through the years, had less access to education than men, and less economic freedom which would have allowed them to pursue writing, so I wouldn't expect a list that spans two hundred years to have absolute gender parity. But nineteen to one in the favor of the men strikes me as a just a bit extreme.

So here's my challenge to you, dear Readers: which of these male writers would you take off the list, and which female writers would you insert in their place? I think a ratio of four to one (five female authors out of twenty total) seems reasonable. And for consistancy's sake, there seems to be a rule that writer have more than one complete book published in her name.

I have my ideas. But I'm looking for more.

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*Ah. So that's why I could only find this heavy, clunky, hardbacked volume, instead of a more portable paperback: B&N doesn't want to sell any edition from a rival publisher (And they also want to promote themselves as being just a bit hoity-toity and "cultured," so it's a hardback "library" for them). Humph!

**He wrote more than one?

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[ETA: samantha2074 is right. There are a few twentieth century writers on the list, but they're all, except for Hemmingway, from before the Great War. And that, dispite the calender, really is the turning point into the Twentieth Century (So say I :-P). So that brings up another bias: why must the essential "finest works" of the world's "greatest literature" be so distant from us, culturally?

I got my Bachelor's degree from a very traditionally-minded liberal arts college, and I nearly got my Master's from another. And even though they're the sorts of schools that oft get criticized for being fuddy-duddy and teaching "Dead White Men," my education was a lot more hip and wide-ranging than Barnes & Nobel standards!]

Comments

[samantha2074.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure who I'd take off -- I haven't read many of those authors (shame, shame), but if you're looking for historical female authors, George Eliot, Emily Bronte (although I really disliked Wuthering Heights, so I'd be happy to dump her), Charlotte Bronte, and Edith Wharton come to mind. The Brontes are, arguably, one-hit wonders, but I think the other two are definite contenders.

I know there's more, but I'm tired today and totally blanking.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

I know there's more, but I'm tired today and totally blanking.

Yeah. That's kind of my point.

When I read an author's works, I start to automatically have imaginary conversations with that person in my head. With Miss Austen, I've been telling her how things have changed for women since 1817 -- women no longer have to be ashamed to work for their own money (especially as a writer -- hello, J.K. Rowling!), and their security is no longer dependent on the fortunes of the men in their lives. ... And then, I see the list of authors on the back flap, and I wonder how much things have really changed...

Just the fact that we have to scratch our heads, a little, to think of women to put on the list.

I haven't read all the authors on the list, either -- and I was an English major!

[samantha2074.livejournal.com]

Well, the authors on the list are what I'd call pre-modern, so I was trying to think of women from the same time periods. If there were a comparable collection for twentieth and twenty-first century literature, the male/female balance would be a lot better. Maybe it would be more useful to have something like that.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Well, Ernest Hemmingway is twentieth century (and is considered "modern"); so is O. Henry. I'm drawing a blank on Jack London, but my hunch is that he was also twentieth century, even though his subject matter went back to previous generations... (Checks Wikipedia... Okay, he was on the cusp; Call of the Wild was published in 1903... O. Henry, too.).

If it weren't for those, I would have thought that era was also part of their criteria. But since they are on the list, I can think of several women writers who were Hemmingway's contemporaries, at least.

[pedanther.livejournal.com]

Mark Twain would have staged a 'he goes or I go' protest on discovering that the list compilers consider James Fenimore Cooper an Essential Writer, so there's a spot opened up one way or the other. :)


Bram Stoker Five Novels**
**He wrote more than one?

Sure! There's 'Jewel of the Seven Stars', which is reasonably well-regarded and has been filmed a few times; and I believe the one about the giant worm, the title of which temporarily escapes me, is also by him; and then there's... um... can I get back to you?

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

I could check Wikipedia, I suppose. But that would be cheating. ;-)

Would you recommend any of those Stoker novels?

[pedanther.livejournal.com]

Honesty compels me to admit that I haven't actually read any of Stoker's novels except Dracula.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Yeah... I think that's typtical. And it's one reason why I question his inclusion in such a select (and supposedly important) company.

One of the novels he'd written had a great influence on our culture. But that doesn't mean that the whole body of his work is "essential" to a cultured life.

I'd put him on the "B" list.

[alto2.livejournal.com]

Mark Twain would have staged a 'he goes or I go' protest on discovering that the list compilers consider James Fenimore Cooper an Essential Writer, so there's a spot opened up one way or the other. :)

LOL! You're darn right he would have! "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" is one of my favorite bits of Twain ever.