Anna Sewell was an English novelist who wrote the 1877 novel Black Beauty, her only published work, which is now considered one of the top ten best selling novels for children, although it was originally intended for an adult audience. She died just five months after Black Beauty’s publication, having lived long enough to see her only novel become a success.
Sophia Frances Anne Caulfeild was a British writer and needleworker who wrote about religion and needlework, and frequently worked with Blanche Catherine Saward.
Sheema Kalbasi is an Iranian American poet, writer, filmmaker and activist for women’s rights, minorities’ rights, children’s rights, human rights and refugees’ rights. Her work discusses these topics as well as other women’s issues, war, refugees, Sharia Law and freedom of expression. In additon to her artistic work, Sheema taught refugee children and worked for the UNHCR and the Center for Refugees in Pakistan, and UNA Denmark. Her poems have been anthologized and translated into more than 20 languages.
Although Élisabeth-Sophie Chéron is best remembered today as a painter, she was actually a true Renaissance woman, acclaimed during her lifetime as a talented poet, musician, artist, and academicienne. In her childhood, she was trained by her father in the arts of enamelling and miniature painting. Under the sponsorship of the prominent artist Charles Le Brun, she was admitted to the Académie Royale of Paris as a portrait painter in 1672. She exhibited regularly at the Salon in Paris, while also producing poetry and translations; she was fluent in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Chéron’s literary talent was recognized in 1694 when she was named a member of Italy’s Accademia dei Ricovrati in Padua, and given the academician name of Erato, after the muse of lyric and love poetry.
Ofelia Domínguez Navarro was a Cuban writer, teacher, lawyer, feminist and activist who fought for the rights of women and illegitimate children.
Ann Hui On-wah, BBS MBE is a Hong Kong film director, producer, screenwriter and actress and one of the Hong Kong New Wave’s most critically acclaimed filmmakers.
Perhaps best known as the long-time lesbian partner of Marguerite Radclyffe Hall, author of The Well of Loneliness, sculptor and translator Una Troubridge was an educated woman with achievements in her own right.
Norwegian feminist writer and artist
In 1884 needleworker Thérèse de Dillmont left the embroidery school that she had started with her sister Franziska and moved to France, where she wrote her Encyclopedia of Needlework (1886).
Teréz Karacs was a Hungarian writer, educator, memoirist and women’s rights activist.