Image: Marie de France ([source](https://www.medievalists.net/2019/08/what-makes-breton-lays-breton-bretons-britons-and-celtic-otherness-in-medieval-romance/));xNLx;Background image: A crossed letter written by Mrs. F. L. Bridgeman to Fanny West, December 15, 1837. (Miscellaneous Collection; Reference Code: F775 (1837-10); Archives of Ontario) ([Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:10_16_cross_writing_1020.jpg));xNLx;;xNLx;This timeline benefits from a number of sources, including the invaluable [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page). Images are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license unless otherwise stated. All errors are my own.;xNLx;;xNLx;Compiled by Miriam Jones, Humanities and Languages, [University of New Brunswick Saint John](https://unb.ca), in Menahkwesk on the unceded land of the Wabanaki Confederacy.
"The Wife's Lament" is one of the poems collected in the Exeter Book, the largest and oldest collection of Old English poetry extant.
Marie de France was an Anglo-Norman writer of tales, fables, and at least one hagiography.
There are twelve Breton lais by Marie de France extant: chivalric tales written in Anglo Norman.
Julian of Norwich (1343 – after 1416) was a Christian mystic writer and anchorite.
Julian of Norwich wrote two versions of her famous text:
Margery Kempe (c. 1373 – after 1438) was a Christian mystic, writer, and traveller.
Margery Kempe's spiritual autobiography was not published in its entirely until the twentieth century.
Gwerful Mechain (fl. 1460–1502) was a Welsh medieval poet.
Aemilia Lanyer (1569–1645), poet
Lady Mary Wroth (1587–1653) was a Renaissance poet.
Rachel Speght was a Calvinist feminist polemicist.
Collected in Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611).
Anne Bradstreet (March 20, 1612 – September 16, 1672) was the published first writer in England's North American colonies.
Trans. "a muzzle for a black mouth"
Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (1621) is the second-known sonnet sequence by a woman in English.
Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1623 – 15 December 1673) was a philosopher, poet, and playwright.
Dorothy Osborne, Lady Temple (1627–1695) was a British writer mentioned briefly by Virginia Woolf.
Katherine Philips (1 January 1631/2 – 22 June 1664) was also known as "The Matchless Orinda."
Mary Rowlandson, née White, later Mary Talcott (c. 1637 – January 5, 1711)
"Aphra Behn, the 17th-century poet, playwright and fiction writer, is hailed by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own (1929) for having ‘earned [women] the right to speak their minds’" (British Library).
Margaret Cavendish published this collection in 1653.
Anne Killigrew (1660–1685) was a poet and painter.
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (née Kingsmill; April 1661 – 5 August 1720), poet, is mentioned by Virginia Woolf.
In this poem, Katherine Philips reflects on matrimony.
Katherine Philips wrote this poem to a friend from whom she was separated by marriage.
This collection of Anne Bradstreet's poems was published posthumously in 1678.
Mary Rowlandson's autobiographical text can be categorized as a captivity narrative.
Anne Finch wrote this poem in answer to Alexander Pope.
Anne Killigrew's Poems were published in 1686.
Aphra Behn
The full title to Aphra Behn's poem is “To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me, Imagined More than a Woman."
"The Adventure of the Black Lady" is a short amatory fiction by Aphra Behn.
Sarah Scott (née Robinson) (21 September 1720 – 3 November 1795)
Frances Burney (13 June 1752 – 6 January 1840), novelist, is mentioned briefly by Virginia Woolf.
Sarah Scott's novel was published in 1762.
Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817), novelist, is discussed by Virginia Woolf.
Mary Russell Mitford (16 December 1787 – 10 January 1855) was an English author whom Virginia Woolf mentions in passing.
Richard Polwhele's poem
Elizabeth Gaskell (29 September 1810 – 12 November 1865), novelist, is mentioned by Virginia Woolf.
Charlotte Brontë (21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855), novelist, is discussed by Virginia Woolf.
Emily Brontë (30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848), novelist, is discussed by Virginia Woolf.
Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), novelist, who wrote under the name George Eliot, is discussed by Virginia Woolf.
Sarah Emily Davies (22 April 1830 – 13 July 1921), co-founder of Girton College, Cambridge University, is mentioned by Virginia Woolf.
Feminist literary critics should throw roses upon the grave of Virginia Woolf (25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941), for it was she who laid the scaffolding for their discipline.
Rebecca West (21 December 1892 – 15 March 1983), author, was mentioned by Virginia Woolf.
Based on talks given at Newnham College and Girton College in 1928,
Audre Lorde (February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer and activist.
In 1979 Audre Lorde made a speech, "The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House."
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