Only eight women authors were included in the list of the 100 best novels of the century, and compiled by a panel chaired by Random House executive Christopher Cerf.
While the list ranked the novels by worth and literary contribution (Ulysses heading the list at number one), the first woman novelist, Virginia Woolf, did not appear until number fifteen.
The books written by women that made the list were To the Lighthouse by Woolf, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, The House of Mirth by Wharton, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark, The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen, Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, and Under the Net by Iris Murdoch.
