- Joined
- Nov 12, 2015
- Messages
- 1,011
- Reaction score
- 194
So a Twitter thread related to the history of the genre came across my feed the other day. I don't want to go into too much detail because it was a bit fractious but I did pick up this factoid: there were a lot of women writing in those early days that don't get talked about today.
So for both my own reference and for anyone else who might be interested, I figure I'll list those that were mentioned here. Where there are public domain editions of their work available, I'll link those too (I haven't checked for in-print editions of all of them but those are likely to be rare).
Jane C. Loudon (1807-1858)
Louden mostly wrote gardening manuals but her novel, The Mummy, predated Jules Verne and is set in an imagined 22nd century. (Project Gutenberg texts - LibriVox audiobook)
Gertrude Barrows Bennett (pseudonym: Francis Stephens) (1884-1948)
Has been called "the woman who invented dark fantasy" and may have been an influence for Lovecraft. She wrote shorts and novels throughout her life and was the first American woman to be widely published in the genre. (Etext editions of her novels are scattered about the web; the most convenient source appears to be Manybooks which offers three novels: Cidatel of Fear, The Heads of Cerberus and Friend Island.)
Claire Wagner Harris (1891-1968)
Harris was a prolific short writer, published in Amazing Stories and a handful of other pulp magazines. She was the first woman to do so under her own name. (Some back issues of those magazines can be found on the Internet Archive and a number of her stories have been reprinted in various anthologies. The complete collection, Away from the Here and Now, doesn't look to be in print anywhere.)
Charlotte Haldane (1894-1969)
An outspoken activist and feminist as well as a prolific novelist, she is best known for the dystopian novel Man's World which envisions a society ruled by a male scientific elite that tightly control women's lives.
Katharine Burdekin (1896-1963)
As a novelist, Burdekin had wide range but she is best known for her utopian/dystopian works which were strongly feminist and anti-fascist. Her best known novel, Swastika Night, envisions a future where the Axis succeeded in taking over the world (before WWII had officially started).
So for both my own reference and for anyone else who might be interested, I figure I'll list those that were mentioned here. Where there are public domain editions of their work available, I'll link those too (I haven't checked for in-print editions of all of them but those are likely to be rare).
Jane C. Loudon (1807-1858)
Louden mostly wrote gardening manuals but her novel, The Mummy, predated Jules Verne and is set in an imagined 22nd century. (Project Gutenberg texts - LibriVox audiobook)
Gertrude Barrows Bennett (pseudonym: Francis Stephens) (1884-1948)
Has been called "the woman who invented dark fantasy" and may have been an influence for Lovecraft. She wrote shorts and novels throughout her life and was the first American woman to be widely published in the genre. (Etext editions of her novels are scattered about the web; the most convenient source appears to be Manybooks which offers three novels: Cidatel of Fear, The Heads of Cerberus and Friend Island.)
Claire Wagner Harris (1891-1968)
Harris was a prolific short writer, published in Amazing Stories and a handful of other pulp magazines. She was the first woman to do so under her own name. (Some back issues of those magazines can be found on the Internet Archive and a number of her stories have been reprinted in various anthologies. The complete collection, Away from the Here and Now, doesn't look to be in print anywhere.)
Charlotte Haldane (1894-1969)
An outspoken activist and feminist as well as a prolific novelist, she is best known for the dystopian novel Man's World which envisions a society ruled by a male scientific elite that tightly control women's lives.
Katharine Burdekin (1896-1963)
As a novelist, Burdekin had wide range but she is best known for her utopian/dystopian works which were strongly feminist and anti-fascist. Her best known novel, Swastika Night, envisions a future where the Axis succeeded in taking over the world (before WWII had officially started).
Last edited:
