Claire Tomalin is best known for the highly acclaimed biographies of three women, each from a different century: Mary Wollstonecraft, Katherine Mansfield, and the actress Nelly Ternan. Central to these books is a concern with how the experience of females is fundamentally different from that of men. However, she does not see herself as a doctrinaire feminist. Rather, she perceives herself as someone concerned with the political and social repercussions of being female. In particular, she writes with great force and precision on how male laws, customs, and practices have imposed themselves on her female subjects.

According to Tomalin, women's experience is often said to be more centered on the private and the detailed than men's. Whether this is true or not, Tomalin feels that those characteristics have been useful tools for her in the construction of her books. In the foreword to Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life...