Collective biography, or prosopography, has been a classic form of recognition of eminent persons, promoting models of leadership, learning, virtue, or other desirable qualities within a community. For many centuries, a few women had been included in the collections of great men, and at times women appeared in albums of their own. Gradually modern nations honored their roster of eminent women as a sign of advanced civilization. As the reading public and publishing expanded in Britain and North America, demand increased for varieties of all-female collective biographies or prosopographies. The illustrated narratives displayed admirable or notorious characters, moving incidents, and excellent adventures while opening historical horizons for the reader. As Christine de Pizan wrote in 1405, "All things which are feasible and knowable . . . are possible and easy for women to accomplish." The variety of female roles celebrated in these collections adds to the excitement of rediscovering many neglected books that serve as precursors to women’s studies.

More about collective biographies of women…

Search for a famous, little-known or forgotten woman (e.g. Cleopatra, “Hannah More,” “Ann H. Judson”) in the “Word or Phrase” or the “Editorial Notes” search boxes, or by using the “Find” function when browsing the site. Publications may similarly be retrieved by date. Searches may also locate the authors and editors of these volumes: largely forgotten professional writers, more often men than women. (This is not a bibliography of women writers or of fiction or poetry about women, though women writers are popular subjects in the collections.) Title searches may trace recurring patterns and themes; “heroines,” “history,” “Bible,” “good,” “noble,” and similar terms yield numerous results for comparison. Searches may be restricted by place of publication or by publisher for those pursuing the North American or the British contexts.

See User’s Guide…

This bibliography enhances and expands the un-annotated bibliography published in Alison Booth, How to Make It as a Woman: Collective Biographical History from Victoria to the Present (Chicago: U Chicago P, 2004). Readers of How to Make It as a Woman may gain an understanding of ways to make use of this online bibliography, and will find there discussions many of the items collected here (cross-references to these pages in the book appear in the entries). We have adapted from the book both the "Pop Chart"—comparing the popularity of frequently-represented subjects—and the chart of the Number of Collective Biographies per Year.

With the support of the Scholars' Lab, Digital Scholarly Services, Special Collections, the Department of English, the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, and the editorial board of NINES, we are working on the design, functionality, and substance of this site. We have added links to search OCLC WorldCat and Google Books for library holdings or available digital versions of these texts. In 2008-2009, a focus of the project is to develop an image gallery of collections that include a life of the nursing reformer Sister Dora, which will form the basis of a model of archives on individual subjects. Read more…

Please let us know if you have corrections or additions regarding book collections of short biographies of women published in English, in any country, not only between 1830 and 1940 but also before and after these dates (for the selective bibliographies). Email Alison Booth at ab6j@virginia.edu.