I'm not certain who altered my thread title but Marilyn French was much more than a 'novelist'

The obituary in The Guardian yesterday more accurately described her as

'writer and academic'

'The fact that she came to public attention as a popular novelist may not have been entirely comfortable for a woman who regarded herself as a serious academic, but it expresses a tension at the heart of her work.

French was an intellectual whose non-fiction polemics were rigorously researched; she published scholarly works such as Beyond Power: Women, Men & Morals (1985), a 600-page analysis of patriarchy, and the four-volume From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women (2002).'

A Brooklyn native, French graduated from Long Island's Hofstra University with a master's degree, studying philosophy and English literature. She taught there in the 1960s.

After her divorce, she earned a doctorate from Harvard and was an English professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.