The 100 best books about freedom and justice by women

No. 11 on this list. The Mill on the Floss · George Eliot · 1860

Taught in schools: AQA GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)

Firmly established in the Victorian literature curriculum and regularly taught in surveys of 19th-century British fiction. It stands as Eliot's second-most-studied novel after 'Middlemarch,' valued for its feminist themes, psychological depth, and semi-autobiographical portrayal of female intellectual awakening in a restrictive provincial society.

No. 12 on this list. The House of Mirth · Edith Wharton · 1905

It is on the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list and on 928 university syllabi, placing it in the 74th percentile. It is a standard text in American literature and Gilded Age courses.

No. 13 on this list. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie · Muriel Spark · 1961

Taught in schools: CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council

Regularly taught in British literature and women's studies courses, considered essential modern Scottish fiction. Appears on A-level syllabi and university 20th-century literature surveys. Not as universally taught as The Great Gatsby, but firmly established in academic curricula focused on postwar British fiction and modernist technique.

No. 14 on this list. To Kill a Mockingbird · Harper Lee · 1961

Taught in schools: Cambridge IGCSE Literature in English (0475), Common Core text exemplars (Appendix B) (US), CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council

Appears on 1,674 university syllabi (80.6th percentile, Open Syllabus Project) and is a fixture of American high school and university English curricula. Wikipedia articles exist in 58 languages with dedicated reception and adaptations sections. Published by four prestige houses — Library of America, Everyman's Library, Penguin Classics, and Penguin Modern Classics — confirming its standing in the Western canon.

No. 15 on this list. The Story of an Hour · Kate Chopin

One of the most anthologized American short stories, taught widely in high school and college courses on American literature and feminist writing. It is a fixture of short fiction curricula.

No. 16 on this list. Burger's Daughter · Nadine Gordimer · 1979

Burger's Daughter appears on 68 university syllabi (Open Syllabus Project, 45.8th percentile), placing it firmly in postcolonial and African literature courses though not in the top tier of globally canonical texts. Wikipedia articles exist in 7 languages — modest compared to landmark novels — but the article runs to over 61,000 characters and includes a dedicated reception section, indicating sustained critical discourse.

No. 17 on this list. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry · Mildred D. Taylor · 1976

Taught in schools: CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council, Singapore-Cambridge GCE O-Level Literature in English (2065)

Newbery Medal winner and a cornerstone of Black children's literature. Widely taught and frequently appears on essential reading lists.

No. 18 on this list. The Optimist's Daughter · Eudora Welty · 1973

The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1973 and is widely recognized as a major work of American letters, though it remains less universally anthologized than Welty's other stories. Its place in the canon is secure but somewhat specialized, firmly established in serious literary study.

No. 19 on this list. The Testaments · Margaret Atwood · 2019

Co-winner of the Booker Prize in 2019 and a sequel to one of the most taught novels in the English-speaking world. Syllabus adoption is moderate — it appears in some university courses, particularly feminist literature and dystopian fiction, but less frequently than its predecessor. Its canonical status derives substantially from the cultural weight of The Handmaid's Tale rather than independent standing.

No. 20 on this list. The Tombs of Atuan · Ursula K Le Guin · 1971

The Tombs of Atuan is the second volume of Le Guin's Earthsea Cycle, which has been a staple of middle school and YA curricula for decades. It won the Newbery Honor in 1972. While not as universally taught as the first Earthsea volume or Le Guin's science fiction, it appears regularly in fantasy literature courses and feminist literary criticism syllabi, cementing its place as a significant canonical text within speculative fiction.

No. 21 on this list. The Golden Apples · Eudora Welty · 1949

Virgie Rainey swallowed a button the day King MacLain came back to Morgana and then fled his own front porch before knocking. That's where Eudora Welty's sequence of seven stories begins—with a gossipy neighbor churning butter and narrating what she barely witnessed. The Golden Apples spans fifty years of life in Morgana, Mississippi: King's twin sons growing up without him, the German piano teacher Miss Eckhart pouring Beethoven into children who will barely remember her, a girl nearly drowning at a summer camp while a boy scout named Loch Morrison watches from the bank with the calculating dispassion of someone taking notes. Welty writes in multiple voices, each distinct—the vernacular monologue of 'Shower of Gold,' the double-stranded telescope-and-memory narration of 'June Recital,' the hallucinatory street-walking of 'Music from Spain'—and all of them circle the same problem: what we owe one another across the distance of separate selves. The book's mythological scaffolding (Perseus, Orpheus, Zeus's golden shower, Yeats's wandering Aengus) operates beneath the surface, surfacing only in charged moments. The final image—Virgie on a courthouse stile in October rain, hearing through it 'the running of the horse and bear, the stroke of the leopard, the dragon's crusty slither'—earns its strangeness. This is literary fiction that demands full attention and rewards rereading.

