• Catfish@aussie.zone
    1·
    2 hours ago

    Tanith Lee, Mary Gentle, Melanie Rawn deserve mentions. (MZB I haven’t been able to read since learning…) Anais Nin was mostly intentionally writing trash but is fun

  • Libb@piefed.socialEnglish
    5·
    3 hours ago

    I don’t have ‘best female author of all time’ but I do have favorite writers some of which happen to be female. I don’t usually split them by their sex (nor by their height, distaste for bananas, or whatever) as for me they’re all in the same ‘people who have a great time staining paper with ink making me a happy reader’ league but here it is, in absolutely no order beside the first two, as there is them and then there is all the others:

    • Virginia Woolf (the only reason I would love to be able to travel in time is to meet her),
    • Jane Austen,
    • Edit: (how could I forget) Emily Dickinson!
    • Sylvia Plath,
    • Shirley Jackson (if you have not already, go read The Haunting of Hill House, it’s considered a classic for reasons),
    • la marquise de Sévigné (she wrote letters and they make for a great read, no idea if it’s available in English),
    • Margaret Atwood (imho she deserves a Nobel Prize, next to Woolf and Austen),
    • Mary Shelley (like mentioned by others already, she well deserves to be read and would still have a lot to teach to some contemporary authors too, imho).
    • I love reading Lizza Tuttle. Her horror short stories are different.
    • In the same vein, I also quite like Mélanie Fazzi (who is also a translator of some of Tuttle’s stories, btw). But I can’t find that much more female writers in that specific genre (a lot more males do come to my mind).

    Being French, I realize I have not listed that many French female writers I would consider a favorite. But they are a few I would consider excellent read nonetheless:

    • La comtesse de Ségur (one of my childhood companion next to, say, Verne and Doyle),
    • Simone de Beauvoir,
    • (very) few pages of Marguerite Duras,
    • Fred Vargas.
    • To which I would also add Pauline Réage, because I think her ‘Histoire d’O’ is well worth reading for anyone into erotica.
    • At one time, I also quite liked Joëlle Wintrebert (scifi) but I have not felt like reading her for a very long time so I could not tell.
  • remon@ani.social
    82·
    4 hours ago

    Some people are about to lose their marbles but just going by the numbers: J. K. Rowling.

    She authored the 4th best selling single book of all time and the best selling book series of all time, by quite the margin.

      • remon@ani.social
        3·
        3 hours ago

        Sure, but when you asking about a specific profession, that seems the most obvious way to interpret that question.

        Unless OP just wants to find a nice female author to hang out with (in that case we should probably exclude all the dead ones).

        • MurrayL@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          3 hours ago

          Financial success is a poor measure for the worth of artists of any stripe. If anything, it has an inverse relationship.

          • remon@ani.social
            1·
            3 hours ago

            Pretty sure a lot of artists that are just scratching by would disagree, but fair enough.

        • ValiantDust@feddit.org
          2·
          3 hours ago

          Counterpoint: If success is what we base this on, then E. L. James (50 shades of grey) is a very good author.

        • ohulancutash@feddit.ukEnglish
          2·
          3 hours ago

          Sure, if you’re talking about insurance salespeople or stockbrokers. But in the creative field, things are a little deeper.

  • SchwertImStein@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    21·
    2 hours ago

    metacommantary: "

    Who is the best X of all time?"

    All answers are about am*rican or british X.

    This thread also made me realise that I do not read that many woman-writ books.

    answer:

    I enjoyed books by : Ursula K. Le Guin, JK Rowling, Patricia Ann McKillip, and Kathy Reichs.

  • starlinguk@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 hours ago

    Ellen Booraem (YA, she’s great at writing books from a totally different angle), Oyinkan Braithwaite (she’s only written two books so far but they’re great), Katharine Kerr.

  • eightpix@lemmy.world
    18·
    6 hours ago

    Fiction

    • Ursula K. LeGuin

    • Octavia Butler

    • Margaret Atwood

    • Tui T. Sutherland (J Fic)

    • Suzanne Collins (YA)

    • Lois Lowry (YA)

    Non-Fiction

    • Naomi Klein

    • Margaret Atwood (Massey Lecture)

    • Angela Y. Davis

    • Tanya Talaga

    • bell hooks

    • Robin Wall Kimmerer

  • UncleArthur@lemmy.world
    2·
    3 hours ago

    I’m voting for Julian May (yes, she was female). Her best series of books were the Saga of Pliocene Exile and the Galactic Milieu trilogy (in 4 parts).