Best Female Novelists

The Top Ten
1 Agatha Christie Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, was an English crime novelist, short story writer and playwright. She is the best-selling novelist ever. She also made the longest play ever. She is remembered for making multiple mystery books including; And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express, A.B.C. Murders, and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Easily the best novel writer ever.

2 Jane Austen Jane Austen was an English novelist known principally for her five major novels which interpret, critique and comment upon the life of the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century.
3 Charlotte Bronte Charlotte Brontë (21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels have become classics of English literature. She first published her works (including her best known novel, Jane Eyre) under the pen name Currer Bell.

Jane Eyre is a great book!

4 Edith Wharton
5 J.K Rowling
6 Harper Lee Nelle Harper Lee, better known by her pen name Harper Lee, was an American novelist widely known for To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960. Immediately successful, it won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of modern American literature.

She accomplished more with one novel than many authors accomplish with an entire bibliography.

7 Emily Bronte
8 Beatrix Potter
9 Willa Cather
10 Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf, born Stephen (25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941), known professionally as Virginia Woolf, was an English writer and one of the foremost modernists of the 20th century.
The Contenders
11 Anne Rice Anne Rice was a novelist known for her gothic storytelling in novels including her bestselling novel Interview With a Vampire.

The author that wrote Interview With the Vampire (which brought rise to the existence of gothic novels) passed away from sudden stroke complications on December 11th 2021 aged 80. The world will never see another gothic novelist like her. She was the top of the gothic world. R.I.P. (1941-2021).

12 Barbara Cartland Barbara Cartland was an English writer, known as the Queen of Romance, who published both contemporary and historical romance novels, the latter set primarily during the Victorian or Edwardian period. Cartland is one of the best-selling authors worldwide of the 20th century.
13 Mary Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, née Godwin (30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her ...read more.
14 Mary Gaitskill
15 Margaret Atwood
16 Sigrid Undset
17 Harriet Beecher Stowe
18 Amy Tan
19 Ursula K. Le Guin
20 Josephine Tey
21 Selma Lagerlöf
22 Joan Didion

The lady that wrote stories about American society. Also a playwright & model. Bigger than almost every other novelist on this list. R.I.P. Joan (1934-2021).

23 Melissa Bank

The author of a Girl's Guide to Hunting & Fishing (which became 1 of the best selling Jewish novels of all time). R.I.P. (1960-2022).

24 Nora Roberts
25 Madeleine L'Engle
8Load More
PSearch List