Women Writers - The "exemplary Women" Tradition

The "exemplary Women" Tradition

• Hesiod, Catalogue of Women (attr.)
• Plutarch, in Moralia
• Boccaccio, De mulieribus claris (On Famous Women) (1361–1375)
• Christine de Pisan, The Book of the City of Ladies (1405)
• Osbern Bokenham, Legendys of hooly wummen (c.1430)
• George Ballard, Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain Who Have Been Celebrated for their Writing or Skill in the Learned Languages, Arts, and Sciences. Oxford: W. Jackson, 1752.
• John Duncombe, Feminead (1754)
• Anon., Biographium faemineum : the female worthies, or, Memoirs of the most illustrious ladies, of all ages and nations, who have been eminently distinguished for their magnanimity, learning, genius, virtue, piety, and other excellent endowments. London: Printed for S. Crowder, 1766. 2 vols.
• Mary Scott, The Female Advocate: A Poem Occasioned by Reading Mr Duncombe's Feminead. London: Joseph Johnson, 1774.
• Mary Hays, Female Biography (6 vols., 1803)
• Sarah Josepha Hale, Woman's Record; or, Sketches of All Distinguished women from the Creation to AD 1850 (1854)
• Charlotte Mary Yonge, Biographies of Good Women (First Series, 1862; Second Series, 1865)
• Julia Kavanagh, Woman in France during the Eighteenth Century (1850), Women of Christianity (1852), French Women of Letters (1862) and English Women of Letters (1862). These collective biographies "all argue against idealized, sentimental portrayals of female experience. She intended these biographies to provide a corrective to the silence of male historians on the topic of female influence in a variety of sphere beyond the domestic" (ODNB).
• Helen C. Black, Notable Women Authors of the Day: Biographical Sketches. Glasgow: David Bryce & Son, 1893.
  • "These sketches originally appeared as a series in the 'Lady's pictorial'... They are now revised, enlarged and brought up to date." Sketches of Mrs. Lynn Linton, Mrs. Riddell, Mrs. L. B. Walford, Rhoda Broughton, John Strange Winter (Mrs. Arthur Stannard), Mrs Alexander, Helen Mathers, Florence Marryat, Mrs. Lovett Cameron, Mrs. Hungerford, Matilda Betham Edwards, Edna Lyall, Rosa Nouchette Carey, Adeline Sergeant, Mrs. Edward Kennard, Jessie Fothergill, Lady Duffus Hardy, Iza Duffus Hardy, May Crommelin, Mrs. Houstoun, Mrs. Alexander Fraser, Honourable Mrs. Henry Chetwynd, Jean Middlemass, Augusta De Grasse Stevens, Mrs. Leith Adams, Jean Ingelow.