Best Female Lead Historical Fiction: 20 Novels with Strong Women

For a long time, historical fiction told the past through kings, generals and the men who made the decisions. But women were always there: ruling, spying, healing, writing, running farms and households, and surviving wars they had no say in starting. The best historical novels with female leads put those women at the centre of the story.

The novels on this list don’t drop modern heroines into old costumes. They show women working within the limits of their time, and sometimes breaking them, from a princess captured by Rome to a codebreaker at Bletchley Park. Every book has a woman as its lead character, and the list runs in historical order from the ancient world to the Second World War.

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What Makes a Great Female Lead in Historical Fiction?

The strongest heroines on this list share a few things. They feel like women of their own time, with its beliefs and limits, rather than modern women in disguise. They have real choices to make, even when the choices are bad ones. And their strength takes many forms: a queen’s stubbornness, a servant’s watchfulness, a mother’s grief, a spy’s nerve.

Many of these novels also rescue real women from the margins of history. Cleopatra’s daughter, Shakespeare’s wife, Marie de France, Sarah Grimké and Agnes Magnúsdóttir all left only traces in the record, and novelists have given them back a voice.

Quick Picks

If you want	Read
A royal heroine	Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen
A literary prize winner	Hamnet
A real crime and a real woman	Burial Rites or Alias Grace
Spies and codebreakers	The Alice Network or The Rose Code
A family saga across generations	Pachinko
A big romance with time travel	Outlander
A book to share with a teenager	Code Name Verity or The Book Thief

The Ancient World

1. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant (1997)

Setting: Mesopotamia, Canaan and Egypt in the age of the biblical patriarchs

In the Book of Genesis, Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah, is mentioned in only a few verses. Anita Diamant gives her the whole story. Dinah tells of the red tent where the women of her family gather, of her four mothers and their stories, and of a life that takes her from Canaan to Egypt.

The novel cares less about scripture than about the lives of women in the ancient world: childbirth, midwifery, friendship and the traditions they passed between them. It became a word-of-mouth phenomenon, and in 2014 Lifetime adapted it as a two-part miniseries with Rebecca Ferguson as Dinah.

Perfect for: Readers who want a women’s history of the ancient world and stories of female friendship.

2. Babylonia by Costanza Casati (2024)

Setting: The Neo-Assyrian Empire, 9th century BCE

Semiramis is one of the great legendary queens of the ancient world, probably based on the real Assyrian queen Sammuramat. Costanza Casati follows her from the margins of the empire, an orphan with nothing who will not accept the place the world has given her, into the dangerous politics of the Assyrian court.

The novel is fierce, ambitious and full of the texture of a world few novels visit. For more fiction from this region, see our ancient Middle East historical fiction list, and for the classical world next door, our ancient Greece historical fiction list.

Perfect for: Fans of Madeline Miller who want a darker, more political heroine.

3. Cleopatra’s Daughter by Michelle Moran (2009)

Setting: Rome, from 30 BCE

After the deaths of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, their children are not executed as everyone expects. Octavian takes the twins Selene and Alexander Helios, and their younger brother Ptolemy, to Rome to be paraded in his triumph, and then has them raised by his sister Octavia, the wife Antony left for Cleopatra.

Selene tells the story herself. She is a captive princess in the household of the man who destroyed her family, and she has to find a way to survive the dangers of Augustus’s Rome while holding on to the Egypt she lost. It is a lively, accessible introduction to a real woman often forgotten beside her famous mother. More novels from this world are on our ancient Rome historical fiction list.

Perfect for: Readers who want royal intrigue in ancient Rome from a young woman’s point of view.

The Medieval World

4. Matrix by Lauren Groff (2021)

Setting: An abbey in 12th-century England

Very little is known about Marie de France, one of the earliest known women poets writing in French. Lauren Groff imagines her life: at seventeen she is sent away from the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine to lead a poor abbey in England, where the nuns are starving and sick.

Marie has no wish to be there, but over the years she finds her purpose in the community of women around her and in her own visions. Groff writes in rich, compact prose, and the novel was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction. For more of the period, see our medieval historical fiction list and the Medieval Europe hub.

Perfect for: Readers who want literary fiction about women’s power and community.

Tudor and Elizabethan England

5. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory (2001)

Setting: The court of Henry VIII, 1520s and 1530s

Before Henry VIII fell for Anne Boleyn, he took her sister Mary as his mistress. Philippa Gregory tells the story through Mary, a young woman pushed forward by her ambitious family and then pushed aside when her sister catches the king’s eye.

