This book provides nearly 450 entries covering major and minor British women writers from the Middle Ages to the present, including women born up to 1940 and Commonwealth writers who have spent most of their writing time in Britain and aligned themselves with British culture. Each entry gives dates and places of birth and death, pseudonyms, a biographical summary, and a discussion of key works and themes. Titles and dates of works (or selected works, in the case of prolific authors) and critical references are also given at the end of each entry. Deliberately, both literary and non-literary writers are included - poets as well as diarists, historians, and writers in less prestigious areas such as children's fiction.