The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women

📅 1985 ✏️ Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar 📖 W. W. Norton & Company 📚 3rd edition, 2007

Women's PoetryFeministAcademic20th CenturyCanon-Correcting

The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women (1985), edited by feminist scholars Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, was compiled explicitly to correct the historical underrepresentation of women writers — including poets — in the mainstream literary canon. Now in its third edition (2007), it remains a foundational academic anthology for the study of women's poetry and prose across historical eras, genres, and cultural backgrounds.

Overview

Edited by literary scholars Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar — co-authors of the influential feminist criticism study The Madwoman in the Attic — The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women was first published by W. W. Norton in 1985 as a direct response to how thoroughly women writers, including many significant poets, had been excluded or marginalized in standard anthologies like Palgrave's Golden Treasury and even the general Norton Anthology of Poetry.

Contents and Scope

The anthology spans centuries of women's literary output in English, including poetry, fiction, and non-fiction prose, deliberately reaching beyond the small handful of women poets (Dickinson, Barrett Browning, a few others) who had achieved canonical status in mixed-gender anthologies. It includes work by women from diverse racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, religious, and sexual backgrounds, expanding significantly with each edition.

Historical Significance

The anthology emerged from the broader feminist literary recovery project of the 1970s and 1980s, which sought to identify, republish, and critically re-evaluate women writers whose work had gone out of print or been excluded from academic study. Where anthologies like Palgrave's Golden Treasury included "only a handful" of women poets across all editions, Gilbert and Gubar's collection made women's authorship — not a subordinate category within a mixed canon — the entire organizing principle.

Ongoing Relevance

Poetry anthologies remain a documented site of gender imbalance; controversies over "all-male" or heavily male-skewed anthologies have continued into the 2010s and 2020s, prompting boycotts and public criticism from women writers. The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women continues to serve as both a corrective historical resource and a standing rebuke to anthologies that fail to represent women poets proportionally.

Legacy

Now in its third edition (2007), the anthology remains a standard text in women's studies and literature courses, and represents a broader category of corrective, identity-centered anthologies — alongside collections of Black, Indigenous, LGBTQ+, and non-Western poets — that emerged specifically to counteract exclusion from earlier canon-defining collections.

Related Anthologies

Palgrave's Golden Treasury, Emily Dickinson's Posthumous Collections

Frequently Asked Questions

What is The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women?

First published in 1985 and edited by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, it is an anthology compiled to correct the historical underrepresentation of women writers, including poets, in the mainstream literary canon. It is now in its third edition (2007).

Why was The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women created?

It emerged from the feminist literary recovery movement of the 1970s–80s, which sought to identify and re-canonize women writers excluded from standard anthologies like Palgrave's Golden Treasury, where only a handful of women poets appeared across all editions.

Is gender imbalance in poetry anthologies still an issue?

Yes. Controversies over male-dominated anthologies have continued into the 2010s and 2020s, including public boycotts by women writers, underscoring the ongoing relevance of corrective anthologies like this one.

Last updated: 2026-07-01