A leading authority in the field here provides the first synthetic and comprehensive history of women in American higher education in over fifty years. "Essential reading for feminists and educators, appealing to general readers as well, this study joins familiar material with new insights gleaned from fiction, journals and the records of deans and dons." - Publishers Weekly "An absorbing history of women's higher education in the United States." -Patricia Meyer Spacks, The New Republic "Will be invaluable to social historians or anyone interested in the education of women." -Sue Beckwith, New Directions for Women "An aid and resource for women to continue their struggle for equality, it is a work of both scholarship and inspiration." -Jurgen Herbst, Reviews in American History " An] excellent history." -Christine Bolt, Times Higher Education Supplement "A major contribution to the exploration of women's past." -Joyce Antler, American Educator "This marvelous and monumental book will be an enduring classic--a major contribution to our understanding of historical changes in the lives of American women during the past two hundred years. It is a very human book, filled with humor as well as statistics, and it will be enjoyed by a general as well as an academic audience." -Kathryn Kish Sklar

In the three decades since her revolutionary and seminal article "The Character of Hamlet's Mother," Carolyn Heilbrun has been a prophet in the field of women and literature, gender and culture. This collection of graceful and uncompromising essays charts her development as a feminist writer and critic, which has culminated in such groundbreaking works as REINVENTING WOMANHOOD and WRITING A WOMAN'S LIFE. Shakespeare's Gertrude was first among many literary figures illuminated by Heilbrun's feminist sensibility. Others include Homer's Penelope -- an archetypal single parent, weaving herself a new life for which she was given no script; Jo in LITTLE WOMEN, a model of autonomy for generations of female readers; Elizabeth Bennet, remarkable for the promise of friendship in her marriage with Darcy; and Harrriet Vane, outrageously unique on many counts. The consistency and clarity of Heilbrun's vision in matched only by its heterogeneity, as she discusses Margaret Mead and Freud's daughters, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, resistance to feminist studies in academia, mothers and daughters, fiction and myth, tomboys and surrogate sons, and the detective story, of which Heibrun herself (as Amanda Cross) is one of the ablest practitioners. HAMLET'S MOTHER AND OTHER WOMEN will spark recognition, again and again, in readers on their own quest for female redefinition. "[A] witty, learned collection of essays . . . filled with delicate, sometimes startling gems of perception . . . . Provocative." -- New York Newsday