Women in World History

A Biographical Encyclopedia
Published by Gale

With more than 10,000 biographical entries, this is the most comprehensive women's history encyclopedia available. This ambitious work profiles women throughout time and throughout the world. More than 2,500 signed articles written by academics, up to 5,000 words in length, highlight a particular woman's personal background and significance in history. Shorter entries spotlight historically important women who are less frequently researched or for whom less information is available.

This encyclopedia features women from all walks of life, including: rulers, royalty, lawyers, politicians, soldiers, heroines, pacifists, resistance fighters, financiers, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, investors, authors and more. Coverage includes many women for whom profiles are not included in traditional sources.

Features include: a short introductory quotation that exemplifies the woman being profiled; a short summary of each woman's life and achievements; more than 3,000 photos and illustrations; genealogical charts establishing standard names used throughout; sidebar entries for women whose lives touched that of the biographee; occupational, geographical, historical era and master indexes; essay-specific lists of sources consulted and further reading lists; lists of related media (recordings, television, etc.) about each woman; information on collections of any works by the subjects; extensive cross-references, and much more. More than 600 books were analyzed to identify the women most likely to be researched in a historical context.

Women in World History's 17th volume includes an occupational index, a geographical index, an historical era index and a master personal name index. Because variant names can be a confusing component of research, the first volume and the index include genealogical charts that note relationships and establish a standard name to be consistently used throughout the set.

Review:

"A generation's worth of scholarship has gone by, and there is much fuller representation of women in reference materials in general; so any new woman-centered encyclopedia has to offer something unique. WWH's contribution is sheer size, profiling nearly 10,000 women around the world from 3100 B.C.E. to the modern period. Its heft reflects both a greater availability of documentation and awider embrace...One of the things that make this set an eye-opener is that longer entries are not just devoted to the same women who are routinely covered in other sources...This is a landmark publication, and we look forward to its completion (and its indexes)."
-- Booklist (March 20020

Published/Released: October 1999
ISBN 13: 9780787637361
ISBN 10: 078763736X
DDC: 920
Product number: 160027
Page count: About 750/vol.
Number of vols. in set: 17
Shipping Weight: 0.45 lbs (0.20 kgs)