French women's writing, historically marginalised by the literary establishment, blossomed with an extraordinarily creative power in the 1970s. The optimism generated by France's miracle economy and the emergence of a new feminist movement both undoubtedly contributed to the new profile of women writers.

What kind of writing was produced in these heady circumstances? French Women's Writing offers the English-speaking reader the opportunity to discover for him or herself the work of seven contemporary French women writers, many of them translated here for the first time.

From the avant-garde texts of Chantal Chawaf, centering on the writing of the body and the constant search for the maternal within us, to the best-selling work of Annie Ernaux, drawing on her Normandy childhood, the variety and energy of the different ways in which these writers explore their status as women are amply demonstrated by the selection offered in this volume.

An introduction to each writer precedes the translations of her work and the more general introductory section discusses the cultural conditions of writing for women in France in the 1970s and 1980s.