By a Woman Writt

1973, 1974 Penguin edition
edited by Joan Goulianos
By a Woman Writt [sic]: Literature from Six Centuries by and about Women
Original price unknown, bought used for $4.25
Worn paperback
C+

Goulianos selects women's writings in English from 14th-century Margery Kempe to modern poet Muriel Rukeyser, so this collection is understandably uneven.  I most enjoyed Aphra Behn, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, and Sylvia Ashton-Warner.  In the introduction, Goulianos suggests some themes, like fear and motherhood, but I don't feel like there's enough commentary or organization here.  Also, she doesn't give dates to all the pieces, and sometimes not even birth or death dates for the authors, so my labels are limited to the wider eras and I can't include the 20th-centuries decades, other than the 1970s of course.  (Not that there aren't a lot of labels on the post anyway.)  This is a serviceable introduction to women's literature, deliberately omitting some of the better known writers (although Wollstonecraft and daughter Mary are here), without going overly obscure.