Jane Austen died 200 years ago today, but she continues to be widely read and influential to today’s writers. The Onion highlights some of the most notable female authors throughout history.
Agatha Christie
Her groundbreaking mystery-thrillers defined the genre and paved the way for hundreds of episodes of NCIS: Los Angeles
Maya Angelou
Although she’s best known as the first black female streetcar conductor in San Francisco, Angelou was also a rather talented writer
Ayn Rand
Rand’s writing made strides toward eradicating the harmful stereotype of females as a compassionate, nurturing gender
Laura Ingalls Wilder
By highlighting the joys of living off the land, Wilder’s Little House books have inspired thousands of children to grow their own food and birth their own calves at home
Harper Lee
Her legendary work ethic allowed Lee to crank out novels at the blistering pace of one per century
Jane Austen
Scholars widely credit Austen with creating Keira Knightley’s career as we know it today
Anne Frank
Frank is still one of the world’s most widely read authors, despite her career taking a nosedive around 1945
J.K. Rowling
Rowling’s richly imagined novel The Casual Vacancy allowed children across the globe to daydream about what it might be like to be a parish councilor
@NikiG91
She had a pretty good tweet about her Uber driver last week