I really appreciate books about canonized authors, this graphic novel version is full of exciting details the common person might not know about the female authors they have read or will read in school. Jane Austen and Mary Shelley have big fav's of mine for most of my life and here is a book I can enjoy while I need a break from the text formatting of a "real" book.

Well, this successfully manages to spin off from any podcast that may have launched these creators' careers. It's not a brilliant book, but will be exceedingly welcome for the educator seeking to have something concentrating on females in the English language canon. Starting almost from a position of 'nobody really cares that women wrote anything', the authors have managed to put together a book that hardly features the voice or opinion of a male. We get an introduction, fair enough, after which the book is split into six parts, each with their own opening notes and each with three authoresses to cover. That coverage is again a primer to their biography, and then we get the core of the book – graphic novel representations of their lot and their life. So Mary Shelley, who we open with, is of course shown mulling over "Frankenstein", but we see how public opprobrium of her life choices and the loss of a baby woke some of the horrors of her novel. Ann Radcliffe is shown failing to bat away stupid thoughts and comment at a dinner party she would rather never have been at. Charlotte Bronte gets inspiration from a haunted house and some of her own pent-up emotion.

What I had to feel a flaw with these pages was that the graphic novels were written very young – they're visually and textually primary school stuff – apart that is, from a wilful love of warping the timeline until it snaps here and there. But the writing here (beyond the closing trivia that each author gets as an appendix) seemed fit for an audience a few years older. Overall the chapters do convey the women involved, but it did feel to me as if not one but two target audiences were being aimed at – the young scholar interested in the background to the literature, and the even younger reader who may delight in seeing some of that fashioned as a cartoon, years before the words 'set text' get to worry their mind.

Errant chronology helps serve the way the women have been lumped into trios, but not the history of them all – this book wants to show connections from one to another where at all possible, but also to hide that behind a wall of time-changes. It did do the dutiful thing as a kids' book of teaching this adult something, for I was certainly not aware there was a real story behind the "Gentleman Jack" TV series, although as it was a quite yawnsome 'here's how I selled me coal up in t'Yorkshire' story I was losing no sleep either way. But in acclaiming the graft, the individuality, the bravery sometimes, of being a standout female writer, is where this volumes virtues would lie. It's just that, considering how easy it is to imagine a less unwieldy and more straightforward book than the one I saw, the star rating has to remain as it is.

If you enjoy female writers or just really love supporting females this book is for you! I always find the idea of why people write and why they choose the subjects they write about and this book provides insight into that in a way that does not feel analytical in the slightest! I really enjoyed this book and think it is a great airport read (that’s where I read it).

Pub Date: April 20, 2021
I adored this one! It was so beautifully illustrated and the concept of focusing on women authors of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries - who pioneered the lit scene for women - was fantastic. I enjoyed learning more about authors such as Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, and the Bronte sisters. The format is that of which each woman is celebrated with a summary of what inspired her to write, followed by graphics that depict a pivotal moment in her life. This book explores women and their untold histories, including: "The success of Little Women, the diary of the 'first modern lesbian,' Austen's struggle with writer's block, and the forgotten mother of the gothic genre" (@netgalley). Highly recommend this book! Overall, I gave it 4.5/5 Stars.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

'Why She Wrote' is a graphic novel illustrating the most remarkable moments of the famous classic women writers during the 18th and 19th centuries. The authors tried to capture the different aspects of these writers and portrayed it beautifully. It's no doubt that the eminence can't be captured in a 300-page book. But the most one can do is celebrate their becoming. And that's what I love about the book the most.

It celebrates not just authors and their works, but their becoming. Their stories, their similarities. How each of them inspired the other and why they disguised under a different name. As a fan of women writers and classics. I loved each snippet. The illustrations are neat and beautiful. This book can be read by any age group. There would be something new to learn and know for everyone. I would love to reread it sometime later in a paperback or hardcover format.

I'll love to see if they decide to make a sequel of this for more female writers of the 19th and 20th century too. I would love to see an illustrated version extending to Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath.

Thanks to Netgalley and Chronicle Books for an advanced copy for review. It was a delight reading this book. And I would buy a hard copy when it's released. It's just that good.

You can also find this review on my blog: https://thebooktoldmethat.wordpress.com/

This is one of the best books I have read in a while. It made me curious. It made me laugh, cry and it made me desperate to read more, even as I was actually reading it.

It also made me hopeful in a time of difficulties in the world, reminded me how people are able to change things.

I must say I am from Brazil. Though I had heard of most of the authors and read some of the work I had never studied them. Therefore it was all mostly new to me and quite amazing.


Overall, I can say the authors have done a great job capturing the stories and telling them. I am now excited to read more of these womens work and life.

