Murasaki refers to both the heroine of the Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji), and the book's author, Murasaki Shikibu. Curiously, in both cases the name is a pseudonym, and the real names are unknown. In the court manners of the time (the Heian Period), it was considered unacceptably familiar and blunt to freely address people by their names. As a result the real name of the author is not known, and she is nicknamed after the heroine she invented. Similarly, most of the characters in the novel are never identified by name. The author Murasaki was a lady in waiting to the Empress Shoshi (a daughter of the powerful Fujiwara Michinaga). She was a literary contempary and rival of Sei Shonagon. She was a middle class aristocrat and the daughter of a pronvincial governor. The lady in the novel is commonly named Murasaki in translations, to make the novel more comprehensible to those unfamiliar with Heian era court manners. The name is inspired by a poem Genji composes when contemplating his first meeting with her.

An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 31 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. She was a Southern writer in the vein of William Faulkner, often writing in a Southern Gothic style and relying heavily on regional settings and -- it is regularly said -- grotesque characters. However, she remarked "anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic" (Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose 40). Her texts often take place in the South and revolve around morally flawed characters, while the issue of race looms in the background. One of her trademarks is unsubtle foreshadowing, giving a reader an idea of what will happen far before it happens. Finally, she brands each work with a disturbing and ironic conclusion.

Her two novels were Wise Blood (1952) and The Violent Bear It Away (1960). She also published two books of short stories: A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (1955) and Everything That Rises Must Converge (published posthumously in 1965).

Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, children's author, and short story author. Known primarily for her poetry, Plath also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas.

Plath took her own life after she completely sealed the rooms between herself and her sleeping children with "wet towels and cloths."[12] Plath then placed her head in the oven while the gas was turned on. The next day an inquiry ruled that her death was a suicide.

Mary Ann (Marian) Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist. She was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological perspicacity.

She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure that her works were taken seriously. Female authors published freely under their own names, but Eliot wanted to ensure that she was not seen as merely a writer of romances. An additional factor may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes.

Willa Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) is an eminent author who grew up in the state of Nebraska in the United States. She is best known for her depictions of frontier life on the Great Plains in novels such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and Death Comes for the Archbishop.

A resolutely private person, Cather destroyed many old drafts, personal papers, and letters. Her will restricted the ability of scholars to quote from those personal papers that remain. Since the 1980s, feminist and other academic writers have explored Cather's sexual orientation and the influence of her female friendships on her work.

Emily Jane Brontë; (July 30, 1818 – December 19, 1848) was a British novelist and poet, now best remembered for her only novel Wuthering Heights, a classic of English literature. Emily was the second eldest of the three surviving Brontë sisters, being younger than Charlotte and older than Anne. She published under the masculine pen name Ellis Bell.

Charlotte Bronte;(April 21, 1816 – March 31, 1855) was a British novelist, the eldest out of the three famous Brontë sisters whose novels have become standards of English literature.

Oates was born in Lockport, New York, and grew up in the New York countryside. She attended the same one-room school her mother attended as a child.

Oates often remarks about receiving a copy of Alice in Wonderland when she was a little girl, and how it affected her life very deeply, growing up on a farm with very few books.

Oates taught at the University of Detroit, publishing her first novel, With Shuddering Fall, when she was twenty-six years old. Her novel them received the National Book Award in 1970. She then started teaching at the University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, right across the river from Detroit in 1968 to 1978. Since then she has published an average of two books a year, many of them novels. Frequent topics in her work include rural poverty, sexual abuse, class tensions, desire for power, female childhood and adolescence, and occasionally the supernatural.

Violence is a constant in her work, even leading Oates to have written an essay in response to the question, "Why Is Your Writing So Violent?" She is a fan of poet and novelist Sylvia Plath, describing Plath's sole novel The Bell Jar as a "near perfect work of art"; but though Oates has often been compared to Plath, she disavows Plath's romanticism about suicide and among her characters, she favors cunning, hardy survivors, both women and men. Oates' concern with violence and other traditionally masculine topics has won her the respect of such male authors as Norman Mailer. She gained much attention for her book-length essay On Boxing. Oates has also written several books, mostly mystery novels, under the pen names Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly. She also taught at the University of Windsor in Canada for ten years before moving to Princeton in 1978.

Dorothy Parker (August 22, 1893–June 7, 1967) was an American writer and poet, best known for her caustic wit, wisecracks, and sharp eye for 20th century urban foibles.

