Women have contributed countless acclaimed novels to the world of literature. And yet the majority of books that schools teach are from male writers, with just one out of three assigned readings written by women.
It’s not much of a shock, considering this is an age in which women are still tempted to write under a pen name to beat the gender bias. But this got the team at WordTips thinking: who are the most commonly assigned women authors in American college classes?
Using OpenSyllabus.org, WordTips analyzed over 300,000 English Literature syllabi in U.S. colleges to find out which women-authored books are the most assigned. Based on their findings, they put together a list of the top 50 books and the top 50 authors across the U.S.
Perhaps you’ll recognize a few of their findings.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is the most-assigned novel by a woman, featuring in 4,789 syllabi. It is the most assigned novel by a woman in 41 states. Perhaps the U.S. is something of a Frankenstein itself, pieced together from disparate sources and jolted into life by its turbulent early history.
Virginia Woolf is the most-read woman novelist, with her works appearing 8,054 times across U.S. college syllabi. Woolf’s body of work is ripe for the classroom due to its overarching themes, ground-breaking formal techniques and social politics.
Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison were neck and neck for most assigned novelist, with Toni Morrison coming in as the most-read woman novelist at Ivy League schools.
They also took a look at the most assigned novel in each state, and compared reading assignments in Ivy League vs. public colleges. Want to read more of their findings? Check out the original article published by Wordtips.
