From Christine de Pisan's medieval love poetry to Nadine Gordimer's dissection of apartheid, the works of the 135 authors represent the entire spectrum of writing by women from around the world--in poetry, drama, the novel, and short fiction, from antiquity to the end of the twentieth century.

Louisa May Alcott -- Elizabeth Bishop -- Angela Carter -- Simone de Beauvoir -- Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell -- Lorraine Hansberry -- Shirley Jackson -- Adrienne Kennedy -- Madame de La Fayette -- Mary McCarthy -- Gloria Naylor -- Joyce Carol Oates -- Grace Paley -- Ann Radcliffe -- Nelly Sachs -- Tatyana Tolstaya -- Mona Van Duyn -- Alice Walker.