Charmian London When we meet Saxon, the heroine of Jack London’s The Valley of the Moon [1915], she is ironing fancy linen in a steamin...

Over a 37-year period, Ursula Le Guin used her Earthsea series to state and refine her concepts of the nature of being and doing, living ...

Woman of Taihu, William Armstrong O-lan becomes the wife of Wang Lung in the opening chapter of Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth [1931]. She...

Mary Austin, 1906, Huntington Library Born in Illinois in 1868, it is Mary Austin’s understanding of how people are affected by their en...

Lois Rosenthal, Philanthropist (my image of Nedra) "Nedra was working in the kitchen, her rings set aside. She was tall, preoccupie...

Doris Lessing by Godfrey Argent, 1969 Martha is the main protagonist of a five-novel series called The Children of Violence [published...

Annie Dillard At 23, Lou Bigelow meets Toby Maytree in Provincetown. He sees her first on a bicycle, “A red scarf, white shirt, skin cle...