+ Booklist 17:160 Ja ’21
“The tale, although not very convincing and one in which it would be easy to pick holes, is ingenious and interesting.”
+ − N Y Times p25 O 3 ’20 400w
“The author makes a fairly interesting book with a happy ending to this rather hackneyed theme.”
+ − Spec 125:216 Ag 14 ’20 50w
REYNOLDS, MYRA. Learned lady in England, 1650–1760. il *$2.25 Houghton 396
20–26551
The book is one of the Vassar semi-centennial series, published in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Vassar college. Although it is specifically limited to the learned women in England in the period between 1650 and 1760, the first chapter is devoted to those before 1650, beginning with Juliana Barnes, who, although a nun, wrote a book on “hunting, hawking and fishing” in 1481. The outcome of the research is that in all ages “there have been individual women who by force of native endowment and through some favorable conjunction of circumstances, have risen into prominence in realms not ordinarily open to the women of their time,” but they have been isolated cases and “what was actually accomplished in the century before 1760 was a lavish sowing of seed, a steady infiltration of new ideas, a breaking up of old certainties as to woman’s place in domestic and civic life, and an accumulation of examples proving women capable of the most varied intellectual aptitudes and energies.” Contents: Learned ladies in England before 1650; Learned ladies in England from 1650–1670; Education; Miscellaneous books on women in social and intellectual life; Satiric representations of the learned lady in comedy; Summary; Bibliography; Index; and illustrations.
+ Booklist 16:331 Jl ’20