Reading women

1/ As I said earlier, I intended to read more women this year.    
My favourite writers who are female have been, for a few years, Jane Austen and Emily Bronte. Recently I’ve added Edith Wharton. 
In the past, there were a few other female writers I liked a lot, such as Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath, Isabel Allende, etc. but overtime, their works no longer have the same impact (though I intend to reread, or read more of, Toni Morrison, and see what happens). 
At the moment, my favourite writers are Jane Austen, Lev Tolstoy, Herman Melville, Gustave Flaubert, Vladimir Nabokov, Edith Wharton, and Emily Bronte. 

2/ I’ve just realised something interesting.  
My favourite period for literature is the 19th century. When it comes to Russian literature, I’ve read a large part of Tolstoy’s fictional works (except Resurrection, which I didn’t finish, the plays, and some short stories), and some of Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Turgenev, Gogol, Leskov, Lermontov, but not a single work by a female writer. 
When it comes to 19th century British literature, however, I’ve realised that my reading of women is not bad at all: I’ve read Jane Austen’s 6 novels plus Lady Susan and the unfinished The Watsons and Sanditon, 3 George Eliot novels (Adam Bede, Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, not to mention about 1/3 of The Mill on the Floss), 6 out of 7 Bronte novels (Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, Shirley, and Villette, Emily’s Wuthering Heights, Anne’s Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, and probably some other works I can’t think of at the moment. 
In fact, I seem to know the women better than the men—I’ve only read a few Dickens books, a few Wilkie Collins books, a few Stevenson books, etc. and none by Thackeray, Trollope, or Hardy. 
This hasn’t been a conscious desire to read more women, but a combination of interest in classic works (especially Frankenstein and Middlemarch), assigned reading (such as Shirley and Daniel Deronda), and a tendency to read more works by the same author (especially if I like the author).   
Now that I’ve written it down, I realise the holes in my knowledge of Victorian literature—I should actually read more Dickens, and check out Hardy, Trollope, and Thackeray. 

3/ Does this mean that British literature has more great/ celebrated female writers than others, at least in the 19th century? 

4/ I do think people should read widely and diversify their reading. 
However, as I’ve said many times before, I have problems with much of the talk about literature and diversity. 
- The most important thing, when we’re talking about literature, is quality—literary merit, genius, greatness. The other day, I saw someone complain about James Wood’s list of great literary works (in some book) that only a small percentage were by women. People say the same thing when attacking the Western canon.  
I mean, forget about contemporary literature, think about the history of literature and see how many women were writing, and how many women were at the top. There is no doubt that in history, women were seen as inferior and didn’t get the same opportunities as men, and didn’t have “a room of their own” (to use Woolf’s phrase), but that’s exactly why most classic works were written by men.
The only way to have a much higher percentage of books by women on such lists is to include contemporary or more recent works, which haven’t been tested by time, or to replace great works by men with less good works by women just to have more women, which is an anti-artistic, philistine approach.
- People should read widely, but should also read deeply. To me personally, I place much more emphasis on reading deeply, which is why I read slowly, read multiple books by the same author, reread books, and never rush to read a certain number of books per year. 
- I wonder if the people who attack the Western canon and say that books by dead white male authors are irrelevant to people of colour realise that by the same (asinine) logic, books by writers of colour are irrelevant to white people.
- I have noticed that a lot of people who loudly push for diversity in reading don’t seem to realise that other countries exist—they read books by non-white writers in Western countries or non-white writers who write in English, ignoring foreign/ translated books.   
Some others don’t seem to realise that other countries have classics—they mostly read contemporary literature, which includes translated literature, but not translated classics, and also rarely read English classics outside school, which suggests that they dislike the Western canon more because they don’t enjoy classics. 
- There is nothing wrong with reading mainly classics. Some people, including me, prefer to focus on works that have stood the test of time. 
See some of my blog posts on related subjects: 
A call for humility in approaching classic literature. 
The idea of relevance and relatableness in the arts. 
A riff on “dead white men”. 
Long novels and the Stockholm syndrome theory. 
I should repeat: I do think people should read widely, and diversify their reading. This is also a note to myself. 

5/ This is embarrassing, because I’ve read so little, but if I have to compile a list of classic novels by women that I think everyone should read, here it is:
- Jane Austen: Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice. 
- Edith Wharton: The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence. 
- George Eliot: Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda. 
- Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre. 
- Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights. 
- Anne Bronte: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. 
- Mary Shelley: Frankenstein.
These are the books I recommend, not only to those who are interested in reading books by women, but to anyone who is serious about literature.