How many books by female authors were you taught at school? It's an interesting question posed on Twitter by Scott Wilson, a guy from Glasgow who's training to become an English teacher.
"It's only now I feel qualified to look back and reflect on my own high school education," Wilson wrote. "In my six years, we read two female writers, both of whom were poets: Lochhead & Duffy. Did your school do better?"
The responses he's received have been illuminating and at times, pretty disappointing. Quite a few people can remember being taught Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird at school. The poetry of Sylvia Plath and Carol Ann Duffy (who became Britain's first female poet laureate in 2009) also appear to have been popular.
However, several respondents said they were unable to remember being taught a single play by a female writer. Check out a selection of responses to the tweet below.
A trend I'm definitely noticing is that female authors don't seem to come in until later in education... not sure we did any plays/novels by women until a level (at which point we had a lot more freedom over what we read/studied)
— Emma Ainley-Walker 🐇🌼 (@emaw23) March 8, 2018
Plath, Duffy. Catherine Forde came to visit and sign copies of her book once. I chose Wuthering Heights for my personal study and my teacher gave me a book of Bronte poems. Apart from that it was all male writers I'm sure.
— rosie 🍄 (@rosievox) March 7, 2018
Nope. Only in excerpts and tangentially. And I went to an all girls school.
— Orla Smith (@orlamango) March 8, 2018
I remember reading Pride and Prejudice, A House on Mango Street, maybe a Toni Morrison book? No plays until uni by female writers, and poetry was limited if any
— Shosh (@shoshush20) March 7, 2018
As well as Duffy, read Color Purple and Handmaid's Tale in 6th form. Nothing until then, I read a lot of Enid Blyton in my primary school days...
— Baz Watson (@BazWatson) March 10, 2018
We studied Top Girls by Caryl Churchill and Oranges are not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. So it’s probably the individual teachers rather than the curriculum.
— Sarah Appleton (@SarahAppleton_) March 8, 2018
Only Austen that I remember for compulsory English, sadly. I was lucky enough to study a lot for my A Level though; Shelley, Plath, Angela Carter, Charlotte Perkins Gilman to name a few. My A Level Lit teacher was fab, we had a great balance of works.
— Robyn Masson (@RobynEmily_) March 7, 2018
I was very lucky to have a teacher at sixth form who taught us work by trans women and non-binary people (I can’t remember the authors now), Sylvia Plath and spoke about gender in a way I hadn’t ever heard before.
— rebecca moneybags (@messymebecca) March 8, 2018
It's obviously worth pointing out that unless you've made a list of every single book you've ever read (and if you had the forethought to do this, I'm jealous), it's difficult to know exactly how many books by female authors you were taught at school. I was lucky enough to have an amazing teacher for both GCSE and A-level English, Mrs Baker, who taught us Pride & Prejudice, To Kill a Mockingbird, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, an excellent collection of Alice Munro short stories, and poetry by Carol Ann Duffy. I can also remember being taught Anne Frank's The Diary of Anne Frank and Anne Fine's Flour Babies at primary school.
But like some of the people who responded to Wilson's tweet, I can't remember being taught a single play by a female writer. Perhaps this is partly attributable to the fact that a single male playwright, William Shakespeare, is so widely taught in schools?
Read These Stories Next:
I Went From Fashion Intern To Bestselling Author
These Historical Fiction Novels Will Sweep You Away
Women Of Colour Are Quietly Taking Over Sci-Fi & It's About Time
Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?
Amber Tamblyn’s Debut Novel Is About A Female Rapist — But Why?
This Author Is Reinventing Fairy Tale Princesses, & You'll Hardly Recognise Them