I’d never heard of MacDonald, but she was an incredibly popular author in the 1940’s and 1950’s for her comical memoirs and children’s books, selling millions of copies and gaining national fame (as well as a dedicated fan-base in the UK.) This is why I was so happy when someone recommended Betty MacDonald to me. Unfortunately they’re few and far between. I fear generations of readers have suffered an unknowable misfortune in the many funny books which went unwritten by women.īut of course there are funny women authors: Nancy Mitford, Flannery O’Conner and Jane Austen spring immediately to mind. Third, a sense of humor is just one of the many qualities of character which has for a very long time been roundly discouraged in women but encouraged in men. Second, for most of history the proportion of male to female authors of any kind has been ludicrously unbalanced. First, there aren’t that many funny authors of any sex - I think humorists are the unsung heroes of literature, almost always written off by critics as unserious and therefore not literary. Of course I don't mean that women aren't funny - of course they are (or rather, can be, just as with men,) but a few unfortunate historical factors come together in a kind of Venn diagram for why the shelf of great female humorists is lamentably small. When I say that it’s because I like funny books, said critics can get pretty angry.

When asked to list my favorite authors or books, I’m sometimes criticized for not including enough (or indeed any,) women.

The egg and i book betty macdonald