WHY SHE WROTE: A GRAPHIC HISTORY OF THE LIVES, INSPIRATION, AND INFLUENCE BEHIND THE PENS OF CLASSIC WOMEN WRITERS by Hannah K. Chapman and Laura Burke, illustrated by Kaley Bales is about eighteen women writers: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Bronte, Frances Burney, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Wollstonecraft, Frances E. W. Harper, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Anne Lister, Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Maude Eaton (Sui Sin Far), Mary Anne Evans (George Eliot), Anne Bronte (Acton Bell), Beatrix Potter, Frances Hodgson Burnett and Louisa May Alcott.

I really liked the format. The book is divided into six chapters. Each chapter features three authors connected by the same theme. For example, one of the chapters is called "Activism as Art". Every chapter starts with a short introduction. Two pages of text. Then the author is introduced. A page with a name, portrait, the year when she was born-the year when she died, and a citation from her work. Here is my favorite example of a quote: "Nothing is impossible to a determined woman." Louisa May Alcott, THE ABBOT'S GHOST OR MAURICE TREHERNE'S TEMPTATION, 1867. After that, there is one page about that author (text only), followed by approximately ten pags of comics about a pivotal moment in her life. After that, there are some interesting facts about her and a list of selected works.

Beautiful illustrations. I'll definitely look up the work of Kaley Bales. Her art is spot on.

Diversity!!! What I love the most about this book is that features the authors of color, too.

Inspiring stories. It's a book about perseverance. These writers lived in different times (the 18th, the 19th, and the 20th centuries), but all of them felt trapped and confined. They couldn't inherit property, couldn't vote, could't get divorced. And yet, despite all the obstacles, they persisted and kept writing. They faced rejection, stigmas, and criticism. They struggled. But they kept fighting. Fighting for their rights. The dared to defy.

The focus of this book is on similarities of their stories and connections that emerged upon the analysis of their works and lives. And it's fascinating!

By the way, I really loved the note about Johanna Ortner, the doctoral student who managed to find a copy of the Frances E. W. Harper's first book called FOREST LEAVES. So many people thought that this book was lost, and a student found a perfect copy in the archive in 2015. How cool is that?

At university, I was forced to read some of the books written by these authors. To be absolutely candid with you, it was really hard. MIDDLEMARCH by George Eliot, WIVES AND DAUGHTERS and NORTH AND SOUTH by Elizabeth Gaskell, etc... Back then, I preferred to read the novels about Percy Jackson. But this book... it changed my perspective. It gave me a reason to care.

E-galley was provided by NetGalley for an honest review. Thank you so much!

3 out of 5 ✨s - Thank you to NetGalley and Chronicle Books for the ARC of Why She Wrote! I thought this book was such a cool take on on a biography, and the illustrations were beautiful throughout the entire book.

One thing I really enjoyed about Why She Wrote is how the authors organized the chapters—from Activism as Art to Finding Their Voice, there were some really interesting connections made between authors that I was previously not aware of. As I was reading, I kept wanting to add more and more authors and works to my TBR shelf.

With that said, I didn’t *love* this book for myself. I found the stories of the women interesting, but not necessarily the writing of the stories. More often than not, I was paging to get through to the next chapter or the next writer.

However, I think this book has a place on a shelf of a family who has a child looking to read about some power female authors. The book can also be an important addition in a classroom. Although I think this book could be interesting for a younger audience, I’m not sure that the works of the women in the book would fit that same audience.

I found the premise for Why She Wrote to be super interesting. The introduction made me super excited to read the rest of the book.

The book is divided into chapters that feature three to four female writers. Each author has a portrait and a one-page biography. This is then followed by several pages of graphic storytelling and finally two pages that contained factoids, like connections to other authors, and selected works.

I found this approach to be really disjointed. The transition from written biography to graphic storytelling was often confusing. At first, I was unsure if the graphic portion was supposed to be a clip from their lives or a scene from one of their books. There was never an introduction to what exactly it was, and it didn't always connect to the biography. The chapters also were not tied together. I would have also liked there to be additional modern writers, especially BIPOC, such as Maya Angelou so that the book is not primarily white Europeans.

As far as images and format go, it was okay. Within the graphic sections, I found that the script font used was difficult to read and the rest of the font to be unattractive. The images themselves I liked although it was often difficult to tell one person apart from another.

Overall, I ended up liking the concept much better than the actual book. It was a great idea that was not executed well. I think the book has a lot of potential but needs significant editing and changes prior to being published.

Very interesting topic and take on it.

Good overview and introduction to famous female authors and depictions of a pivotal moment in each of their lives. We read these authors but don't think much about them really and this book gives us a glimpse into their lives and motivations and whets the appetite to learn more about them.
The half-comic format works great depicting the important moment of inspiration, backlash, despair, and emotion that gave us timeless works.

