Review
... a rich, full and stimulating analysis of many aspects of women's lives during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ... very clearly structured throughout ... Mendelson and Crawford's book is wide-ranging and sophisticated, and should be widely read. It will serve both as an invaluable teaching companion and, with its immensely detailed bibliography (which is especially good as a guide to manuscripts and unpublished doctoral work), as a useful tool for further research for many years to come. Journal of Early Modern History ... an important new feminist study of women in early modern England by two of the leading social historians in their field ... offers both a valuable synthesis and a fresh insight into areas until recently little studied. Particularly useful are the sections on single women and the chapter on female culture, which includes fascinating discussion of speech and material culture. The book also provides an important theoretical framework for women's history, one that is genuinely innovative conceptually and methodologically. Journal of Early Modern History This is an important book which is sure to become influential in our understanding of women's history ... it contains much that is subtle, interesting, and innovative; it moves our understanding of women's lives forwards, providing a position from which to start new debates. This book should become the core text for all courses in early modern England and required reading for any student covering early modern England more generally. Jane Whittle, University of Exeter It is the extraordinary achievement of Crawford and Mendelson to have demolished the arguments about lack of sources for the lives of early modern Englishwomen once and for all ... Mendelson and Crawford have set out to write a history of "women's experience". This vivid, highly readable book, the product of the two authors' research energies over the past twenty or so years, gives just that ... A major scholarly achievement, it provides a detailed account of the lives of English women which has the depth of local study, and which goes far beyond interpretation of gender ideology as it is found in advice books or prescriptive sources ... it is a tribute to this ground-breaking book that it contrives always to open up new questions for research while providing the most authoritative account we are likely to have of the lives of women in early modern England. Lyndal Roper, Times Literary Supplement ... an excellent book and highly recommended. Parergon
Review
`an excellent book and highly recommended.' Parergon 18.2
`Mendelson and Crawford have assembled a formidable array of materials which shed light on the hitherto somewhat obscure subject of Early Modern Women.' Parergon 18.2
`Mendelson and Crawford ... set new standards and reorient early modern women's history toward new goals. Mendelson and Crawford's methodology gives the book a credence almost unassailable.' Robert L Woods Jr, Jnl of Interdisciplinary History, Spring 00.
`Almost every page suggests heretofore overlooked relationships and unstudied connections.' Robert L Woods Jr, Jnl of Interdisciplinary History, Spring 00.
`This splendid book, well written with sparkling prose, shows how a methodology rigorously applied can destroy old presumptions - in this case, the professed lack of historical sources about early modern women's lives ... Mendelson and Crawford have achieved their ambitious aim and taught us much about the historian's craft.' Robert L Woods Jr, Jnl of Interdisciplinary History, Spring 00.
`"Comprehensive and Scholarly Treatment of Topic. Well Illustrated. Good bibiolography facilitating further reading and research".' Dr R G Kendall, Senior Lecturer, College of Ripon and York St John
Fifteen years in the making and a fully collaborative venture of the co-authors, Women in Early Modern England is a splendid new survey of the lives of early modern English women./Mary S. Hartman/Journal of Social History Spring 2000.
This book is a brilliant slash across the dark curtain of the past, jammed with stories and images of unimagined lives. It is a great achievement to make history this vivid. With interest for the specialist, its wider appeal will be for the general reader who would simply like to know because now they can./Helen Elliott/The Australian's Review of Books August 1999 p.25.
`It is the extraordinary achievement of Crawford and Mendelson to have demolished the arguments about lack of sources for the lives of early modern Englishwomen once and for all ... Mendelson and Crawford have set out to write a history of "women's experience". This vivid, highly readable book, the product of the two authors' research energies over the past twenty or so years, gives just that ... A major scholarly achievement, it provides a detailed account of the lives of English women which has the depth of local study, and which goes far beyond interpretation of gender ideology as it is found in advice books or prescriptive sources ... it is a tribute to this ground-breaking book that it contrives always to open up new questions for research while providing the most authoritative account we are likely to have of the lives of women in early modern England.' Lyndal Roper, Times Literary Supplement
`The book covers all aspects of women's lives, and women of all levels of wealth and status from monarchs down to vagrants, allowing the reader to develop a real sense of what being a woman in seventeenth-century England might have been like. Another strength is the amount of new research the two authors have incorporated in the book: this is not simply a distillation of existing research but a study from original sources. This is an important book which is sure to become influential in our understanding of women's history.. it contains much that is subtle, interesting, and innovative; it moves our understanding of women's lives forwards, providing a position from which to start new debates. This book should become the core text for all courses in early modern England and required reading for any student covering early modern England more generally.' Jane Whittle, University of Exeter.
