Women's work

WILLIAM Shakespeare was actually a black, Jewish woman according to a new book by historian Irene Coslet. She claims the bard was really Emilia Bassano, a poet with connections to the Tudor court.

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A novel approach: George Orwell's first wife - psychologist Eileen Blair - was a massive influence on his writing. His most celebrated novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was even inspired by a poem she wrote 15 years earlier called End Of The Century, 1984. She died aged just 39 in 1945.

Flipping the script: Sophia Tolstaya, the wife of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, is seen as instrumental to his success. She was his manager and editor for 48 years, famously writing out the whole 1,500-word manuscript to masterpiece War And Peace (1867) seven times by hand. She also had 13 children.