Female LEC authors (women, gender)

I felt there should be, somewhere on this forum, a list of female authors published by the LEC, so I made one and am posting it with rudimentary commentary - I’d be delighted if anyone would add to it. I’ve looked through the index of Grossman’s book and can find no discussion of gender there, though I’d love to be contradicted. (I note that discussing Frankenstein, CG does not mention that it is the first LEC book published that is written by a female author.) There is a short discussion of the topic on page 44 of the Quarto-Millenary, somewhat critical - fairly, I feel - of George Macy, after his death. I’m not getting up on a soapbox, though - I’m not here to bash the Macys. I love the LEC. The present is the present. And I come from the country where (almost all) Nobel Prizes are handed out, including the ones in Literature, so far 16 to women out of 117 total…

I make it 28 out of 589 books or 4,8 percent. Jane Austen, George Eliot, Edith Wharton and Maya Angelou who were all published more than once make up 12 of those, so that’s 20 unique authors, I think. No female authors were published for the first four series or indeed the first 50+ (52) books. The longest ”gap” (series with no female author) after that is the 11th up to and including the 17th; the 11th being Shakespeare’s plays, 12-17 is perhaps fairer. Corrections welcome on all points! Edit: I’ve assumed the mostly religious works published without author were written by men… Edit2: 31 series I _think_ with no female author.

List, v1.1 (all information gratefully from Bill Majure’s list):

1st to 4th series - none.
5th series - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, 1934.
6th to 8th series - none.
9th series - Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1938.
10th series - Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, 1939 AND Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1940 (issuing these two in the same year would perhaps have been a bit too brave!).
11th to 17th series - none (perhaps the 10th series was too brave after all?).
18th series - Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese, 1948.
19th to 20th series - none.
21st series- Emily Dickinson, Poems of Enily Dickinson, 1952.
22nd series - George Eliot, Silas Marner, The Weaver of Raveloe, 1953.
23rd to 24th series - none.
25th series - Jane Austen (again), Sense and Sensibility, 1957.
26th series - none.
27th series - Helen Hunt Jackson, Ramona, 1959.
28th series - none.
29th series - Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm, 1961.
30th series - none.
31st series - George Eliot (again), The Mill on the Floss, 1963.
32nd series - Jane Austen (third time!), Emma, 1964.
33rd to 34th series - none.
35th series - Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, 1967.
36th series - Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, 1968.
37th to 38th series - none.
39th series - Jane Austen (fourth time), Northanger Abbey, 1971.
40th series - none.
41st series - Edith Wharton , The Age of Innocence, 1973.
42nd series - Edith Wharton (again), The House of Mirth, 1975.
43rd series - none.
44th series - Jane Austen (for the fifth time), Persuasion, 1977.
45th series - Rachel Carson, The Sea around Us, 1980.
46th series - none.
47th series - Colette, Break of Day, 1983 AND Willa Cather, A Lost Lady, 1983 (the second series with two female authors a long time after the first, and the first time they are published in the same year, though I’m likely making too much of that).
48th to 52nd series - none.
53rd series - Margaret Walker, For My People, 1992.
54th series - Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, 1993 AND Maya Angelou, Our Grandmothers, 1994 (third time with two female authors in one series)

SERIES NUMBERING DISCONTINUED

Anna Akhmatova, Requiem, 2000.
Zora Neale Hurston, Bookmarks In the Pages of Life, 2000.

Maya Angelou (again), Deep Rivers in My Soul, 2003.

Flannery O'Connor, Everything That Rises Must Converge, 2005.

Do please say which female authors the LEC should have published, in your opinion!

Edited to add two authors I missed, thanks to >8 Sport1963:!

This is a great topic and one I will happily comment further on when I have more time. This is very near and dear to me on an academic level, and I appreciate you kickstarting it GusLogan!

I did some analysis about the disappointing amount of women specifically, and POCI writers in general, in fine press on my blog when I was reviewing my reading for the year once. I've spent the past several years expanding my reading to address the fact that my life of somewhat unintentionally reading the white male canon has badly skewed my experience. I'll die before it's been reasonably corrected.

Fine press continues to favor the white male canon with some progress being made, especially by Thornwillow Press. But to read wide one has to go outside of the world of nicely printed books and even hardbound books. You're lucky to find even a natty paperback of that first published book by a black woman in any bookstores.

>1 GusLogan: This is so well done and informative. I think if I could only pick one it would be Wuthering Heights, but there are numerous editions I would add. I have quite a few and wish I could see all on my shelves. Thanks for you efforts to inform us.

>1 GusLogan: “I’ve assumed the mostly religious works published without author were written by men…”

A tangential and speculative point only, but I believe Harold Bloom thought it likely that the J writer (of Genesis) was a woman.

I admit I didn’t quite follow his logic in terms of historical evidence, but it is still interesting.

>1 GusLogan:

I own three of these books, by the way, out of 62 LECs (counting sets, especially the 11th series, as one, since that’s how the 589 number above/Majure’s list works) - so about in line with the ”global” figures.

Edit: Thank you for responding!

>5 abysswalker: "Harold Bloom thought it likely that the J writer (of Genesis) was a woman. I admit I didn’t quite follow his logic"

Probably his usual logic...such as it is....

OK, female authors the Limited Editions Club should have published (the order just being as they come to mind): Sappho, Marguerite de Navarre, Anne Radcliffe, Elizabeth Gaskell, Christina Rossetti, Gertrude Stein, Sarah Orne Jewett, Virginia Woolf (even though I'm not a fan), Beryl Markham, Elizabeth van Arnim, Katharine Mansfield, Barbara Pym (a personal favorite!), Rose Macaulay, Simone de Beauvoir, Flannery O'Connor...I won't include more recent authors, as the Limited Editions Club would not have either been around or been able to get the rights to publish them.

The fact that I got my degrees in the pre-feminist era explains the relative paucity of my recommendations. I hope others here with greater awareness can fill out the list.

Edited to add: The Limited Editions Club rarely ventured into genre literature, or mysteries, but if it did, I would have had to have it also publish the best work of Dorothy Sayers, Daphne du Maurier, and, of course, Agatha Christie.

>1 GusLogan: A few titles that I did not see on your list:
O'Connor, Flannery - Everything That Rises Must Converge (2005)
Hurston, Zora Neale- Bookmarks In the Pages of Life (2000)

Authors I wish the LEC had published:
Charlotte Bronte
Mary Wollstonecraft
Harper Lee
Sappho

>8 Sport1963:

Excellent, many thanks for catching those two! Flannery I would never have guessed was a woman’s name, Zora I should have spotted. Up to 28! Will revise shortly.

Also thanks to >7 Django6924:, our prime mover, for a stimulating list!

>3 jveezer:
I never responded to express my admiration for your project, but here it is. If you see this and have the time I’d appreciate a link to the blog!

>10 GusLogan: You can view the post here:

http://www.thewholebookexperience.com/2016/09/25/women-writers-in-fine-press-rev...

Enjoy! And encourage your fave presses to publish more women!

>8 Sport1963: I'll point you to the Folio Society letterpress Sappho

https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/if-not-winter.html

amazing book at a fabulous price!

>11 jveezer:
Thanks. Interesting reading, I’d only seen a few of your excellent reviews before - though I’m glad I posted before reading this, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have bothered and wouldn’t have had the discussion above!

>13 GusLogan: Thanks for reading! It's all good; the more posts about this the better!