I have a fascination with scale, and the idea of giants overpowering tiny people, especially where women are put in the position of power.

Big size differences create very different dynamics – particularly where you have a callous and cruel giantess. It’s an area ripe for tales of deep fear, revenge, or shaking up systems. I write such themes in my own stories, exploring power through giantesses or shrunken people (or both!) – but I love to find similar examples in mainstream work, where the goal wasn’t necessarily an obsession like mine.

Shifts in scale crop up frequently in literature, from the classical allegories of Jonathan Swift to blink-and-you-miss-it dream sequences in commercial thrillers, with more literal fantasy tales in between. Women are less commonly associated with giants, however, given the prominence of male characters in general. So, as I’ve hunted out examples myself, I decided to write explorations and reviews of what I’ve found, starting with this master list (which I’ll keep updated) which I’ll elaborate on with more detailed reviews of particular books.

I’ve mostly focused on adult characters and stories, as people will likely be interested in such stories either as horror or macrophilia, making the more common but more innocent children’s tales inappropriate, one way or another. That said, there is much more content concerning giants in stories for younger people, so I have included some of noteworthy examples (particularly if it’s very influential, like Alice in Wonderland), though at least leaning towards where young adult meets new adult fiction.

Now, onto the list: these are stories I have personally found featuring scenes of giant-sized women, split into ones I have read myself and ones I’m merely aware of. Do get in touch if you have more examples for me to include! 

Books Featuring Giantesses or Women Who Seem Giant

These are books I’m familiar with the content for:

• Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift – the classic archetype of a traveller visiting a land of small people and then giants; featuring handling as Gulliver is carried by a (young) girl but most notably toyed with by a queen’s maids, go so far as to place him on their breasts. Some versions have illustrations.
• Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carrol – classic tales that I’m sure most people know; Alice grows very large and shrinks down, with the quintessential “growing limbs bursting out of a building” scene and a few moments where she lifts smaller creatures.
• The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson – a classic sci-fi horror, which spawned a franchise of “incredible shrinking” stories, and has a running theme of the main character feeling frustrated by losing his masculinity before his increasingly (relatively) large wife. He gets carried around a few times, though he mostly resents interaction. Click here for a more detailed review.
• The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman – dark epic fantasy involving an invasion of 20ft giants, where towards the end the adventurers have a fight with three giants and a discussion with an injured giantess. Little interaction beyond a giantess tossing trees at people, but a great atmosphere and a fun book! Click here for my detailed discussion.

• Small World by Tabitha King – horror featuring a doll-house-obsessed rich woman with a shrink ray, which she uses on a journalist. She traps and torments the woman with some handling and other prodding, though its often presented in a fairly disembodied or grotesque way. Click here for a more detailed review.
• The Little Country by Charles de Lint – contemporary fantasy where magic stirs in Cornwall, with a parallel story following a young woman shrunk by a witch and her misadventures. A reasonable amount of interaction, including the tiny woman spending a day bored in a beautiful secretary’s pocket. For a full review, click here.
• The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke – historical fantasy short story collection including one tale where a woman raids a nest of tiny fairies (stomping on some) and another where two men are swallowed by women in owl form. For a full discussion with quotes click here.
• The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman – a fantasy adventure including a race of tiny spies who ride dragonflies; they are carried about by the protagonist and her mother.

• The Hollows Series by Kim Harrison – urban fantasy with size disparity in every novel, as the main character, a witch, has a tiny pixie as a sidekick. Lots of swiping at him and occasional carrying, with size-changing spells feature later in the series. For my detailed analysis of all the content I’ve come across so far, click here.
• The Grey Land Duology by Paedar O Guilin (The Call & The Invasion) – fantasy/horror where fairies shrink the longer they are in Ireland, and teenagers who travel to the land of fairy encounter tiny people. A great atmosphere with lots of size-shifting and a few nasty moments, including a girl stepping barefoot on someone and a shrinking girl being trapped in a jar by a mad female scientist. Check out my expanded look at it here.
• Mistress Masham’s Repose by T.H. White – a sequel to Gulliver’s Travels where a girl finds Lilliputians living on her land; she carries some about and plays with them, but the girl is young.
• Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson – literary fiction following an outcast girl at college who at one point imagines herself giant and terrorising campus; she devours a room full of people and forces others into sex poses. Click here for a review, including a section from the text.

• The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett – fantasy series that frequently includes gnomes and imps. Particularly noteworthy are the Tiffany Achings books, which feature the unstoppable ‘wee men’ who are generally more dangerous than the big people around them. Tiffany herself is a bit young for these themes but there are some fine moments such as where a winter winter stomps on one of the wee men (he pushes her off). Another notable book is Moving Pictures, which includes a King Kong-reversal where a giantess (actually a demon taking on a movie star’s appearance) grabs an orangutan and scales a building.
• You Must Not Miss by Katrina Leno – young adult horror where a girl transports people to a fantasy world to be devoured by size-shifting effigies of girls she knows. This happens three times, I think.

