There is a body of women writers from the 20th century who were major figures in their time and are now systematically underread — not unknown, but not assigned, not recommended, not part of the common reading vocabulary. Willa Cather. Christina Stead. Jean Rhys. Barbara Pym. Penelope Fitzgerald.

I want to make a case specifically for Barbara Pym, who wrote twelve novels about the interior lives of ordinary English women in the 1950s and 60s, who was dropped by her publisher in 1963 and rediscovered in the 1970s after Philip Larkin nominated her as one of the most underrated authors of the century. Her novels are comedies of manners in a tradition that runs through Austen, but they're also precisely observed studies of loneliness and competence and the way people manage quiet lives.

Excellent Women is where I'd start. It's 221 pages. It's the funniest and saddest book about being single and capable in a world that doesn't notice.