Fiction Featuring Historical Women

Historical fiction often features the more well known figures in history, particularly when it comes to women.  Here are some works that highlight the lives of less well known, but very important women figures in history.

The Other Einstein - Marie Benedict

Mitza Marić has always been a little different from other girls. Most twenty-year-olds are wives by now, not studying physics at an elite Zurich university with only male students trying to outdo her clever calculations. But Mitza is smart enough to know that, for her, math is an easier path than marriage. And then fellow student Albert Einstein takes an interest in her, and the world turns sideways. Theirs becomes a partnership of the mind and of the heart, but there might not be room for more than one genius in a marriage.  Fictional account of the wife of Albert Einstein who was also a brilliant physicist.

The Moon in the Palace - Weina Dai Randel 

A Palace concubine, young Mei knows nothing of these womanly arts, yet she will give the Emperor a gift he can never forget. Mei's intelligence and curiosity, the same traits that make her an outcast among the other concubines, impress the Emperor. But just as she is in a position to seduce the most powerful man in China, divided loyalties split the palace in two, culminating in a perilous battle that Mei can only hope to survive.  Mei, also known as Wu Zetian, went on to become  Empress Wu, was involved in the expansion of China. 

Margaret the First - Danielle Dutton

Margaret the First dramatizes the life of Margaret Cavendish, the shy, gifted, and wildly unconventional 17th-century Duchess. The eccentric Margaret wrote and published volumes of poems, philosophy, feminist plays, and Utopian science fiction at a time when 'being a writer' was not an option open to women. As the English Civil War raged on, Margaret met and married William Cavendish, who encouraged her writing and her desire for a career. After the War, her work earned her both fame and infamy in England: at the dawn of daily newspapers, she was "Mad Madge," an original tabloid celebrity. Yet Margaret was also the first woman to be invited to the Royal Society of London--a mainstay of the Scientific Revolution--and the last for another two hundred years.

Hild - Nicola Griffith

Tells the story of Saint Hilda of Whitby.  Daughter of a poisoned prince and a crafty noblewoman, quiet, bright-minded Hild arrives at the court of King Edwin of Northumbria, where the six-year-old takes on the role of seer/consiglieri for a monarch troubled by shifting allegiances and Roman emissaries attempting to spread their new religion.

Terrible Virtue - Ellen Feldman 

A fictional portrait of one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century follows the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, who sacrificed two husbands, three children, and scores of lovers in her fight for sexual equality and freedom.