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…often women aren’t allowed to be characters in history, they have to be stereotypes. Cleopatra was a poet and a philosopher, she was incredibly good at maths; she wasn’t that much of a looker. But when we think of her, we think: big breasted seductress bathing in milk. Often, even when women have made their mark and they are remembered by history, we are offered a fantasy version of their lives.

Dr. Bettany Hughes on women’s absence from history, and the ways historians need to actively put women back into the narrative.  (via thepoliticalnotebook)
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resmeae:

rinielle:

jellyfishjulie:

ladies invented your favorite science fiction subgenres

Margaret Cavendish – Mary Shelley –  Emma Orczy – Catherine Lucille Moore

The Modern Novel:

Though there’s debate over it, many consider Murasaki Shikibu’s ’The Tale of Genji’ to be the first ‘novel’ as we might understand it today. It is, at the very least, considered one of the earliest classics and one of the most important pieces of literature of it’s time.

Not to mention, one the claimants to being the earliest known literary author was a woman known as Enheduanna. 

A high priestess, Sumerian poet and hymn writer. She was also, arguably, the first to utilise writing in the first person. 

We can never ever know who the first writer was, we certainly can never know the first storyteller, but what we can say with certainty is that ladies have been instrumental in shaping all sorts of writing and storytelling styles since the very beginning.

I’ll add that the first thing we might call autobiography in English was a woman named Margery Kempe.