In A Jury of Her Peers, Elaine Showalter chronicles the history of female American writers, from captivity narratives to Annie Proulx. Salon calls her “the woman for the job” due to her 1978 book A Literature of Their Own: British Woman Novelists from Bronte to Lessing. One of the founders of feminist literary criticism, Showalter “brings a perspective to changing literary culture that makes criticism seem not only understandable but also healthy and invigorating,” according to the LA Times. (Passionate Minds, a title from 2000, also catalogs female writers “to reckon with.”)