The novel made Gregory a household name and was filmed in 2008. Its view of the Boleyns is dramatic and has been debated by historians, but as a story of two sisters caught in a game they cannot control, it is hard to put down. Gregory’s other novels are on our Philippa Gregory page and in the Plantagenet and Tudor reading order.

Perfect for: Readers who want Tudor court drama with a sister rivalry at its heart.

6. Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen by Alison Weir (2016)

Setting: England, from 1501

The first of Alison Weir’s Six Tudor Queens novels begins when Katherine arrives in England at sixteen to marry Prince Arthur. After his death she waits years in uncertainty before marrying his younger brother, now Henry VIII, and the novel follows her through the hopeful early years of the marriage and the long struggle that comes when Henry turns to Anne Boleyn.

Weir is a historian as well as a novelist, and her Katherine is devoted, steadfast and determined to defend her faith, her marriage and her daughter. The series gives each of Henry’s six wives a novel of her own: see our Six Tudor Queens reading order and the Alison Weir page.

Perfect for: Readers who want the real history of a Tudor queen, told from her side.

7. Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (2020)

Setting: Stratford-upon-Avon, 1580s and 1596

Shakespeare’s son Hamnet died in 1596 at the age of eleven. A few years later, his father wrote a play called Hamlet. Maggie O’Farrell’s novel is about the family behind those facts, and above all about Shakespeare’s wife, whom she calls Agnes (history knows her as Anne Hathaway). Her husband is never named.

Agnes is a healer with a deep knowledge of plants, and O’Farrell, who has said Anne Hathaway was unfairly portrayed for centuries, makes her the heart of the story. Hamnet won the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction, and Chloé Zhao’s film adaptation, co-written by O’Farrell with Jessie Buckley as Agnes, won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Drama. For more of the period, see our best Tudor historical fiction list.

Perfect for: Readers who want a moving, literary novel about grief, marriage and a forgotten woman.

The 17th and 18th Centuries

8. Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier (1999)

Setting: Delft, the Dutch Republic, 1660s

Griet is a young servant who goes to work in the household of the painter Johannes Vermeer. Quiet and observant, she has an eye for colour and light, and she is gradually drawn into the painter’s work, with dangerous consequences in a crowded house where everyone is watching.

Chevalier imagines the story behind one of the most famous paintings in the world, and Griet’s restraint and intelligence make her one of the most memorable narrators in the genre. The novel was filmed in 2003, with Scarlett Johansson as Griet and Colin Firth as Vermeer.

Perfect for: Readers who love art, quiet tension and beautifully controlled prose.

9. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon (1991)

Setting: The Scottish Highlands, 1743

In 1946, Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is on a second honeymoon in Scotland when she walks through a circle of standing stones and finds herself in 1743. She is thrown among the Highland clans in the years before the Jacobite Rising, and into a marriage with a young Highlander, Jamie Fraser.

Claire is practical, sharp-tongued and a skilled healer, and she never stops being herself in a century that has no place for her. Outlander began a long series and the Starz TV adaptation. See our Outlander series reading order and the Diana Gabaldon page.

Perfect for: Readers who want romance, adventure and history on an epic scale.

The 19th Century

10. Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (2013)

Setting: Northern Iceland, 1829

Agnes Magnúsdóttir has been condemned to death for her part in the murder of two men. While she waits for her execution, the authorities send her to live on the farm of a district officer, Jón Jónsson, whose wife and daughters are horrified to share their home with her. A young priest, Tóti, is sent to prepare her soul.

Agnes was a real woman, among the last people executed in Iceland. Hannah Kent first heard of her as an exchange student in Iceland, and the novel slowly uncovers who Agnes was beyond the crime. It was shortlisted for the 2014 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Perfect for: Readers who want a bleak, beautiful novel built on a true story.

11. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (1996)

Setting: Upper Canada, 1840s and 1850s

In 1843, Grace Marks, a poor Irish immigrant servant, was convicted of murder in one of the most notorious cases in Canadian history. Margaret Atwood tells her story through Grace herself, years into her imprisonment, as she talks to a young doctor who is trying to discover whether she is guilty or innocent, and whether she remembers at all.

Atwood never gives easy answers, and Grace is one of her most fascinating creations. The novel won the 1996 Giller Prize, and in 2017 it became a six-part miniseries for CBC and Netflix, written by Sarah Polley with Sarah Gadon as Grace.

