Women writers

There have always been good women writers, but until the 1950s it was not easy for a woman writer to sell many of her books under her own name. Many nineteenth-century women writers used male pen names or pseudonyms: George Eliot, an important nineteenth-century writer (1819 - 1880), never used her real name which was Mary Ann Evans.

Things are changing. Since the 1950s, the number of well-known women writers has increased. Women writers are now winning prizes for literature. Nadine Gordimer, a South African writer, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991 with July's People.

Michael Vaughan-Rees, Geraldine Sweeney, Picot Cassidy: In Britain. 21st Century Edition, Cornelsen Verlag, 2000, page 52