The 100 best essay collections by women

No. 11 on this list. The White Album · Joan Didion · 1979

Joan Didion opens with a confession: "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." What follows is the record of what happens when that story breaks down. Writing through the late 1960s in Los Angeles, Didion moves between her own psychiatric evaluations, the Manson trial, an afternoon with the Doors at a recording session, the engineering of Hoover Dam, and the geometry of a shopping mall in San Bernardino. The connections are never explained. That is the point. The white album of the title gestures at the Beatles' blank-sleeve record — a surface onto which listeners projected whatever they needed. Didion offers herself as a similar surface: a woman whose nervous system recorded an era's disintegration while her own sense of narrative failed her. The essays fragment deliberately, cutting mid-thought, juxtaposing a clinical psychiatric report with dispatches from the Black Panther press conference. Didion's sentences are precise and cold in the way a surgeon's instruments are cold — not indifferent, but controlled. The book asks what it means to impose meaning on experience when the experience refuses to cohere. It does not answer. The question, delivered with this particular clarity, is enough.

No. 12 on this list. Women, Race & Class · Angela Davis · 1981

A fixture on syllabi in Women's Studies, African American Studies, Sociology, and History courses across US universities since its 1981 publication. Required reading in virtually every Black feminist theory course and central to the canon of intersectional scholarship. Widely included on lists of essential texts in feminist and critical race theory.

No. 13 on this list. Dante: The Poet, the Political Thinker, the Man · Barbara Reynolds · 2006

Widely recommended as the best single-volume introduction to Dante in English.

No. 14 on this list. Out of Africa · Isak Dinesen · 1937

Out of Africa is widely recognized as one of the great literary memoirs of the twentieth century. It appears on the Modern Library's 100 Best Nonfiction list at number 17 and is regularly assigned in university courses on memoir, African literature, and postcolonial studies. Its Wikipedia article exists in numerous languages and includes sections on reception and adaptations. The work has achieved broad curricular and cultural presence across the English-speaking world and beyond.

No. 15 on this list. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination · Toni Morrison · 1992

Playing in the Dark is a foundational text in American literary studies and critical race theory in literature. It appears on countless graduate and undergraduate syllabi in American literature, African-American studies, and literary theory courses. It is widely considered essential reading for anyone studying the American literary canon, frequently cited alongside Edward Said's Orientalism as a paradigm-shifting work of cultural criticism.

No. 16 on this list. The Pillow Book · Sei Shonagon · 1002

Included in: UNESCO Collection of Representative Works

The Pillow Book is one of only two surviving prose masterpieces of the Heian period (alongside The Tale of Genji) and appears in virtually every world literature survey course. It is the founding work of the zuihitsu genre—the Japanese personal essay—and is treated as an essential document of 10th-century Japanese civilization. No verified syllabus count is available in the database, but its position in world literature curricula and its continuous publication in major translation series (Penguin Classics, Columbia University Press) confirms broad canonical standing.

No. 17 on this list. I Could Tell You Stories · Patricia Hampl · 1999

Widely assigned in memoir and creative nonfiction programs alongside Gornick and Lopate.

No. 18 on this list. Regarding the Pain of Others · Susan Sontag · 2003

Regarding the Pain of Others is a standard text in media studies, photography, visual culture, and war journalism courses worldwide. It appears on hundreds of university syllabi as a primary theoretical text. Wikipedia articles exist in over 40 languages. The book is the go-to theoretical reference whenever questions of war photography and the ethics of looking arise in public discourse.

No. 19 on this list. The Journalist and the Murderer · Janet Malcolm · 1990

The Journalist and the Murderer is a staple of journalism school curricula across North America and is widely assigned in media ethics, creative nonfiction, and literary journalism courses. Its opening sentence is among the most frequently quoted lines in American nonfiction. While it does not appear on general literary canons as broadly as major novels, within its domain — journalism studies and media ethics — it is as close to required reading as any single text.

No. 20 on this list. Citizen: An American Lyric · Claudia Rankine · 2014

Citizen has become required reading across university courses in American literature, race studies, creative writing, and cultural criticism within a decade of its 2014 publication—a speed of canonization rarely seen in contemporary poetry. It appears on hundreds of syllabi and on nearly every 'essential American poetry' list of the 2010s. Its Wikipedia article exists in multiple languages, and the book is cited in academic work across disciplines from legal theory to art history.

No. 21 on this list. An Introduction to Spanish-American Literature · Jean Franco · 1969

Established as the foundational anglophone survey of Spanish American literature for over three decades.

No. 22 on this list. This Sex Which Is Not One · Luce Irigaray · 1977

A foundational text of French feminist philosophy and literary theory. Essential in feminist theory and continental philosophy courses.

No. 23 on this list. The Iliad, or the Poem of Force · Simone Weil · 1940

Written in 1939 and published in Cahiers du Sud under the anagram Émile Novis, the essay is a fixture of great-books and humanities courses that teach the Iliad. NYRB Classics keeps it in print beside Rachel Bespaloff's On the Iliad as War and the Iliad.

No. 24 on this list. The Cambridge History of German Literature · Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly · 1997

The definitive Cambridge reference history for German literature in English.

No. 25 on this list. Leopardi: A Study in Solitude · Iris Origo · 1953

The standard English-language biography of Leopardi; long considered definitive.

No. 26 on this list. The Tale of Genji: A Reader's Guide · Norma Field · 2015

The standard English-language reader's guide to the Genji; recommended by every Japanologist working in English.

No. 27 on this list. The Licensing Act of 1737 and the Staging of the Eighteenth-Century Essay · Margaret Anne Doody · 1996

The major revisionist challenge to Watt; essential in any account of the novel's origins.

No. 28 on this list. The Cancer Journals · Audre Lorde · 1980

A founding text of illness narrative and the medical humanities, regularly assigned in courses on feminist theory, disability studies and Black women's writing. It includes 'The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action', one of Lorde's most quoted essays.

No. 29 on this list. A History of Australian Literature · Leonie Kramer · 1981

One of the foundational scholarly accounts of Australian literature; debated and built on by subsequent historians.

No. 30 on this list. Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose · Flannery O'Connor · 1969

Edited after O'Connor's death by Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, the collection is one of the most assigned books on the craft of fiction in American creative-writing programmes. Essays such as 'Writing Short Stories' and 'The Nature and Aim of Fiction' are also taught beside her stories in Southern and Catholic literature courses.