Inspired and informed by her groundbreaking history A Jury of Her Peers, Elaine Showalter's landmark anthology features the best work of writers ranging from Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet to contemporary stars like Annie Proulx and Jhumpa Lahiri. For centuries women have been marginalized and overlooked in American literary history and Showalter's collection corrects this injustice, allowing us to see our famous women writers in their full literary context and to encounter scores of lesser-known and forgotten writers who fully deserve to be rediscovered and enjoyed by new generations of readers. Sure to fuel debate for years to come, The Vintage Book of American Women Writers offers an epic overview of the canon in one readable, entertaining, and provocative volume.á

Showalter follows her invigorating literary history A Jury of Her Peers: Celebrating American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (2009) with an equally substantial and exciting anthology encompassing 350 years and 79 writers of diverse backgrounds, locations, and literary styles, each introduced with brief, vivid biographical sketches. As Showalter observes, women's writing has been "closely allied" with the quest for not only women's rights but also universal human rights and justice, as well as literary exploration and excellence. Showalter's chronological survey of "the literary mothers of us all" takes measure of the great reach and splendid variety of women's writing and how it has illuminated America's continuing transformation and shaped American literature. Naturally, such pillars as Emily Dickinson, Louisa May Alcott, Edith Wharton, Zora Neale Hurston, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Flannery O'Connor are present. But here, too, are versatile Lydia Maria Child, early African American writer Frances E. W. Harper, short story writer Constance Fenimore Woolson, courageous Kate Chopin, blacklisted Meridel Le Sueur, and on to Joyce Carol Oates, Cynthia Ozick, Amy Tan, and Jhumpa Lahiri.