• Gulliverzone by Stephen Baxter – 90s YA sci-fi where a girl gets caught in a VR world based on Gulliver’s Travels; there’s some interaction with a giant girl and a near-miss with some ladies almost treading on her, but the best fun comes at the end when the character is picked up and almost eaten by her friend (warning, the characters are young).
• Wychetts by William Holley – another YA story, with a girl and boy shrunk with their parents in a magical house. A beautiful woman who can turn into a cat tries to stomp on the boy twice, captures and holds the parents, almost flushes everyone down a toilet and (the best bit, if rather brief) picks up a talking mouse and swallows him whole.
• White Silence by Jodi Taylor – horror/thriller with a sequence where the protagonist encounters a woman whose mouth expands big enough to swallow her, though it cuts out before she’s eaten. (Not strictly size-change but the ability to eat someone whole creates a similar feel.)
• Giants by Hugh Scott – children’s urban fantasy where giants hide in a small English town, perceived as normal-sized; a girl hides under a chair which her teacher sits on while stretching to her truer size. All a little bit abstract with minimal content, though.
• The Food of the Gods by H.G. Wells – classic sci-fi about a substance that leads to creatures and later people growing to giant size. The early stages are great for fans of size-based fun as the animals become more threatening, and later we have a bunch of giants trying to fit into society. They mostly mope about, but occasionally pick people up, and don’t do much else. However, they’re all male except a mostly absent princess, who when she does show up doesn’t do anything related to her big size, just talks to another giant… A fun and good read, but not so hot on giant women.
• Cosmic Casanova by Arthur C. Clarke (short story) – a man’s long-distance romance is scuppered when he discovers the woman is 30ft tall (very brief twist ending)
• Goosebumps books by R.L. Stine – more young adult fiction, borderline horror but almost certainly with younger protagonists. There’s quite a few examples of size-play in the series, with the noteworthy ones I’ve found including Scream of the Evil Genie (a choose your own adventure with a section where the genie grows giant and accidentally steps on, squishing you like a bug); The Adventures of Shrinkman (a boy shrinks and is almost stomped on by his friend, then carried around. He also jumps on a woman’s shoe to get onto a bus.); and Giant Everything (a boy shrinks and is almost stomped on by his barefoot friend; she picks him up and pokes him).
• Animorphs by K.A. Applegate – young adult sci-fi adventures where the main characters can change into animals, which while involving more transformation does involve a lot of shrinking and some interaction. There’s some 50 books and in many there are insect morphs, where the characters often encounter giant-seeming people. In one book a character in a fly morph is swatted by the giant hand of an air hostess and almost dies. Overall, lots of fun descriptions of size changing in general (though mostly featuring younger characters).

The following are books I’m aware of but haven’t read, so can’t fully summarise the content:

• The Land of the Giants by Murray Leinster – novelisation of the TV series featuring people trapped in a land of giant people
• The Dark Ground by Gillian Cross – guy is shrunk in his back garden and when he gets inside his giant mum flicks him
• Fractal Mode by Piers Anthony –  a woman steps on shrunken people
• The Princess and the Rogue in the Tears of Hathor by Richard J Johnson
• The Borrowers by Mary Norton – classic children’s tale following a race of tiny people hiding from humans
• Little (Grrl) Lost by Charles de Lint – urban fantasy where a girl befriends a tiny punk
• Jack the Giant Killer by Charles de Lint – urban fantasy; not sure if this contains any actual content yet
• Demon by John Varley – the antagonist creates a fifty-foot Marylin Monroe avatar
• The Black Hole Passes by John Varley (short story)

• Enormity by W.G. Marshall
• Just a Few Inches by Tara St. Pierre
• The Girl in the Golden Atom by Ray Cummings
• The Wonderful Adventure of Nils by Selma Lagelof
• The Eerie Indiana Series, including The Incredible Shrinking Stanley by Robert James and The Dollhouse That Time Forgot by Mike Ford
• Cold War in a Country Garden by Lindsay Gutteridge
• Land of Dreams by James Blaycock
• Fifty Feet of Trouble by Justin Robinson
• Swynmoor by Joelle Mellon
• You Are Microscopic (Choose Your Own Adventure) by Edward Packard
• Ant-Man: Natural Enemy by Jason Starr

Giantess-Adjacent Books

Finally, a few books that suggested some kind of giant woman related material but didn’t quite get there.

• The Tangle Box by Terry Brooks – a fantasy story featuring a wonderful cover of a giantess woodland spirit, facing down a woman; in the actual book the spirit is barely described, let alone said to be huge.
• The Attack of the 50 Foot Women by Catherine Meyer – an interesting non-fiction read about feminism, that briefly takes the giant woman as a motif; in the introduction she describes an advert on a London bus that appeared to be a giant zombie Scarlet Johanson, seeming to smother passengers with her breasts!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this list – if you did, please share it, and if you know of anything I’m missing (specifically in the mainstream, adult field of giantesses or tiny people interacting with women) do let me know in the comments below, or drop me an email.

And if these themes are your jam, do check out my own books, where I aspire to bring the wonders/terrors of feminist macrophilia into genre fiction of all types.