The first international guide to women writers in English, featuring both well-known and obscure women writers from the British Isles and North America as well as writers from the Caribbean, the South Pacific, Australia, Asia and Africa. It includes not only poets, dramatists and novelists, but also diarists, translators, and spiritual autobiographers. Most entries are biograhical but there are numerous topic entries as well. This book is the fruit of research by three editors and fifty specialist consultants. Each entry sets its subject in a chronological, generic and ideological framework and examines her importance or interest today. There is biographical information on origins, education, career and personal relationships plus analysis, with quotes, of writings both published and unpublished. The book also includes general entries on important movements and institutions that have affected women's writing - on genres in which women have been particularly active and on key developments in feminist theory and criticism, education, journalism and publishing.