Perfect for: Readers who like psychological mystery and unreliable narrators.

12. The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd (2014)

Setting: Charleston, South Carolina, from 1803

On her eleventh birthday, Sarah Grimké is given a ten-year-old enslaved girl, Hetty, known as Handful, to be her maid. The novel follows both of them over some thirty-five years, in alternating chapters: Sarah, who will grow up to be a real abolitionist and campaigner for women’s rights, and Handful, who longs for freedom.

Sue Monk Kidd drew on the real Grimké sisters, and Handful’s story was inspired by records of an enslaved girl in the household. It was the third pick for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0.

Perfect for: Readers who want two very different women’s paths to freedom in the American South.

13. The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber (2002)

Setting: London, 1870s

Sugar is a young prostitute in Victorian London: clever, well-read and quietly writing a novel full of rage against the men she serves. When William Rackham, heir to a perfume business, becomes her client, she sees a way out, and the novel follows her as she works her way into his household.

This is a huge, immersive and frank novel, told by a narrator who leads the reader by the hand through Victorian London from the gutters to the drawing rooms. The BBC adapted it in 2011 with Romola Garai as Sugar. More from the era is on our Victorian Era hub.

Perfect for: Readers who want a big, gritty Victorian novel with an unforgettable heroine.

14. The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry (2016)

Setting: London and coastal Essex, 1890s

Cora Seaborne is newly widowed and glad of it, free at last from an unhappy marriage. An amateur naturalist, she moves to Essex when she hears rumours that a mythical serpent has returned to the marshes, and she clashes, and then forms a deep bond, with the local vicar, Will Ransome, who believes the panic is a matter for faith rather than science.

The novel is about science and religion, friendship and love, and a woman discovering what she wants. It was named Waterstones Book of the Year in 2016, and Apple TV+ adapted it in 2022 with Claire Danes as Cora and Tom Hiddleston as Will.

Perfect for: Readers who like atmospheric, gothic-tinged fiction full of ideas.

The 20th Century

15. The Alice Network by Kate Quinn (2017)

Setting: Occupied France, 1915, and Europe, 1947

In 1947, Charlie St. Clair, an American college student who is pregnant and unmarried, goes to Europe to look for her cousin Rose, who disappeared in occupied France during the war. Her search leads her to Eve Gardiner, a bitter, hard-drinking woman in London who once worked as a spy.

In 1915, Eve was recruited into the Alice Network, a real ring of women spies who worked against the Germans in occupied France. The two timelines meet as the women set out together across France. See our Kate Quinn page and the WWI hub for more.

Perfect for: Readers who want real wartime history, spies and a sharp-edged heroine.

16. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (2017)

Setting: Korea and Japan, from the early 20th century to 1989

Sunja, the daughter of a poor boarding-house keeper in a Korean fishing village, falls pregnant by a wealthy stranger. Rather than bring shame on her family, she marries a gentle young minister and goes with him to Japan, where Koreans live as unwelcome outsiders.

From that choice grows a saga of four generations of one family fighting to make a life in Japan. Sunja is its quiet, unbreakable centre. Pachinko was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction, and Apple TV+ adapted it as a series in Korean, Japanese and English.

Perfect for: Readers who want a sweeping family saga and a history they may not know.

17. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (2015)

Setting: Occupied France, 1939 to 1945

Vianne Mauriac and her younger sister Isabelle Rossignol face the German occupation in very different ways. Vianne, whose husband is sent to the front, stays in the village of Carriveau with her daughter and must make terrible choices to keep them alive, even with a German officer billeted in her home. Isabelle, reckless and rebellious, joins the Resistance.

Hannah shows that courage can look like quiet endurance as well as open defiance, and the two sisters carry the book equally. For more fiction about the war, see our best WWII historical fiction list and the WWII hub.

Perfect for: Readers who want an emotional story of sisters, sacrifice and survival.

18. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (2012)

Setting: Britain and occupied France, 1943

A young British agent has been captured by the Gestapo in occupied France. To buy time, she agrees to write a confession, and she tells it as the story of her friendship with Maddie, the pilot who flew her into France.

Saying more would spoil the book, which is a story of female friendship, courage and storytelling itself. Written for young adults but loved by readers of every age, it was a 2013 Michael L. Printz Honor book.

Perfect for: Readers of any age who want a gripping wartime story about friendship.

