Watson & Hazell, Printers, London and Aylesbury.
Dedicated to the Right Hon. LORD LYTTON.
In One handsome Volume, Foolscap 4to., cloth gilt, price 25s.
WOMANKIND
IN WESTERN EUROPE,
from the Earliest Ages to the Seventeenth Century.
By THOMAS WRIGHT, M.A., F.S.A.
Illustrated with numerous Coloured Plates and Wood Engravings.
“It is something more than a drawing-room ornament. It is an elaborate and careful summary of all that one of our most learned antiquaries, after years of pleasant labour, on a very pleasant subject, has been able to learn as to the condition of women from the earliest times. It is beautifully illustrated, both in colours—mainly from ancient illuminations—and also by a profusion of woodcuts, portraying the various fashions by which successive ages of our history have been marked.”—The Times.
“We should be at a loss to find words of excessive praise for the learning, judgment, and delicate art with which the author has gathered, arranged, and presented the multifarious materials of a fascinating narrative, that would be told effectively by the embellishments of the book, even if the illustrations were not accompanied with words of explanatory text.”—Athenæum.
“This is much more than a pretty illustrated book. It is a repertory of antiquarian literature on the costume, social habits, domestic pursuits, and position of the sex, and the illustrations are from all sorts of recondite sources—MS. illuminations of the Romances, Psalters, and Chronicles. It reflects great credit on the writer, whose vast stores of information and research have been, in this instance, well employed. The volume is quite an encyclopædia on a special subject.”—Saturday Review.
“As a work of art, no less than of literary elucidation, this book is perfect in all its parts, and most honourable to its publishers.... The letterpress enhances the value of the work itself a hundredfold, as might have been expected from so well known and learned an antiquarian as Mr. Wright, whose participation in so choice a work makes it in every respect worthy of a place in every public and well-selected library, where art and literature are alike patronized and admired.”—Bell’s Weekly Messenger.
“We cannot justly class Mr. Wright’s ‘Womankind’ amongst the ephemeral books of the season; yet it is admirably suited to answer the purpose of a gift-book—and much more; and it would be unfair to leave it until its less solid neighbours had been cleared out of hand. The high antiquarian renown of the author would alone guarantee that we should have no frivolous, superficial dissertation on the mere outward phenomena of ‘femininity’ in past times—no mere sentimental declamation in favour of woman’s advancement to a social place which she never before claimed. On the contrary, we have a faithful, unshrinking, photographically minute account of the relations between women and men, and of female manners, dress, social duties, and position, literary achievements, and participation in public life, from the date at which authentic history takes cognizance of the condition of the European nations.... Mr. Wright’s ‘Womankind’—like the ideal of the gentle sex—is fitted, not for the festive season alone, but for every time.”—Daily Telegraph.
“The author’s name, on whatever subject he writes, is a guarantee for thorough scholarship, solid information, lucid exposition, and careful delineation; and in this work all these qualities are conspicuous. Mr. Wright believes, and with good reason, ‘that a history of the female sex, in that particular division of mankind to which we ourselves belong, would not be unacceptable to the general reader.’ Such a history he has here produced, and in doing so, has left nothing to be desired.... In every sense this is a splendid book, for which we heartily thank Mr. Wright.”—Illustrated Times.
“Never has history been made more charming than in this excellent volume. Whatever page is opened, some pleasant little narrative, historic or romantic; some sketch of the womankind of Chaucer’s days, or of the heroines of the Romaunt of the Rose; some striking pictures of Anglo-Saxon life, or some quaint costumes, or ever-changing fashions, constantly attract, and interest, and inform.”—Birmingham Daily Post.