The Top 10 Feminist Books

This is one of the 743 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

Guardian, 10 Books

Gender-based inequality remains the greatest global injustice and the struggle against it spans millennia and continents. These books make us more impatient for change, but they may also be turned to in dark hours when it feels change might never come. Feminism is no impulse or outcome of modernity. As these books show, it has been around for centuries. We don't need to re-invent the wheel, or number what "wave" we are now riding; we need to harness an atomic rocket to it.

By Rachel Holmes, a cultural historian whose work combines meticulous biographical research with an ability to bring the lives and times of her 19th-century subjects vividly to life. Eleanor Marx: A Life (2014) and The Hottentot Venus: The life and death of Saartjie Baartman (2008) is some of her published works.

This list was originally published in 2014 and was added to this site over 1 year ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
2593 Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Jeanette Winterson 2011 British English
6454 Fat Is A Feminist Issue Susie Orbach 1978 British English
21 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
773 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1792 British English
17008 Playing In The Dark Toni Morrison 1992 American English
827 Fear of Flying Erica Jong 1973 American English
17008 The Meaning Of Freedom Angela Davis 2012 American English
17008 The Poetry Of Arab Women Nathalie Handal 2001 Multiple English
15786 The Intelligent Woman's Guide To Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism & Fascism George Bernard Shaw 1928 British English
15786 Saint Joan Of Arc Vita Sackville-West 1936 British English