Prior to the political and cultural upsurge of the 60s and 70s, earlier women writers and poets had already paved the way for women into the literary realm that was dominated by men. A multitude of female writers emerged in the 1800s with influential works such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, Margaret Fuller’s Women in the Nineteenth Century, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, and the Bronte sister’s Jane Eyre and other works. This is not to mention the prodigious works of female poets such as Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Phyllis Wheatley, Anne Bradstreet, and previously mentioned Emily Bronte. 

Though the works and expressions of these women writers were radical and emboldening for their sex at the time, it is important to highlight the distinction between nineteenth century “feminist” writing and the literary feminism that burgeoned in the 1960s. For one, most of the women writers above were unable to permeate the bureaucratic, male driven publishing industry. Many used male pen names or published works anonymously if they were given the opportunity to introduce their work to the world. Some were not widely recognized until their death, such as poet Emily Dickinson. 

In female writers of the Victorian Era, the notables including Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Margaret Fuller, the sentiments echoed are not necessarily feminist by the contemporary understanding of the word. English Professor and author of Feminism in Eighteenth Century England Katharine Rogers intimates that Victorian Era feminism was not a “single-minded, systematic campaigning for women’s rights,” but a “particular sensitivity to their needs, awareness of their problems, and concern for their situation.” Books like Aurora Leigh and Women in the Nineteenth Century are often equated with later works in the cannon of radical feminist writings, but they did not echo the political and social demands for equality and civil rights that were synonymous with second wave feminism. Instead, they argued for a recognition of women’s intellect and the validation of female intuition, sensitivity, and individuality. Early works also pointed critiques at the institution of marriage as a confining form of female oppression. Female writers were not decrying inequality in the political or social sphere, but instead initiating the conversation about the fettering conventions and definitions of a woman’s place being in a home and with a man. This solidified the groundwork for the revolutionary demands of women in later years, without depriving these female writers of validity or recognition from male publishers or counterparts.