Choice 评论
This compilation of biographical information on more than 2,700 women writing in English from the Middle Ages to about 1985 includes American, British, African, Asian, Commonwealth, Caribbean, and South Pacific women and covers a range of types of material, from poetry, novels, and drama, to diaries and other nonfiction. The scope is more comprehensive than that of biographical sources focused on genre, period, nationality, or region, although there is inevitable overlap with existing standard biographical works. Blain (Macquarie University, New South Wales) and Clements and Grundy (both at the University of Alberta) have selected women whose works "reflect awareness of their condition as women and women writers." Individual entries include accounts of personal and professional lives, connections with other women, quotes from published and unpublished writing, and selected criticism where it exists. Additional entries on key topics, e.g., autobiography, science fiction, feminist theory, and slave narratives, are interspersed with individuals' biographies. A list of frequently cited works and indexes of topics, names in chronological groups, and cross-references from various forms of names are included at the end of the biographical descriptions. Recommended for all academic libraries. -N. Knipe, Colorado College
《图书馆杂志》(Library Journal )书评
Impeccable scholarship and breadth of coverage make this work a standout among several recently published on the subject. Covering more than 2700 English-language women writers, entries averaging 500 or so words chronicle writings not only in canonized genres but also in popular forms like memoirs, diaries, and travel literature. The compilers and a large team of scholars have freshly examined much of the material to provide a new level of accuracy and completeness, especially in covering works by and about hundreds of pre-modern women writers. An index of cross-references clarifies the name problems that inevitably crop up in the alphabetically-arranged listings. Entries include mention of major scholarship and are current through the mid-1980s. Some even include forthcoming works. Indispensable for literary research collections.-- Susanna Bartmann Pathak, Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.