On the opening day of Hay Festival, organisers have announced the results of their #VOTE100BOOKS campaign celebrating 100 books written by women from the last 100 years.
Hundreds of readers have nominated their favourite titles online over the last three months to mark 100 years since some women were given the right to vote.
The resulting selection, organised in association with online platform The Pool, merges great books of all genres, fiction and non-fiction, written by women and published in 1918 or later, from Enough Rope by Dorothy Parker (1926) to Mary Beard’s Women & Power (2017).
Blending modern classics with lesser-known masterpieces the full list features books by JK Rowling, Virginia Woolf, Vera Brittain, Tove Jansson, Anne Frank, Patricia Highsmith, Franc¸oise Sagan, Sylvia Plath, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Jung Chang, Hilary Mantel, Helen Fielding, Marjane Satrapi, Nigella Lawson, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, Naomi Klein, Elena Ferrante, Caitlin Moran, Yaa Gyasi and Leila Slimani, along with Hay Festival 2018 speakers Margaret Atwood, Mary Beard, Elif Shafak, Jacqueline Wilson, Lionel Shriver, Germaine Greer and Laura Bates.
Titles will be discussed and celebrated in a special event hosted by The Pool at Hay Festival on Monday, May 28, while the discussion will continue at Hay Festival events in Mexico, Peru, Spain and Colombia throughout the year.
Sam Baker, co-founder, CEO and editor of The Pool, said: “I am delighted to see 100 books by women – all of them smart or thought-provoking or hilarious or important or all of these things at once – rounded up in one place. I look forward to this list starting conversations, prompting debates and encouraging thousands and thousands of readers to pick up a brilliant book by a brilliant woman.”
Peter Florence, director of Hay Festival, said: “There are books here that have changed lives and changed the world. The list is an extraordinary testament to the power of ideas and stories. And a testament to the wisdom of crowds. What a fabulous bedside book-pile of empowering and enlightening treasures. Race you to the library!”
#VOTE100BOOKS selection (ordered by date of first publication)
Enough Rope: Poems by Dorothy Parker (1926) Orlando by Virginia Woolf (1928) Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932) Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (1933) Frost in May by Antonia White (1933) Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1936) Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937) Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938) The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie (1942) The Moomins and the Great Flood by Tove Jansson (1945) Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren (1945)
The Pursuit of Love Nancy Mitford by Nancy Mitford (1945) The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (1947) Train to Nowhere by Anita Leslie (1948) I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith (1948) The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949) Babette’s Feast by Karen Blixen (1950) A Book of Mediterranean Food by Elizabeth David (1950) Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith (1950) Under the Net by Iris Murdoch (1954) Bonjour Tristesse by Franc¸oise Sagan (1954) The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West (1956) The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt (1958) The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960) The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien (1960) The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1961) The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1962) The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (1963) The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector (1964) Ariel by Sylvia Plath (1965) Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (1966) I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (1969) The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (1969) The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (1970) Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor (1971) Into That Darkness by Gitta Sereny (1974) Ain’t I A Woman by Bell Hooks (1981) The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (1982) The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend (1982) The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982) Heartburn by Nora Ephron (1983) The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985) Standing Female Nude by Carol Ann Duffy (1985) Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson (1985) Henry and June: From the Unexpurgated Diary of Anai¨s Nin by Anai¨s Nin (1986) Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987) Bad Behaviour by Mary Gaitskill (1988) The View from the Ground by Martha Gellhorn (1988) Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (1989) Possession by A S Byatt (1990) Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker (1991) Wise Children by Angela Carter (1991) Wild Swans by Jung Chang (1991) How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed by Slavenka Drakulic (1992) A Greater Place of Safety by Hilary Mantel (1992) The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992) The Land of Green Plums by Herta Mu¨ller (1994) Bridget Jones’ Diary by Helen Fielding (1996)
Selected Stories by Alice Munro (1996) Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes (1997) The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997) The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (1998) Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters (1998) The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson (1999) The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives by Carole Hillenbrand (1999) How To Eat by Nigella Lawson (1999) Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx (1999) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling (1999) White Teeth by Zadie Smith (1999) Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2000) Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman (2001) Unless by Carol Shields (2002) Brick Lane by Monica Ali (2003) Notes On A Scandal by Zoe Heller (2003) What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt (2003) We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver (2003) The Illustrated Mum by Jacqueline Wilson (2003) Small Island by Andrea Levy (2004) Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2004) The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (2005) The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (2005) Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche (2006) Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak (2006) The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (2007) The Road Home by Rose Tremain (2007) At the Source: A Writer’s Year by Gillian Clarke (2008) Three Strong Women by Marie Ndiaye (2009) My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (2011) Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012) How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran (2012) A Girl is a Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride (2013) Everyday Sexism by Laura Bates (2014) Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill (2014) Headscarves and Hymens by Mona Eltahawy (2015) The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (2015) Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (2016) Falling Awake by Alice Oswald (2016) Lullaby by Leila Slimani (2016) Women & Power by Mary Beard (2017)
View the full list at hayfestival.org/vote-100-books/