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.
Read more about this topic: Women Writers
Famous quotes containing the words exemplary, women and/or tradition:
“... if we look around us in social life and note down who are the faithful wives, the most patient and careful mothers, the most exemplary housekeepers, the model sisters, the wisest philanthropists, and the women of the most social influence, we will have to admit that most frequently they are women of cultivated minds, without which even warm hearts and good intentions are but partial influences.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)
“Perhaps ... women have always been in closer contact with reality than men: it would seem to be the just recompense for being deprived of idealism.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes—our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)