No. 22 on this list. Adam Bede · George Eliot · 1859

Adam Bede appears regularly on Victorian literature and 19th-century British fiction syllabi at universities worldwide, and is the standard entry point to George Eliot's work in courses that cannot assign the longer Middlemarch. It is included in most survey courses of the Victorian novel. Its canonical status within the Eliot corpus is secondary only to Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss, but within the broader Victorian canon it holds a secure if not dominant position — consistently anthologized, consistently in print, and consistently cited as a foundational work of Victorian realism.

No. 23 on this list. Nights at the Circus · Angela Carter · 1984

Nights at the Circus is a regular text in university courses on postmodern, feminist and magical-realist fiction, and probably Angela Carter's most studied novel. It is usually set alongside The Bloody Chamber as the core of her work.

No. 24 on this list. Human Acts · Han Kang · 2014

Han Kang's Nobel Prize in 2024 elevated this novel's global profile significantly, but it appears on only 59 university syllabi (44th percentile in Open Syllabus) and has Wikipedia articles in just 5 languages. Curricular adoption outside Korean literature courses remains limited, though the Nobel will accelerate its integration into world literature programs.

No. 25 on this list. She Came to Stay · Simone de Beauvoir · 1943

She Came to Stay is regularly taught in existentialist literature courses, feminist literary theory courses, and French literature curricula worldwide. It holds a firm position in the de Beauvoir canon alongside The Second Sex and The Mandarins. No database syllabus data was returned, but its presence in standard existentialism syllabi — typically paired with Sartre's Nausea or Camus's The Outsider — establishes it as institutionally canonical.

No. 26 on this list. A Mercy · Toni Morrison · 2008

A powerful tragedy distilled into a jewel of a masterpiece by the Nobel Prize--winning author of Beloved and, almost like a prelude to that story, set two centuries earlier.In the 1680s the slave trade was still in its infancy. In the Americas, virulent religious and class divisions, prejudice and oppression were rife, providing the fertile soil in which slavery and race hatred were planted and took root.Jacob is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh north. Despite his distaste for dealing in "flesh," he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, "with the hands of a slave and the feet of a Portuguese lady." Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, but later from a handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved.There are other voices: Lina, whose tribe was decimated by smallpox; their mistress, Rebekka, herself a victim of religious intolerance back in England; Sorrow, a strange girl who's spent her early years at sea; and finally the devastating voice of Florens' mother. These are all men and women inventing themselves in the wilderness.A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and of a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.Acts of mercy may have unforeseen consequences.From the Hardcover edition.

No. 27 on this list. The Giver · Lois Lowry · 1993

The Giver is among the most frequently assigned novels in American middle and high school curricula, appearing on required reading lists across the country for three decades. Its Wikipedia article exists in dozens of languages and it has sold over 12 million copies, reflecting sustained educational and cultural presence far beyond typical children's novels.

No. 28 on this list. Sula · Toni Morrison · 1973

Two Black women in Ohio—Nel and Sula—grow up together, then apart, their friendship defining and destroying them. Morrison's second novel explores the bonds between women and the boundaries of identity with fierce lyricism.

No. 29 on this list. Purple Hibiscus · Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2004

Taught in schools: Leaving Certificate English – NCCA / State Examinations Commission (Ireland)

Appears on 255 university syllabi according to the Open Syllabus Project, placing it in the 60th percentile of taught works. Wikipedia articles exist in 13 languages with a dedicated reception section. The novel is a fixture in postcolonial literature and African fiction courses, though it has not yet reached the ubiquity of authors like Achebe or Morrison in broader curricula.

No. 30 on this list. Under the Net · Iris Murdoch · 1954

Ranked 95th on the Modern Library 100 Best Novels, included on TIME's All-TIME 100 Novels, and taught on 141 university syllabi (54th percentile). It is the Murdoch novel most often assigned in courses on postwar British fiction.