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Book list for Women’s History Month
10 March 2022
We asked you to share your book recommendations to celebrate Women’s History Month.
The Library’s Liberating the Collections group have created a list of book recommendations made by students and staff at UCL to celebrate the achievements of women and challenge inequalities in the UK and around the world.
Have you read them all? What are we missing? Join us on Twitter or Instagram and share your own recommendations, or fill in the form.
Your recommendations
The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye
A great book. I urge everyone in UCL to read this book.
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
It's an extraordinary rollercoaster journey through the multiple lives of a poet cutting across continents, eras and genders. Wonderful descriptions of places and people throughout time and also of the central figure's inner life. It also has the great advantage for me in a novel of being quite short.
Guy Robinson
Olga Tufnell’s 'Perfect Journey' edited by John D.M. Green and Ros Henry (UCL Press)
Olga was a kick-ass woman doing archaeology in a time when it was all men.
Zenobia: Shooting Star of Palmyra by Nathanael Andrade
Zenobia was a powerful Syrian queen who broke free of Roman hegemony in the East and created a large empire. I have not read this book yet, but I plan to treat myself over March.
Oh! What a lovely war by Joan Littlewood
Joan Littlewood is a fascinating woman. Her work in the Theatre Workshop and at the Theatre Royal at Stratford was seminal. She broke the bias of post-war Britain and challenged the prevailing status quo. This musical is more topical than ever. Funny, shocking and anger-invoking in equal measures.
Adam Bede by George Eliot
Less read today than Middlemarch or Mill on the Floss, it was Eliot's big book in the Victorian period. It works on several levels. Astonishing.
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
It is a beautifully written story of family, addiction, spirituality, science, loss and love. The characters and their experiences are so compelling and I couldn’t put it down.
Emma Cardinal-Richards
Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb
Robin Hobb won the World Fantasy Awards Lifetime Achievement award in 2021. The fantasy genre is often stereotypically associated with male authors and readers, and she has carved a space for herself there at a time when this was unusual. Her characters are incredibly written and her storytelling and world building are amongst the best in the genre.
Safia
A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier
It resonates currently both in terms of women trying to find, or fight to have, a place in the world, and the fact that it takes place following WWI and constantly refers to the loss, pain and consequences of war.
Emma Gutteridge-Xu
Square Haunting by Francesca Wade
A group biography of five important women who lived in Mecklenburgh Square at key points of their lives: Jane Harrison, H.D., Virginia Woolf, Eileen Power and Dorothy L Sayers. You get to know the five women and their lives. A reappraisal, a revaluation, a real gem of a book.
Simon Bralee
Salt Slow by Julia Armfield
Brilliant short story collection which is creative, creepy and very very funny. My favourite story in the collection is 'Stop your Women's Ears with Wax'.
Julia Wagner
Assembly by Natasha Brown
A short, beautifully written and devastating book about a young black woman going to a garden party at her boyfriend's house - and so much more.
Julia Wagner
I hope this finds you well by Kate Baer
It is a collection of poetry that is so accessible and yet profound. Baer's erasure poems are very moving.
Julia Wagner
UCL Library Services Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
- Find out more about the different events taking place this year at UCL to celebrate International Women’s Day.
- Read Break the Bias: International Women’s Day 2022 by Chemistry PhD Student Esther Ambrose-Dempster.