5 FEMALE WRITERS WHO CHANGED OUR READING TASTES

AGATHA CHRISTIE

With 66 detective novels to her name (not to mention short stories, poetry and plays), the queen of crime is the bestselling novelist of all time – with 2bn copies of her books sold since 1920. Poison was Agatha’s fictional murder method of choice, in which she gained expertise while working as an apothecary’s assistant during the First World War. Her disappearance in 1926 provoked a nationwide hunt (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle helped in the search) and, although she was found in a hotel in Harrogate, she never explained what had happened during those 11 days. Her books continue to sell and her play The Mousetrap is the world’s longest running.

SHIRLEY CONRAN

Shirley has always been ahead of the curve. Her 1975 book Superwoman – which included the mantra ‘Life’s too short to stuff a mushroom’ – told working women how to make more time for fun. Later, she set up The Work-life Balance Trust to lobby for flexible working. She was women’s editor of The Observer Magazine and the first editor of the Daily Mail’s Femail pages. Aged 40, she quit due to illness and turned to writing novels. Her debut, Lace, paved the way for a generation of racy books. More recently, Shirley has become a financial guru and launched maths course Money Stuff.

HELEN FIELDING

When journalist Helen began her anonymous column in The Independent about a fictional thirtysomething singleton looking for love, she created one of the most iconic characters of all time. Flawed, funny Bridget Jones was a breath of fresh air and readers lapped it up – Bridget Jones’s Diary has sold 15m copies worldwide since it was published. A quarter of a century and three more books later, Helen’s imperfect heroine has influenced many fictional characters, from Phoebe Waller-bridge’s Fleabag to Candice Carty-williams’s Queenie.

JK ROWLING

It takes guts to keep writing after rejections from 12 publishing houses, especially when you’re a single mum with a full-time job. Joanne persevered and her determination paid off – not only has she sold over 500m Harry Potter books, she’s inspired a whole generation of children to love reading. In 2013, she secretly published a crime novel called The Cuckoo’s Calling under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith and has since written another five books in the series.

BERNARDINE EVARISTO

When Bernardine won the Booker Prize in 2019 with Girl, Woman, Other, it was one of the most talked about wins in years. Not only was she the first Black woman to be awarded the prize, but the fact the judges broke their rules by declaring a tie (the £50,000 was split with Margaret Atwood for The Testaments) was controversial. In 2020, she became the first Black woman to top the UK fiction paperback chart and was recently elected as president of The Royal Society of Literature.