A Timeline of Early Women Authors

When we think of the “great books” of the Western tradition, we typically imagine a parade of male authors: Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton. But this is a distorted picture, shaped by centuries of selective preservation and Victorian editorial choices.

Women have been writing for as long as men. The problem is that their works were less likely to be copied, less likely to be printed, and less likely to be assigned in schools. Many were lost. Many others survived but were forgotten. The recovery of these voices is one of the great scholarly achievements of the past fifty years.

The Pythagorean Women

The tradition of women philosophers begins at the very beginning of Western philosophy itself.Themistoclea, a priestess at Delphi, is said to have taught Pythagoras his moral doctrines. His wife Theano and daughters Myia and Damo continued the school after his death.

Other Pythagorean women—Aesara of Lucania, Phintys, Perictione—left fragments on ethics and the harmony of the soul. These texts survived because later male philosophers quoted them. The Victorians knew about them but showed little interest. Today, scholarly attention has increased 10-fold.

The Medieval Mystics

After Hypatia's murder in 415 CE, we have a gap of several centuries. Then, beginning in the 10th century, a remarkable tradition of women's writing emerged in the convents and courts of medieval Europe.

Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim (935–1002) was a Saxon canoness who wrote six plays in Latin—the first dramas composed in Europe since antiquity. She explicitly modeled them on Terence, but replaced his plots of seduction with stories of Christian martyrdom and conversion.

Meanwhile in Japan, Murasaki Shikibu was composing the Tale of Genji (c. 1010), widely considered the world's first novel. Her contemporary Sei Shōnagon wrote the Pillow Book, a genre-defining collection of observations and lists.

In the West, Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) stands as the most versatile genius of the medieval period: composer, medical writer, theologian, and visionary. Her musical compositions are still performed; her herbal remedies are still studied; her visions still inspire.

The German Mystics: A Lost School

One of the most striking patterns in our data is the German mystic tradition of the 13th century. At the convent of Helfta in Saxony, three extraordinary women overlapped:

• Mechthild of Magdeburg (1207–1282) — Flowing Light of the Godhead
• Gertrude the Great (1256–1302) — Herald of Divine Love
• Mechthild of Hackeborn (1241–1299) — Book of Special Grace

These women developed a distinctive theology of mystical love, often called Brautmystik (bridal mysticism). Their influence on later spirituality—including Meister Eckhart—was profound. Yet the Victorians barely knew them. Mechthild of Magdeburg shows 100x growth in citations from Victorian to Digital era; Mechthild of Hackeborn shows 41x growth.

Marguerite d'Oingt (1240–1310), a Carthusian mystic, shows the most dramatic recovery:278x growth. She was virtually invisible to Victorian scholarship.

The Italian Humanists

The 15th century saw a remarkable flowering of women's learning in the Italian courts. These women were trained in the studia humanitatis—Latin, Greek, rhetoric, poetry—and demonstrated their skills through public orations.

These women were famous in their own time. Cassandra Fedele was invited to address scholars at Padua;Ippolita Maria Sforza gave a Latin oration to Pope Pius II at age 15. But by the 19th century, most had been forgotten. Laura Cereta shows 56x growth;Battista Malatesta shows 17x growth.

The First Feminists

Christine de Pizan (1364–1430) is often called the first professional woman writer in European history. Her Book of the City of Ladies (1405) is a systematic defense of women's capabilities, written in response to misogynist attacks.

This tradition continued with Moderata Fonte's The Worth of Women (1600) and Lucrezia Marinella's The Nobility and Excellence of Women (1600)—both Venetian responses to a treatise claiming women's inferiority.

By the 17th century, we have Marie de Gournay's Equality of Men and Women (1622) and Mary Astell's A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694)—the latter calling for women's colleges a century before they existed.

Women Scientists

Women also participated in the Scientific Revolution, though their contributions were often attributed to husbands or fathers.

Sophie Brahe (1559–1643) assisted her brother Tycho with astronomical observations.Maria Cunitz (1610–1664) published Urania Propitia, simplifying Kepler's tables.Maria Margarethe Kirch (1670–1720) discovered a comet in 1702—but her husband got the credit.

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717) traveled to Suriname at age 52 to study insect metamorphosis, producing illustrations that are still cited in entomology. She shows 14x growth in citations.

And Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) was the first woman to attend a meeting of the Royal Society—and was mocked for it. Her science fiction novel The Blazing World (1666) is now considered a foundational text of the genre.

Why Were They Forgotten?

Several factors contributed to the erasure of women's writing:

• Manuscript loss: Women's writings were less likely to be copied
• Print bias: Early printers preferred male authors
• Canonization: School curricula selected male texts
• Victorian editing: 19th-century editors had strong biases
• Attribution: Women's work was often credited to men

The recovery of these voices is ongoing. New translations, critical editions, and scholarly studies appear every year. The Ngram data shows this process in action: most of these authors have 5-100x more citations today than they did in the Victorian era.

The Biggest Recoveries

Looking at the Google Ngram data, these authors show the most dramatic increases in scholarly attention:

For the full dataset of 120+ women authors with Ngram data, see our cultural attention tracker.