Marilyn French, author of The Women’s Room, dies

Marilyn French, author of the provocative novel The Women's Room, seen as a turning point in feminist literature, has died in New York at the age of 79 after heart failure.

The Women's Room received mixed reviews when it was first published in 1977 - some critics called her writing belligerent and artless - but it spoke to a generation of women around the world who were seeking liberation, and went on to sell more than 20 million copies. In a BBC Radio Woman's Hour poll in 2004, it was voted one of the five books that most changed the way women see themselves.

The novel told the story of a repressed suburban housewife, Mira, who divorces her brutish husband in the 1960s and goes to Harvard where she finds comfort among like-minded women seeking to redefine their lives at a time of sweeping social change.

The book's most quoted line - "All men are rapists, and that's all they are," spoken by the protagonist after the near-rape of her daughter - was often attributed to French herself.

"They said I was a man hater, and I never defended myself against that, because I do believe that men are to blame for the condition of women," she told the Guardian in 2006. "Even men who are not actively keeping women down, but are profiting from women's position, or who don't mind things being the way they are - they are responsible too. I don't hate men . . . but men are responsible for the situation of women.

A native New Yorker, French always said she was radicalised by reading Kate Millett's feminist treatise Sexual Politics, published in 1970, and by the rape of a close family member the following year.

Later non-fiction books - including The War Against Women (1992), and From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women, completed only last year - helped cement French's reputation as a leading radical feminist. But none of them had quite the impact of her debut novel.

However, when she decided to return to fiction almost 30 years after The Women's Room, with a companion piece, In the Name of Friendship, she found that American publishers were unwilling to print it. Only after it became a bestseller in Holland did the Feminist Press publish it in America. A new novel, The Love Children, is due to be published this autumn.

WHAT THEY ARE SAYINGGloria Steinem: She [Marilyn French] was always so far ahead because she wasn't writing about reforms around the edges. Her theories were big and exciting, and they definitely appeal to younger women who hear about them.

Florence Howe, founder of the Feminist Press: It [The Women's Room] came at the right moment. It said to women you just have to stop being oppressed; you have to stand up and fight for yourself. Women heard that.

Carol Jenkins, president of the Women's Media Center: Marilyn was always the clear-eyed one. Not so sentimental as the rest of us - nor patient with the holes we dug for ourselves around our children, parents and spouses. Marilyn could be counted on to ask, 'And what about you?' ·