From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary output in such venues as The New Yorker and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group she later disdained. Following the breakup of that circle, Parker traveled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting. Her successes there, including two Academy Award nominations, were curtailed as her involvement in left-wing politics led to a place on the infamous Hollywood blacklist.

Parker went through three marriages (two to the same man) and survived several suicide attempts, but grew increasingly dependent on alcohol. Dismissive of her own talents, she deplored her reputation as a "wisecracker". Nevertheless, her literary output and her sparkling wit have endured.

Elizabeth Bennet (sometimes referred to as Eliza or Lizzy) is a fictional character and the protagonist of Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice. The novel is centered on her attempts to find love and happiness within the society she lives in, particularly concerning her relationship with the seemingly proud and cold Mr. Darcy. She is generally considered one of Austen's most popular and endearing heroines, and one of the most popular female characters in British literature.

Virginia Adeline Woolf (née Stephen) (January 25, 1882 – March 28, 1941) was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.

During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

The Lais of Marie de France are a series of twelve short narrative poems in Anglo-Norman, generally focused on glorifying the concepts of courtly love through the adventures of their main characters. Little is known of their author Marie, apart from that she was born in France, leading to the name Marie de France. It is believed that Marie lived in England when the lais were written in the late 12th century.

Marie de France's lais, told in octosyllabic, or eight syllable verse, are notable for their celebration of love, individuality of character, and vividness of description – hallmarks of the emerging literature of the times. Five different manuscripts contain one or more of the lais, but only one, Harley 978, a thirteenth century manuscript housed in the British Library, preserves all twelve. It has been suggested that if the author had indeed arranged the Lais as presented in Harley 978, that she may chosen this overall structure to contrast the positive and negative actions that can result from love. In this manuscript, the odd lais — "Guigemar", "Le Fresne", etc. — praise the characters who express love for other people. By comparison, the even lais, such as "Equitan", "Bisclavret" and so on, warn how love that is limited to oneself can lead to misfortune.

The Harley 978 manuscript also includes a 56-line prologue in which Marie describes the impetus for her composition of the lais. In the prologue, Marie writes that she was inspired by the example of the ancient Greeks and Romans to create something that would be both entertaining and morally instructive. She also states her desire to preserve for posterity the tales that she has heard. Two of Marie's lais – "Lanval", a very popular work that was adapted several times over the years (including the Middle English Sir Launfal), and "Chevrefoil" ("The Honeysuckle"), a short composition about Tristan and Iseult – mention King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Marie's lais were precursors to later works on the subject, and Marie was probably a contemporary of Chrétien de Troyes, another writer of Arthurian tales.

Dame Jean Iris Murdoch DBE (15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was a Dublin-born writer and philosopher, best known for her novels, which combine rich characterization and compelling plotlines, usually involving ethical or sexual themes. Her first published novel, Under the Net, was selected in 2001 by the editorial board of the American Modern Library as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 1987, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was a British novelist whose realism, biting social commentary, and masterful use of free indirect speech, burlesque, and irony have earned her a place as one of the most widely-read and best-loved writers in British literature.

Austen lived her entire life as part of a large and close-knit family located on the lower fringes of English gentry. She was educated primarily by her father and older brothers as well as through her own reading. The steadfast support of her family was critical to Austen's development as a professional writer. Austen's artistic apprenticeship lasted from her teenage years until she was about thirty-five years old. During this period, she wrote three major novels and began a fourth. From 1811 until 1815, with the release of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1815), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, published after her death in 1817, and began a third (eventually titled Sanditon), but died before it could be completed.

Austen's works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the eighteenth century and are part of the transition to nineteenth-century realism. Austen's plots, although fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security. Like Samuel Johnson, one of the strongest influences on her writing, her works are concerned with moral issues.

During her own lifetime, Austen's works brought her little fame and only a few positive reviews. Through the mid-nineteenth century, her novels were admired only by a literary elite. However, the publication of her nephew's A Memoir of the Life of Jane Austen in 1870 made her life and her works visible to a wider public. By the 1940s, Austen was firmly ensconced in academia as a "great English writer" and the second half of the twentieth century saw a proliferation of Austen scholarship, exploring many aspects of her works: artistic, ideological, and historical. Currently, Austen's works are one of the most written-about and debated oeuvres in the academy. In popular culture, a Janeite fan culture has grown up centered on Austen's life, her works, and the various adaptations of them.