Women Writers Posters & Prints, pg 9/10
for the language arts, social studies, history, art and science classrooms and home schoolers.

Dorothy Thompson / TIME, June 12, 1939
(American Journalist)
b. 7-9-1893; Lancaster, NY
d. 1961; Portugal

"As far as I can see, I was really put out of Germany for the crime of blasphemy. My offense was to think that Hitler was just an ordinary man, after all. That is a crime in the reigning cult in Germany, which says Mr. Hitler is a Messiah sent by God to save the German people— an old Jewish idea. To question this mystic mission is so heinous that, if you are a German, you can be sent to jail. I, fortunately, am an American, so I was merely sent to Paris. Worse things can happen." (1934)

• World War II posters
• Historic Headlines posters

Hester Thrale
b. 1-16-1741; Wales
d. 5-2-1821; Bristol

Hester Thrale (née Sulusbury, second marriage Piozzi), a patroness of the arts with her first husband Henry, were friends and supporters of Dr. Samuel Johnson. Mrs. Thrale was a writer whose diaries and correspondence with Johnson offers a balance to Boswell's Life of Johnson. She was also friends, for a time, with author Frances "Fanny" Burney.

• The Lives of the Muses- Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired

Flora Tristan
b. 4-7-1803; Paris
d. 11-14-1844; France

Flora Tristan, a writer and activist, was one of the founders of modern feminism, and a maternal grandmother to post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin.

Evelyn Underhill
b. 12-6-1875; England
d. 6-15-1941

Evelyn Underhill is considered a Christian mystic who wrote prolifically on mysticism and the practice of religion. In her book Mysticism (1911) she describes the quest as ". . . refuses to be satisfied with that which other men call experience, and is inclined . . . 'to deny the world in order that it may find reality'."

Sigrid Undset
b. 5-20-1882; Denmark
d. 6-10-1949; Norway

• 1928 Nobel Prize in Literature

Marie-Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne, comtesse de la Fayette
b. 3-18-1634; Paris
d. 5-25-1693

Mathilde Wesendonck
b. 1828
d. 1902

Poet Mathilde Wesendonck infatuated composer Richard Wagner.

Rebecca West
b. 12-21-1892; England
d. 3-15-1983

• Black Lamb and Grey Falcon:
A Journey Through Yugoslavia; Rebecca West
(Rebecca West and H. G. Wells had a ten year affair).

Edith Wharton, National Archives
b. 1-24-1862; New York
d. 8-11-1937

• Edith Wharton : Novels : The House of Mirth / The Reef / The Custom of the Country / The Age of Innocence

Phillis Wheatley
b. c. 1753; Senegal
d. 12-5-1784; Boston(?)

• The Poems of Phillis Wheatley
• Black History posters

Mary Wollstonecraft Writer's Who Changed the World Poster Series

Mary Wollstonecraft
b. 4-27-1759; London
d. 9-10-1797

Poster Text: “Liberty is the mother of virtue, and if women be, by their very constitution slaves, and not allowed to breathe the sharp invigorating air of freedom, they must ever languish like exotics, and be reckoned beautiful flaws in nature.”

The book Vindication of the Rights of Woman was published in England in 1792. The author, Mary Wollstonecraft, wrote that men were given more respect and power in society than women were, and that women were taught only to be concerned with their looks and with getting married. Wollstonecraft believed mothing would change until men and women received the same education. Vindication of the Rights of Woman caused a huge controversy in England – but this was nothing new for Mary Wollstonecraft.

Wollstonecraft was born in London, and her family moved all over England and Wales because of her father's financial troubles. She left home at 19 and became a governess, watching over and teaching young children. She also helped her sister found a school. Eventually, she met Richard Price, a radical preacher who helped her form her thoughts about how unfairly women were treated in English society. With his encouragement, she began to write pamplets and books.

Wollstonecraft became famous (and infamous) when Vindication of the Rights of Woman came out. the book was very important in England and around the world. Her ideas, including the view that women should be seen as equal to men, were revolutionary at he time. Because of Vindication, Wollstonecraft has been called the mother of the feminist movement. Not everyone was happy about her work, however; the writer Horace Walpole called her "a hyena in petticoats." Mary Wollstonecraft wrote many other works, including two novels. She died after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who grew up to write Frankenstein.

• more Writers Who Changed the World posters
• more Mary Wollstonecraft posters

Virginia Woolf, neé Stephen
b. 1-25-1882; London
d. 3-28-1941; suicide, bipolar disorder

Virgina Woolf is considered one of the foremost authors on the 20th century. Her family was well connected in the literary culture; among visitors to her home when she was a child included Henry James and George Eliot. A founder of the Bloomsbury Group, her great aunt was photographer Julia Cameron, her sister Vanessa Bell became a notable painter and designed her book covers; her godfather was American poet and diplomat James Russell Lowell.

• The Virginia Woolf Reader
• Mrs. Dalloway cover