Women writers season 2025
Thus, towards the end of the eighteenth century a change came about which, if I were rewriting history, I should describe more fully and think of greater importance than the Crusades or the Wars of the Roses. The middle-class woman began to write.
For if Pride and Prejudice matters, and Middlemarch and Villette and Wuthering Heights matter, then it matters far more than I can prove in an hour's discourse that women generally […] took to writing. Without those forerunners, Jane Austen and the Brontës and George Eliot could [not have] written’.
- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929), ch. 4
Join us for a season of writings by women – many of them masterpieces; all of them interesting. We study great works from the early nineteenth century until the 1930s.
The season runs from January to December 2025, with a break over summer. A rare chance to study some of the great women writers of the 19th and 20th centuries.
To book, scroll down to images below.
Women Writers Season 2025: Lecture List
Saturday 25 January 2025. Greta Colombani on Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
Saturday 22 February. Alison Hennegan on Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
Saturday 22 March. Corinna Russell on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (1857)
Saturday 26 April. Clare Walker Gore on George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872)
Saturday 24 May. Trudi Tate on Elizabeth Bowen, To the North (1932)
Saturday 28 June. Lisa Mullen on Inez Holden, Night Shift (1941)
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Saturday 20 September. Alison Hennegan on Sylvia Townsend Warner, Summer will Show (1936)
Saturday 25 October. Valerie Waterhouse on Malachi Whitaker, The Journey Home and Other Stories (1920)
Saturday 22 November. Claire Davison on Vita Sackville-West, The Edwardians (1930)
Saturday 13 December. Karina Jakubowicz on Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
Book the full season at a discount. Get 10 sessions for the price of 9.
Scroll down to images below to book
Books
Please support your local bookshop or an independent online shop when buying books for our courses. Map of independent bookshops in the UK. Hive Books online supports independent bookshops. We also like Toppings of Ely.
Time Zones
These online sessions are at 18.00 British Time / 19.00 Central European Time / morning or early afternoon in American time zones. Each session lasts a maximum of 2 hours, finishing by 20.00 British Time.
Recordings
Each lecture will be recorded live and will be available to participants after the live event for 48 hours. The recordings are available only to people who have booked the session. The seminars are not recorded.
If you cannot attend a session you have booked
Please note that, because places are limited, we cannot usually give refunds if you cannot attend a session. But if you contact us in advance, we might be able to transfer your booking to a different session.
Zoom link
We will send you a zoom link by email approximately 24 hours before the lecture. If it does not arrive, please let us know by email in good time, at least an hour before the session, so we can re-send.
To book, click on images below.
