Crowdsourced History Reading — TA’s List No. 2: Women’s History

.. including a selection of first person accounts and primary historical source texts.

Cross-references to my other topical lists are marked with the addition “cf.”

* Antonia Fraser: all books
(women’s history, Tudors & Stuarts — cf. list no. 1, “Bulk Entries and Basics”)
* Joyce A. Tyldesley: Daughters of Isis: Women of Ancient Egypt
* Various Authors: Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts
* Barbara Beuys: Denn ich bin krank vor Liebe: Das Leben der Hildegard von Bingen
(Biography of Hildegard of Bingen; to the best of my knowledge, not translated into English.)
* Helen Castor: She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth
* Alison Weir: Eleanor of Aquitaine
* Christine de Pizan: La cité des dames (The City of the Ladies), Le débat sur le roman de la rose (The Debate on the Romance of the Rose), and Le ditié de Jéhanne d’Arc (poetic tribute to Jeanne d’Arc)
* Moderata Fonte: The Worth of Women
* David Starkey: Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII, and Elizabeth
* Elizabeth Tudor, Leah Marcus (ed.): Collected Works
* Mary S. Lovell: Bess of Hardwick: First Lady of Chatsworth, 1527-1608
* Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: La Respuesta (The Answer)
* Robert K. Massie: Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman
* Wendy Moore: Wedlock: How Georgian Britain’s Worst Husband Met His Match
* Stefan Zweig: Marie Antoinette
* George Sand: Histoire de ma vie (The Story of My Life), and André Maurois: Lélia, ou la vie de George Sand (Lelia: The Life of George Sand)
* Hannah Arendt: Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman, and Carola Stern: Der Text meines Herzens
(Two excellent biographies of Varnhagen.  English speakers will have to make do with Arendt’s books, but I confess my first love is still Carola Stern’s engaging version, which I read first (and whose title translates as “The Text of My Heart”)).
* Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
* Jane Austen: The History of England, and Claire Tomalin: Jane Austen: A Life
(Austen’s own, just for the fun of it: Austen was 13 when she wrote this, and it says more about her 13 year old self than about the English kings she’s portraying.)
* Elizabeth Gaskell: The Life of Charlotte Brontë
* Alexandra Lapierre: Fanny Stevenson: A Romance of Destiny
* Teffi: Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea
* Alexandra David-Neel: Voyage d’une Parisienne à Lhassa (My Journey to Lhasa)
* Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s Own
* Dorothy L. Sayers: Are Women Human?, and Barbara Reynolds: Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul
* Beryl Markham: West With the Night
* Anne Frank: Diary
* Erica Fischer: Aimée und Jaguar: Ein Liebesgeschichte, Berlin 1943 (Aimée & Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943)
* Jennifer Worth: Call the Midwife

@Chris: This is a bit more than 25 books, but there is a certain amount of overlap between my various topical lists, and I’d prefer to list books under all topics that seem relevant to me, so as to give you the option to list them as you think best fits in turn.