100 years of the vote with Penguin Women Writers

Today the rather beautiful Penguin Women Writers series is out! Here’s editor Isabel Wall to tell you a little bit about why she wanted to publish a series of books championing little-known women’s voices.

Plus! Don’t miss a chance to win the series on the @WomensPrize Instagram.

In February 2018 it will be exactly one hundred years since women first secured the right to vote in Britain. This achievement represents decades of unwavering commitment by women who campaigned to make their voices heard. I wanted to celebrate the spirit of this anniversary by finding new readers for books by women that have been unfairly neglected.

I decided to invite two of our most acclaimed contemporary writers, Penelope Lively and Kamila Shamsie, to choose and introduce four books by female writers they felt deserved to be better known in the UK (as well as to showcase the work of the artist Martha Rich, who created the striking hand-painted covers). The resulting Penguin Women Writers series is a brilliantly diverse collection of forgotten classics, all of which are, in their own way, a fitting tribute to the radical and pioneering spirit behind the anniversary.

Penelope Lively champions the work of Mary McCarthy, the fiercely intelligent and acerbic American writer and activist, whose novel Birds of America explores political issues as relevant today as when it was first written in 1971, from the threat of war to environmental destruction. It’s also a witty account of the strange and surprising nature of growing up, as her teenage protagonist discovers when he leaves America for a thrilling new life in Paris. Her second choice might seem surprising at first glance, since it comes from the beloved children’s writer E Nesbit. The Lark is one of her little-known novels for adults, first published in 1922: an utterly joyful novel about two young girls determined to earn a living of their own after their male guardian gambles away their inheritance.

© Robert Shiret

Kamila Shamsie’s choices will introduce readers to writers who are renowned in other parts of the world but barely known here in the UK: Ismat Chughtai and Sara Suleri. Chughtai was India’s most controversial feminist writer who was prosecuted (unsuccessfully) on obscenity charges for daring to write about lesbian love in 1940s India. This is just one of the pieces contained in Lifting the Veil, a wickedly funny collection of short stories and autobiographical fragments which explore female sexuality in a patriarchal world. Suleri’s Meatless Days, first published in 1989, is a searing memoir of life in Pakistan; the sudden death of the author’s mother and sister inspire a profound and heart-breaking meditation on love and grief.

Events like the centenary remind us of the life-changing work done by women for women. The books in the Penguin Women Writers series were written at different times by authors of different religions, nationalities and political beliefs. All of them, however, shared a radical and progressive outlook which captures the spirit of the women who fought for the right to vote one hundred years ago. In commissioning this series I hope that a new generation of readers will enjoy discovering these forgotten literary gems and, in so doing, they will be paying tribute in their own small way to the creative achievements of a group of inspirational female writers of the twentieth century.

Fallen in love with these beautiful little books? Don’t miss a chance to win the whole series on the @WomensPrize Instagram.