Hayley~ Four Great Biographies Following Women’s History Month

This March we have celebrated Women’s History Month – a month dedicated to highlighting and celebrating the achievements and contributions women have made throughout history and in society today. Beginning as "Women's History Day" in Sonoma County, California, the celebration was then recognised as a week in 1980, before going on to become a month in 1987. Throughout this month there have been lots of events to mark the celebration, including the announcement of the longlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022. To carry on the celebration of women into the rest of the year, here are four biographies about some of history’s most important writers, activists and heroines.

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark

While there has already been so much written about the titan poet, Clark’s new biography brings a refreshing and open perspective to Plath’s life and work, moving away from the events of her tragic death and instead focusing on Plath’s literary achievements. An American academic and professor of contemporary poetry at Huddersfield University, Clark spent nearly ten years writing this book which went on to be a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize. As well as previously unpublished letters and journals, Clark includes portions of Plath’s ‘lost’ novel Falcon Yard, and work from the unpublished archive of Harriet Rosenstein, another Plath biographer who never completed their book. Delving back into Plath’s earlier relationships, her mental health, and her determination to avoid becoming a ‘conventional’ woman, Clark brings to life the work of the formidable poet. I remember studying Plath’s work for the first time when I was at school, and like many readers I was blown away by her writing, so I am very excited to read Clark’s insights on the previously unpublished material that she has been able to include.

Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion

Published just a few months before she passed away, Joan Didion’s final collection of essays reveal glimpses into her earlier life and work. An essayist and political writer, Didion’s career spanned five decades, with much of her writing reflecting on the counterculture in the 1960’s and 70’s. In 2005 she won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her memoir ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’. These never before collected pieces, written between 1968 and 2000, range from a session at Gambler’s Anonymous to being rejected from Stamford University, and feature 20th century icons such as Nancy Reagan and Ernest Hemingway. As the pieces span across most of Didion’s career, this collection is a great entry point into her writing.

An Autobiography by Angela Y. Davis

Originally published in 1974 and edited by Toni Morrison (one of my absolute favourite authors), Davis’ biography is a compelling account of her life as a trail-blazing writer and activist. The author of seminal works including ‘Women, Race, and Class’ and ‘If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance’, Davis was at the forefront of Black Liberation and feminist movements in the 1970s. With a new introduction by Davis, she reflects with warmth, conviction, and revolutionary spirit, on her upbringing in Birmingham, Alabama, her political activism as a teenager, her work with the Black Panther Party, and her arrest in 1970. I have read lots around Davis’ political work and I am fascinated to learn more about her life.

Roaring Girls : The Extraordinary Lives of History's Unsung Heroines by Holly Kyte

What does it mean to be a ‘Roaring Girl’? Someone who is loud when they should be quiet, someone who is disruptive when they are expected to behave. In Kyte’s new book we meet eight ‘forgotten’ women from across the centuries of Western history who have defied systems to forge their own paths and ultimately shape society today. Featuring pioneering women such as Margaret Cavendish, arguably one of Britain’s first science fiction writers, Mary Prince, a Black British 17th century abolitionist, and Caroline Norton, an author and social reformer, Kyte’s lively and thoroughly researched biographies explore what these trailblazing women did to be considered outrageous or scandalous in their time, and why it is important to remember them.