A Life of One’s Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again

‘A beautiful, deeply philosophical book about reading as a form of existential consolation’ Literary Review

‘Acute and tender . . . alive with discovery and desire’ Observer

‘A meditation, by turns glorious and aching, on what it means to be a woman and to try to be free’ Amia Srinivasan

‘A gift to readers of all ages. Engaging . . . poignant . . . uplifting’ Washington Post

‘I adored this book . . . a generous, enlivening work, destined to be passed from friend to friend for a long time to come’ Megan Hunter

In this intricate, intimate and dazzlingly original group biography, Joanna Biggs looks to eight revolutionary women writers who each sought freedom and intellectual fulfilment in their lifetimes and asks: why is it so important for women to read one another? By illuminating the motivations, desires and disappointments of Mary Wollstonecraft, George Eliot, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison and Elena Ferrante, Biggs lights a way past the traditional goals and expectations of femininity and towards a life lived generously and joyfully for oneself.

Joanna Biggs is an editor at Harper’s Magazine. Previously an associate editor at the London Review of Books, she is one of the founders of Silver Press, a London-based feminist publishing house. She has also written for the New Yorker, the FT and the Guardian, as well as appearing on BBC Radio 4 and at events in London, Berlin and New York. Her first book, All Day Long: A Portrait of Britain at Work, was published in 2015, and was one of the Observer‘s books of the year.