People often think that feminism in literature is limited to both male and female writers who defend women in the society. However, they fail to realize that the first generation of romantic writers were French female romantics such as Germaine de Stael and George Sand, a female who used a male pseudonym to write in 19th century. Les Miserables of Victor Hugo and Notre Dame de Paris were two works that portray female characters positively. Even Stendhal's Madame Bovary, a realist-romantic novel is another example. So, one can say affirmatively that the romantics were the first feminists. Let modern feminists critics and writers take note otherwise there would be a vacuum in knowledge being dispatched.
Sappho, Aphra Behn, George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Anne Lister, Jane Austen, and, oddly, Samuel Richardson, to name a few in literature.
In my eyes you make four major mistakes: 1. The romantics were not at all the "first" feminists. There have been thinkers long before romanticism, who pleaded for equal rights of women and men; the idea of equal rights of both sexes is said to be expressed by Averroes (Ibn Rushd) for the first time in Europe. In China, the most prominent political claim of emancipation was the takeover of power by Wu Zetian. When you are talking about modernity only, you should consider Olympe de Gouges as a crucial figure of feminist history. 2. You are confusing novels, that deal with female protagonists, like Flauberts masterpiece Madame Bovary with a feminist struggle. Flaubert clearly was a sexist. Hugos Notre Dame doesn't deal with feminism at all. 3. You are confusing being a woman and a writer with being a feminist: There are a lot of anti-feminists among female writers. 4. Feminist critics do know all this. There's no vacuum in knowledge.
Add to your list Mary Wolstonecraft ( 1759–1797) with her "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1792) - who belonged to the age of Enlightenment.
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