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Outsiders: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World

par Lyndall Gordon

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Biography & Autobiography. Literary Criticism. Nonfiction. HTML: Prodigy, visionary, 'outlaw,' orator and explorer. As society's outsiders, the exceptional subjects of this study inspired a new breed of women�??and one another. Finalist of the PROSE Award for Best Book in Literature by the Association of American Publishers Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner and Virginia Woolf: they all wrote dazzling books that forever changed the way we see history. In Outsiders, award-winning biographer Lyndall Gordon shows how these five novelists shared more than talent. In a time when a woman's reputation was her security, each of these women lost hers. They were unconstrained by convention, writing against the grain of their contemporaries, prophetically imagining a different future. We have long known the individual greatness of each of these writers, but in linking their creativity to their lives as outcasts, Gordon throws new light on the genius they share. All five lost their mothers in childbirth or at a young age. With no female role model present, they learned from books�??and sometimes from an enlightened mentor. Crucially, each had to imagine what a woman could be in order to invent a voice of her own. The passion in their own lives infused their fiction. Writing with passionate intelligence of her own, Gordon reveals that these renegade writers inspired a new breed of women who wished to change a world locked in war, violence, exploitation, and sexual abuse. Gordon's biographies have always shown the indelible connection between life and art: an intuitive, exciting and revealing approach that has been highly praised. In Outsiders, she crafts nuanced portraits of Shelley, Brontë, Eliot, Schreiner and Woolf, naming each of these writers as prodigy, visionary, 'outlaw,' orator, and explorer, and shows how they came, they saw, and they left us changed. Today, following the tsunami of women's protest at widespread abuse, we do more than read them; we listen and live with their astonishing bravery and eloqu… (plus d'informations)

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This book explores the lives of five female writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner, and Virginia Woolf. I had some degree of familiarity with all of the them, with the exception of Olive Schreiner. The author does a wonderful job of providing overviews of each of these writers' lives and finding the connections between the writers' lived experiences and their work and also the connections they had with each other. While the writers profiled in this book spanned more than a century, common themes ran through their lives and their work. This was an excellent book which highlighted their contributions and makes the case for these women's place in the literary canon. (

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wagner.sarah35 | Dec 1, 2021 |

Really good read if you are interested in any of these ladies,or women's history ,or even just feel an outsider yourself! (

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SarahKDunsbee | Aug 2, 2021 |

febrero de 2020

mcarmenbriones | Feb 20, 2020 |

The ‘outsiders’ that the author has selected are Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Olive Shreiner, and Virginia Woolf. They were outsiders in the way they lived their lives, and in the things they wrote. All were motherless and learned the ways of being a woman through books. Three of them published under an assumed man’s name, in order to get their work taken seriously. All were feminists. All but Woolf lived in social isolation. And even though they never knew each other, there are connections between them that Gordon makes, looping back to reference something in a different chapter.

Each woman’s life and work is explored in detail, one per section. In some ways, the book reads as if it were five separate thesis or lecture; things we’ve already been told in one section get restated in another. But there is not enough of that to get tiresome.

All these women stepped beyond the common boundaries of the time that were prescribed for women. Some lived ‘in sin’. Some lobbied for women’s and human rights. Gordon describes their lives in detail, and also tells about how the world reacted to their writing, and how the writers who lived after them were affected by their work. She also shines a light on who influenced them, be they absent mother, father, husband, or sister.

I enjoyed the book (although it wasn’t a fast or easy read), but I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had known more about the women beforehand. I was lost a few times because I had not read this or that of their works. While I’ve read Shelley and Woolf, I have barely read Bronte and Eliot; Shreiner I had never even heard of. Gordon’s writing expects the reader to be widely-read. Four stars. (

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lauriebrown54 | Jul 13, 2019 |

Lyndall Gordon describes the private lives and professional careers of five prominent women writers. She highlights many of the similarities between the lives and works of these authors even though they were from different generations. Gordon’s book stimulates an interest in the writings of the authors she chronicles. Gordon’s own writing style, however, is distracting. Her abrupt transitions often make it difficult to follow to whom she is referring. The lack of a smooth flowing narrative creates a jumble of facts and observations. Most disappointing is the failure of Gordon to explicitly address the claim of the book’s subtitle and describe how these women changed the world. Gordon tells of the women’s accomplishments but not of their impact. Gordon’s portraits do provide readers with examples of courageous women who dared to live authentic lives and, as a result, were compelled by society to live as outsiders. (

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mitchellray | Mar 15, 2019 |

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Biography & Autobiography. Literary Criticism. Nonfiction. HTML:

Prodigy, visionary, 'outlaw,' orator and explorer. As society's outsiders, the exceptional subjects of this study inspired a new breed of women�??and one another.

Finalist of the PROSE Award for Best Book in Literature by the Association of American Publishers

Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner and Virginia Woolf: they all wrote dazzling books that forever changed the way we see history. In Outsiders, award-winning biographer Lyndall Gordon shows how these five novelists shared more than talent. In a time when a woman's reputation was her security, each of these women lost hers. They were unconstrained by convention, writing against the grain of their contemporaries, prophetically imagining a different future.

We have long known the individual greatness of each of these writers, but in linking their creativity to their lives as outcasts, Gordon throws new light on the genius they share. All five lost their mothers in childbirth or at a young age. With no female role model present, they learned from books�??and sometimes from an enlightened mentor. Crucially, each had to imagine what a woman could be in order to invent a voice of her own. The passion in their own lives infused their fiction. Writing with passionate intelligence of her own, Gordon reveals that these renegade writers inspired a new breed of women who wished to change a world locked in war, violence, exploitation, and sexual abuse.

Gordon's biographies have always shown the indelible connection between life and art: an intuitive, exciting and revealing approach that has been highly praised. In Outsiders, she crafts nuanced portraits of Shelley, Brontë, Eliot, Schreiner and Woolf, naming each of these writers as prodigy, visionary, 'outlaw,' orator, and explorer, and shows how they came, they saw, and they left us changed. Today, following the tsunami of women's protest at widespread abuse, we do more than read them; we listen and live with their astonishing bravery and eloqu

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