Feminist

No. 1124: The New Religion
A female author searches in an unusual place for the answer to why math and physics are the last fields opening up to women-she looks in Pythagoras' trousers.

No. 965: Who Stole Feminism?
An author on feminism searches for the ideals of early feminists in controversial reports by the AAUW and other writers.

Literature/Poetry

No. 294: Hroswitha
A Saxon nun who spent 70 years of her life in a convent not only wrote comedies in a style before her time but also described a sun-centered solar system with the earth held in revolution by a gravitational field-centuries before Galileo and Newton developed the same ideas.

No. 918: Fanny Burney
A comparison of two female authors, one from the literary "upper-crust" and one from a lower rung on the social ladder, reveals that a higher class does not make one a better writer.

No. 620: Phillis Wheatley
Boston's colonial residents did not expect to find a teen-age prodigy in an African slave girl. Nevertheless, she mastered English and classic literature and published a book of poetry before dying as a free woman at the age of 31.

No. 1206: Harriet Beecher Stowe
The author of an infamous novel, a woman with "no talent, only genius", is accredited with spurring the onset of the Civil War.

No. 1104: Von Suttner and Nobel
It was not only his love for science and peace that inspired Alfred Nobel to create the famous Prize, but also his love for a woman.

No. 382: Frankenstein's Grandmother
The woman who wrote a celebrated and hated feminist argument passes on her literary talent to her daughter, whose pen creates a horrific image of 19th-century masculinity.

No. 853: Inventing Frankenstein
An animated piece of vermicelli inspires the nighttime imagination of Mary Shelley.

No. 868: Women Romantic Poets
18th-century female poets, struggling against the repression of their creativity, express their anger, their love, and the need for forgiveness.

No. 867: Hannah Ropes
Two Civil War nurses challenge the doctors and even the Secretary of War, bringing about the eventual humanization of military medical care. One of these nurses was the author Louisa May Alcott.

No. 1209: Writing about Flight
There's a curious trend among early pilots-besides flying, many had a passion for writing. Pioneer fliers such as Amelia Earhart, Beryl Markham and Charles Lindbergh used the experience of soaring above the clouds to influence their literary creations.

Scientific/Technical Writings

No. 828: Somerville and Marcet
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi828.htm
This Scottish woman's scientific treatises led to a place in the Royal Society's Great Hall, a condemnation, and a strange equality.

No. 224: Mary Fairfax Somerville
A Scottish woman who had not even been to school as a child was still writing books on science and mathematics at the age of 92-books that helped Britain become the world's scientific leader in the 19th century.

No. 599: Florence Merriam Bailey
Victorian ladies' hats drive a home-educated woman to become a radical environmentalist.

No. 466: Icons of Women in Science
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi466.htm
Until the 18th century, science and mathematics had female faces. Now that female face is returning, not as artistic imagery, but as professional equality.

No. 943: Fairyland of Science
Arabella Buckley's science books for children prove to be not only exquisitely artistic but also solid enough for adult reading.

No. 407: Women in Astronomy
The home-educated wife of an amateur astronomer publishes a set of astronomical tables simplifying Kepler's method for calculating the positions of the stars.

No. 1050: A Brain Radiator
An author on human evolution stumbles upon the missing link after a visit to the car repair shop.

No. 1516: Saving the Lore
There's a new endangered species-and it's human. Can old knowledge survive among new technology?

Textbooks

No. 1195: Dhuoda
Trapped in a castle like Rapunzel, her two sons taken from her and used as political pawns by her husband, the wife of a barbarous military figure in medieval France writes her son a well-crafted instruction manual on theology, philology, philosophy and mathematics.

No. 294: Hroswitha
A Saxon nun who spent 70 years of her life in a convent not only wrote comedies in a style before her time but also described a sun-centered solar system with the earth held in revolution by a gravitational field-centuries before Galileo and Newton developed the same ideas.

No. 219: Emilie de Breteuil
An 18th-century woman flaunts her extramarital love affairs in order to conceal something even more inexcusable-her brilliant mind.

No. 392: Margaret Cavendish
Neither a great thinker nor a great revolutionary, Margaret Cavendish nevertheless had the boldness to seek out a new intellectual place for women in 17th-century society.

No. 397: Maria Merian
A talented German artist writes books on Surinamese entomology and offends the consciences of 17th-century colonialists. As a result, some of her drawings are now being published for the first time, three hundred years after they were created.

No. 1105: Mary Roberts
A female scientist's books on biology also offer, upon a deeper reading, an expression of frustration and rebellion against 19th-century society.

Jane Marcet

No. 828: Somerville and Marcet
This Scottish woman's scientific treatises led to a place in the Royal Society's Great Hall, a condemnation, and a strange equality.

No. 745: Ingenium Haud Absurdum
A Latin quote in the cover of a book reveals that not only the author, but also the reader, feel compelled to apologize and compensate for perceived inadequacies.

No. 744: Jane Marcet's Books
A 15-year-old bookbinder reads a book passing through his shop and the author's ideas influence him so much that he goes on to create our modern concepts of electricity.

No. 900: Political Economy
In one of Jane Marcet's many educational books for girls, a fictional teacher equips young ladies with a knowledge of the political economics that shape their world.

No. 1302: Marcet's Steam Globe
The son of Jane Marcet inherits his mother's love for the machines that move our world.

No. 950: Natural Philosophy
Even though Jane Marcet couldn't attend college, she focused her home liberal education course around natural philosophy. Now natural philosophy has drifted out of the educational nucleus and America is falling behind in teaching science.

No. 1466: Vegetable Physiology
Marcet's fictional teacher explores the dangers of succumbing to the temptations of mysterious theories.