Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Companion to Women’s Historical Writing edited by Mary Spongberg, Ann Curthoys, and Barbara Caine

by
April 2010, no 320

Companion to Women’s Historical Writing edited by Mary Spongberg, Ann Curthoys, and Barbara Caine

Palgrave Macmillan, $64 pb, 732 pp

Companion to Women’s Historical Writing edited by Mary Spongberg, Ann Curthoys, and Barbara Caine

by
April 2010, no 320

Do not be put off by the earnest and fusty-sounding title. The Companion to Women’s Historical Writing is not a book to acquire for the reference shelf on the off chance of needing to look up some arcane topic in the future. Quite the contrary. I have found it to be a most enjoyable bedside companion. Arranged alphabetically, with more than one hundred and fifty entries, it offers thumbnail sketches for a quick dip and more substantial essays to hold the attention in a longer engagement. The three editors, like most of the other fifty or so contributors, are distinguished writers in their own fields. Mary Spongberg, at Macquarie University, is the editor of Australian Feminist Studies; Ann Curthoys, from Sydney University, is a doyenne of Australian cultural and political history; and at Monash, Barbara Caine is a leading scholar of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British history. Drawing on their own research fields, each has provided long and lively analytical pieces, as well as writing a great many of the shorter entries. With some six hundred pages, plus another hundred when the index and bibliography are included, the Companion is a good fat book that will not sell the reader short. The new paperback edition has presumably been issued as a consequence of the success in the last five years of the expensive hardback.

Judith Keene reviews 'Companion to Women’s Historical Writing' edited by Mary Spongberg, Ann Curthoys, and Barbara Caine

Companion to Women’s Historical Writing

edited by Mary Spongberg, Ann Curthoys, and Barbara Caine

Palgrave Macmillan, $64 pb, 732 pp

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.