This is not the most in-depth book but the short bios balance well with the comics.

Why She Wrote offers a look into the lives and motivations of many well loved female authors. Although I loved the diversity and inclusivity(it was not solely white straight women), this book wasn’t really for me. While it was very informative, it was mainly just a straight biography. There was some inclusion of graphics, but those were quite short and many of the fonts were unreadable.
I will say though that many will love this book! Those who really like informative texts especially will find this book to their liking. And I did love the way the book was formatted!
Another notable fact is that I finished this book in one sitting! The book is very engaging, but not really my thing. I will check out the authors other works and maybe the podcast that is mentioned though!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an arc of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

I would like to thank netgalley and Chronicle Books for a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

This is everything I wanted it to be!

I loved the illustrations, and the focus on women of colour alongside white women.

If you love the book, check out the podcast Bonnets At Dawn, and if you love the podcast you'll love the book.

I really enjoyed the spirit of this book. Women have been ignored by the literary world for a long time, and I'm glad the women that broke grounds received the recognition they may not have received in their time. By the authors' own admission, there were far too many to put in one book; so I hope this turns into a kind of series, because readers will see it's very euro-centric. I'd love to read something like this with an even broader scope.

I do wish, that there were more graphics to this graphic novel. It was such an informative book; and it's hard to fault them for that, but I would say it was 50% text and 50% graphic panes. I wish more of the text could have been converted.

I think my harshest criticism is for the font used when the women were writing. It was almost too difficult to read.

4.5 Stars (I received an e-arc from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review)

This book has a combination well known female authors, some not as well known, and something which I was pleased to see was some diversity other than white heterosexual women. The book is split into sections with a group of women pertaining to a certain theme. Each section has a general introduction and then goes into a short biography of each writer, then some graphic panels and end notes with a couple illustrations. We do get some diverse woman African American, Chinese Canadian, bisexual and lesbian representation. As well as some women who weren’t afraid to stand up for themselves or document painful/traumatic experiences. This would be a great resource book to have in schools, in particular junior and high school aged kids.

If you're a fan of women writers, you're in for a treat. "Why She Wrote", written by Hannah K. Chapman and Lauren Burke and illustrated by Kaley Bales, is a fascinating compilation of 18 portraits of English-speaking classical women writers. A lot of them, like Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë, are very famous. Others, like Anne Lister or Edith Maude Eaton, are less famous in non-English-speaking areas, but no less important.

The book is perfectly balanced between biographical elements, comic strips, anecdotes and bibliographies and its originality lies in its approach. Instead of individualizing or opposing the writers, a lot of connections are established between them and their reasons for writing: some were activists or used their sufferings as a literary inspiration, others seeked financial stability or wrote under a pseudonym. I now want to read them all.

I really appreciated the authors' attempt to be inclusive, even though the English literature canon tends to be the opposite.

This book is a special treat! Many of my favourite writers of all time are detailed in one gorgeous book, both in text and graphic illustrations, absolutely delightful. The "portraits" of the authors were easily recognizable, though they lived during the 18th and 19th centuries, The illustrator captured them and the time period breathtakingly! During their time, many of these writers were mocked and ridiculed as readers were often shocked and horrified by the content but they were determined and changed the world. They really did, at least in my view. These writers feel like dear friends.

Each chapter (i.e. Gothic genre, pseudonyms, financial profit) highlights three brilliant female authors, what they wrote, their motivation(s), lives, relationships, plagiarism, writing earnings and in some cases, deaths. Some of these women were equal rights advocates, some kindled controversy. All were ingenius writers. At the end of each chapter you will find selected works by the writer in chronological order. From quirky Ann Radcliffe to the creative Bronte sisters to beautiful storyteller Frances Burney to the indomitable Elizabeth Gaskell to masculine entrepreneur Anne Lister (and loads more!), you will read a whopping variety, all with a few common threads, yet all very individual. The writer I knew the least about is Alice Dunbar Nelson so I was thrilled to learn more! Several of these women suffered terribly, emotionally and physically. Their lives were not easy. But I am so, so grateful they wrote what they did...there is a reason their works remain as classics and hopefully always will.

Anyone even remotely interested in female writers in this era, or in general, will adore this stunner. My entire bibliophile family will adore it, especially my teenage nieces. Such a brilliant introduction as well as a wonderful refresher to those more knowledgeable. I cannot praise this book highly enough. It is pure joy.

My sincere thank you to Chronicle Books and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this fantastic book in exchange for an honest review. Much appreciated.

A enlightening and wonderful look into female authors throughout history. I loved that it told the stories of these women and even added the element of graphic novel to make it even more visually fun. The book tells these womens' stories, their lives, how they came about writing and why, and a list of their works. A delightful read perfect for anyone interested in famous female authors!