The Book of the City of Ladies (1000 Books to Read)

This is a rejection of misogynist thought. She was ahead of her time having written this book in 1405!

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

James Mustich

The first laywoman in Europe to make her living solely by her writing, Christine de Pizan used her gifts to refute the misogyny of philosophers, poets, orators, and churchmen, who, the author asserts at the outset, were unanimous in their view that “female nature is wholly given up to vice.” Drawing upon classical mythology, ancient history, scripture, and the lives of the martyrs, Pizan cites examples of female virtue and achievement, honoring women who were warriors, inventors, scholars, oracles, artists, saints. An anthology of entertaining stories, her book is also an important intellectual document and a fierce argument for women’s education: “If it were customary to send little girls to school and teach them the same subjects as are taught to boys,” Pizan wrote at the turn of the fifteenth century, “they would learn just as fully and would understand the subtleties of all arts and sciences.”