19. The Rose Code by Kate Quinn (2021)

Setting: Bletchley Park, 1940, and London, 1947

In 1940, three very different women come to Bletchley Park: Osla, a debutante who translates decoded German messages; Mab, who has fought her way out of poverty in London’s East End; and Beth, a shy village woman with a rare gift for puzzles. The war makes them friends, and then a betrayal pulls them apart.

In 1947, as Britain prepares for the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, a coded letter brings the three back together to find a traitor. Osla is closely based on a real woman, Osla Benning, and the novel brings the forgotten women of Bletchley to life.

Perfect for: Readers who love codebreaking, wartime Britain and a mystery to solve.

20. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (2005)

Setting: Nazi Germany, 1939 to 1943

Liesel Meminger is sent to live with foster parents, the gentle Hans Hubermann and the sharp-tongued Rosa, in a small town near Munich. She steals her first book before she can even read it, and as the war grows closer, books become her way of making sense of a world falling apart.

The novel is narrated by Death, an unusual choice that gives it both its humour and its sorrow. It was filmed in 2013 with Sophie Nélisse as Liesel, Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson.

Perfect for: Teenagers and adults who want a moving story about the power of words.

Great Women in Supporting Roles

These celebrated novels are led by men, but they give the women around them unusual depth. They are not female-lead novels, but readers who love strong women in historical fiction often ask for them.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2009): Thomas Cromwell’s story, with a brilliant portrait of Anne Boleyn. See the Wolf Hall trilogy reading order and the Hilary Mantel page.
The Autobiography of Henry VIII by Margaret George (1986): Henry tells his own story, but all six wives emerge as full characters. More Tudor novels are on our Tudor England hub.
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (2011): narrated by Patroclus, with Thetis and Briseis drawn with real care. It won the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction. More myth retellings are on our Greek mythology historical fiction list.
March by Geraldine Brooks (2005): the absent father of Little Women at the American Civil War, with Marmee given her own voice. It won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2014): shared between Marie-Laure, a blind French girl in Saint-Malo, and Werner, a German orphan. It won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Not Quite Historical Fiction

Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (1933): not a novel but a memoir of the First World War, written by a woman who served as a nurse and lost her fiancé, brother and close friends. It is one of the great books by a woman about that war.
Margery Kempe by Robert Glück (1994): an experimental novel that sets the life of the medieval mystic Margery Kempe beside a modern love affair. Kempe’s own book, dictated in the 15th century, is the earliest surviving autobiography in English.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best historical fiction with a female lead?

It depends on what you like. For literary fiction, Hamnet and Matrix are outstanding. For page-turning wartime stories, The Nightingale, The Alice Network and The Rose Code are hugely popular. For royal history, Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen tells a queen’s story from her own side.

Which of these novels are about real women?

Many are. Cleopatra Selene, Mary Boleyn, Katherine of Aragon, Marie de France, Sarah Grimké, Agnes Magnúsdóttir and Grace Marks were all real, and Hamnet’s Agnes is Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway. The Alice Network and The Rose Code are built around real women spies and codebreakers.

Are these books historically accurate?

They are novels, so every author invents dialogue and private lives. Most of the books here rest on careful research, and several authors, such as Alison Weir, are also historians. Where little is known, as with Marie de France or Semiramis, the novelist fills the gaps with imagination.

Which books on this list are good for teenagers?

Code Name Verity and The Book Thief are both written for young adults and loved by adults too. Cleopatra’s Daughter is also a good fit for older teens. Some books on this list, such as The Crimson Petal and the White, are firmly for adult readers.

Which of these books have been adapted for film or TV?

Hamnet, Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Other Boleyn Girl and The Book Thief became films. Outlander, Alias Grace, The Crimson Petal and the White, The Essex Serpent, Pachinko and The Red Tent became TV series or miniseries.

Why are Wolf Hall and The Song of Achilles not on the main list?

Both are superb novels with strong women in them, but they are led by men: Thomas Cromwell and Patroclus. This list is for novels with a woman as the lead character, so they appear in a separate box for readers who want them.

Which time periods have the most historical fiction with female leads?

The Tudor court and the Second World War are the richest periods, with dozens of novels about queens, spies, resisters and survivors. The ancient world and the Middle Ages have fewer, which makes books like Babylonia and Matrix all the more welcome.

Where can I find more historical fiction about strong women?

Our author pages for Philippa Gregory, Alison Weir, Kate Quinn and Diana Gabaldon cover whole careers of female-led fiction, and the Six Tudor Queens reading order gives each of Henry VIII’s wives a novel of her own.