Volume III of A History of Women draws a richly detailed picture of women in early modern Europe, considering them in a context of work, marriage, and family. At the heart of this volume is "woman" as she appears in a wealth of representations, from simple woodcuts and popular literature to master paintings; and as the focal point of a debate--sometimes humorous, sometimes acrimonious--conducted in every field: letters, arts, philosophy, the sciences, and medicine. Against oppressive experience, confining laws, and repetitious claims about female "nature," women took initiative by quiet maneuvers and outright dissidence. In conformity and resistance, in image and reality, women from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries emerge from these pages in remarkable diversity.

Discusses the legal, social, and religious position of women in the Greco-Roman world, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Industrial Revolution, and modern era.

The American Historical Association's Committee on Women Historians commissioned some of the pioneering figures in women's history to prepare essays in their respective areas of expertise. These volumes, the second and third in a series of three, complete their collected efforts. The first volume of the series dealt with the broad themes necessary to understanding women's history around the world. As a counterpoint, volume 2 is concerned with issues that have shaped the history of women in particular places and during particular eras. It examines women in ancient civilizations; including women in China, Japan, and Korea; women and gender in South and South East Asia; Medieval women; women and gender in Colonial Latin America; and the history of women in the US to 1865. Authors included are Sarah Hughes and Brady Hughes, Susan Mann, Barbara N. Ramusack, Judith M. Bennett, Ann Twinam, and Kathleen Brown. As with volume 2, volume 3 also discusses current trends in gender and women's history from a regional perspective. It includes essays on sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, early and modern Europe, Russian and the Soviet Union, Latin American, and North America after 1865. Asuncion Lavrin, Ellen Dubois, and Judith P. Zinsser writing with Bonnie S. Anderson. Incorporating essays from top scholars ranging over an abundance of regions, dates, and methodologies, the three volumes of Women's History in Global Perspective constitute an invaluable resource for anyone interested in a comprehensive overview on the latest in feminist scholarship. Bonnie G. Smith is the Board of Governors Professor of History and director of the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University. She is the author of Confessions of a Concierge: Madame Lucie's History of Twentieth-Century France and many other books.

Ridiculed for her Saturday salon, her long romance novels, and her protofeminist ideas, Madeleine de Scudéry (1607-1701) has not been treated kindly by the literary establishment. Yet her multivolume novels were popular bestsellers in her time, translated almost immediately into English, German, Italian, Spanish, and even Arabic. The Story of Sapho makes available for the first time in modern English a self-contained section from Scudéry's novel Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus, best known today as the favored reading material of the would-be salonnières that Molière satirized in Les précieuses ridicules. The Story tells of Sapho, a woman writer modeled on the Greek Sappho, who deems marriage slavery. Interspersed in the love story of Sapho and Phaon are a series of conversations like those that took place in Scudéry's own salon in which Sapho and her circle discuss the nature of love, the education of women, writing, and right conduct. This edition also includes a translation of an oration, or harangue, of Scudéry's in which Sapho extols the talents and abilities of women in order to persuade them to write.

Maria Sibylla Merian, a German painter and naturalist, produced an innovative work on tropical insects based on lore she gathered from the Carib, Arawak, and African women of Suriname.

The most prominent woman in Renaissance Florence, Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici (1425-1482) lived during her city's golden age. Wife of Piero de' Medici and mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Tornabuoni exerted considerable influence on Florence's political and social affairs. She was also, as this volume illustrates, a gifted and prolific poet. This is the first major collection in any language of her extensive body of religious poems. Ranging from gentle lyrics on the Nativity to moving dialogues between a crucified Christ and the weeping sinner who kneels before him, the nine laudi (poems of praise) included here are among the few such poems known to have been written by a woman. Tornabuoni's five storie sacre, narrative poems based on the lives of biblical figures-three of whom, Judith, Susanna, and Esther, are Old Testament heroines-are virtually unique in their range and expressiveness. Together with Jane Tylus's substantial introduction, these poems offer us both a fascinating portrait of a highly educated and creative woman and a lively sense of cultural and social life in Renaissance Florence.