Masterplots II, Women's Literature Series offers 536 essays that examine the rich tradition of fiction and nonfiction literature by women from ancient Greece to the late twentieth century. Classic feminist tracts from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), by Mary Wollstonecraft, to The Feminine Mystique (1963), by Betty Friedan, stand alongside the poetry of Sappho, the plays of Lillian Hellman, the novels of Jane Austen, and the historical texts of Barbara Tuchman. Female characters in plays, stories, and novels experience lives of silence and oppression, while real women tell their own, similar tales in letters, diaries, and autobiographies. Works by women writers from Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas are covered; twenty-six countries are represented.