This bibliography aims to list all books published in English between 1830 and 1940 that present three or more women's biographies in some narrative detail. Such volumes have seldom been catalogued with care, as the subgenre is little recognized. Some titles purporting to feature individual women turn out to be discursive advice books, whereas some titles suggesting general histories or principles are organized around a sequence of famous lives. Although collections of women’s lives often appeared in serial publication or in reference works, and many individual women appear in collections with men, such sources generally are not included here. I do include some closely related works that feature men as well as women or that take the form of poetry, drama, lectures, historiography, catalogues or encyclopedias, advice or advocacy, even historical fiction. These exceptions are warranted for various reasons: they feature a series of representative, named women of history (including sacred or legendary history); they affirm new constituencies (e.g. a "Who's Who" of the women of a region or organization); they are written by someone who contributes to this subgenre; or they closely relate to other volumes or varieties of prosopography represented in the bibliography. We indicate such relevant but formally divergent works with the shorthand "NOT" followed by a short identification of the format or genre of the item.

Following the chronological selection of female prosopographies in earlier centuries, the bibliography is alphabetical by author rather than chronological in part to serve those who are interested in the biographers, but primarily because of the extraordinary fluidity of these publications: the same collection often was reprinted many times, republished under different titles, or partly lifted into other collections. Anonymous publications are alphabetized by title unless authorship is known; pseudonymous works are listed under the pseudonym.

The publication data includes the date of every edition or reprint through 1940 that I have traced, though I have not attempted complete histories of each work. Where I have seen a specific edition in either the Bodleian or the British Library, this is indicated immediately following the publication date of that edition. While I do not otherwise track the often duplicating sources for an entry, which include other critical studies, I do in some cases note the source of differing publication information: Oldfield, Collective Biography of Women in Britain, 1550-1900= "Oldfield"; Riches, "A Bibliography of Collective Biography," Book Bibliography, 543-75= "Riches."

Annotations—in progress—may identify other works by the author; provide if possible the table of contents or list of subjects; describe contents; or draw links to interrelated works. Where an item is discussed in How to Make It as a Woman, the entry will include page references. Call numbers for the University of Virginia library holdings will be provided, along with links to holdings of any digital texts of the items, subject to licensed accessibility. Entries marked *Pop Chart are unspecialized or eclectic collections that contribute to the "Pop Chart" of subjects in How to Make It as a Woman; comparison of the list of subjects in any one collection with that chart will give a sense of how closely the list conforms to the consensus on the representative eminent women of history at the time of publication.

Alterations to this bibliography since publication of the book have been made silently in the entries themselves, but are listed separately in a linked appendix. Where a new item is inserted in the chronological or alphabetical order, it is marked by a letter (e.g. 762A), so as to avoid changing or confusing item numbers discussed in How to Make It as a Woman.