Miles Franklin
Ursula le Guin is a great SF writer
Astrid Lindgren, her books are translated to 95 different languages and sold over 160 million copies. Probably the worlds most beloved children’s book author.
A lot of greats have been mentioned already, so I’ll add Han Kang to the mix.
I don’t have ‘best female author of all time’ but I do have favorite writers some of which happen to be female. I don’t usually split them by their sex (nor by their height, distaste for bananas, or whatever) as for me they’re all in the same ‘people who have a great time staining paper with ink making me a happy reader’ league but here it is, in absolutely no order beside the first two, as there is them and then there is all the others:
- Virginia Woolf (the only reason I would love to be able to travel in time is to meet her),
- Jane Austen,
- Edit: (how could I forget) Emily Dickinson!
- Sylvia Plath,
- Shirley Jackson (if you have not already, go read The Haunting of Hill House, it’s considered a classic for reasons),
- la marquise de Sévigné (she wrote letters and they make for a great read, no idea if it’s available in English),
- Margaret Atwood (imho she deserves a Nobel Prize, next to Woolf and Austen),
- Mary Shelley (like mentioned by others already, she well deserves to be read and would still have a lot to teach to some contemporary authors too, imho).
- I love reading Lizza Tuttle. Her horror short stories are different.
- In the same vein, I also quite like Mélanie Fazzi (who is also a translator of some of Tuttle’s stories, btw). But I can’t find that much more female writers in that specific genre (a lot more males do come to my mind).
Being French, I realize I have not listed that many French female writers I would consider a favorite. But they are a few I would consider excellent read nonetheless:
- La comtesse de Ségur (one of my childhood companion next to, say, Verne and Doyle),
- Simone de Beauvoir,
- (very) few pages of Marguerite Duras,
- Fred Vargas.
- To which I would also add Pauline Réage, because I think her ‘Histoire d’O’ is well worth reading for anyone into erotica.
- At one time, I also quite liked Joëlle Wintrebert (scifi) but I have not felt like reading her for a very long time so I could not tell.
- Rosa Luxemburg: Great German socialist thinker and revolutionary
- Emma Goldman: Lithuanian Jewish Anarchist and feminist thinker
- Voltairine de Cleyre: American Anarchist and political thinker
- Luisa Capetillo : Puerto Rican labor organizer and anarcha-feminist
Agatha Christie. While not quite what I like there is no denying her success.
Fiction
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Ursula K. LeGuin
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Octavia Butler
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Margaret Atwood
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Tui T. Sutherland (J Fic)
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Suzanne Collins (YA)
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Lois Lowry (YA)
Non-Fiction
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Naomi Klein
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Margaret Atwood (Massey Lecture)
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Angela Y. Davis
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Tanya Talaga
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bell hooks
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Robin Wall Kimmerer
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Tamsyn Muir comes to mind for her excellent locked tomb series
This has been living rent-free in my head since I started reading it a month ago, and now I’m rereading it already.
Ursula K LeGuin?
Sorry, but read “Walk To The end Of The World” by Suzy McKee Charnas,
/thread
No love for Robin Hobb?
Much, and lindholm
Poets are authors too, so I’m tossing mine in for Emily Dickinson
I have no idea what this question is asking but I like Donna Tartt
I don’t know about “of all time” but “The Coming Plague” by Laurie Garrett should be required reading.
Some people are about to lose their marbles but just going by the numbers: J. K. Rowling.
She authored the 4th best selling single book of all time and the best selling book series of all time, by quite the margin.
Definitely one of the greats. Her characters have a life that is missing in quite a few of the other greats. Her world building and story telling are fantastic, especially considering she didn’t do the kind of historic world building Tolkien engaged in before even telling his stories. J. K. Rowling definitely belongs on the list of great authors in general, not just great female authors.
I’d say that would be considered “most successful”
“Best” is very subjective
Best is always subjective when it comes to art, but I think she is squarely in the safe zone for wearing the label.
Sure, but when you asking about a specific profession, that seems the most obvious way to interpret that question.
Unless OP just wants to find a nice female author to hang out with (in that case we should probably exclude all the dead ones).
Could also just be to start a discussion or find new authors to check out
Financial success is a poor measure for the worth of artists of any stripe. If anything, it has an inverse relationship.
Pretty sure a lot of artists that are just scratching by would disagree, but fair enough.
Counterpoint: If success is what we base this on, then E. L. James (50 shades of grey) is a very good author.
Sure, if you’re talking about insurance salespeople or stockbrokers. But in the creative field, things are a little deeper.
