Description
Book SynopsisTells the complete history of women readers and the controversies their reading has inspired since the beginning of the written word. This volume travels from the Cro-Magnon cave to the digital bookstores of our time, exploring how and what women have read through the ages and across cultures and civilizations.
Trade Review"Engaging, lively and vigorous.
The Woman Reader is a landmark work that no feminist—or for that matter, general reader—should miss."—Naomi Wolf, author of
The Beauty Myth -- Naomi Wolf
"An utterly gripping history of women and reading, brilliantly conceived and told depth and detail for the first time. Belinda Jack's remarkable book is destined to be a landmark in its field."—Claire Harman, author of
Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World -- Claire Harman
"A lively and erudite history of the many and ingenious covers thrown over women's minds to keep us in the dark, Jack's absorbing story describes and deconstructs the endlessly remade cover versions that men (mostly) have told to women, and to themselves, about the reasons why books and women should be kept apart."—Jeanette Winterson, Times of London
-- Jeanette Winterson * Times of London *
“A rarefied study of women’s reading over the centuries - a subject that is vast, but also intensely private, and that has left little trace for most of history.”—The Sunday Telegraph
* Sunday Telegraph *
“Jack’s excellent history begins from a position of anxiety, which she argues is caused by women’s access to the written word. What do women read and what happens to them, and the world, when they do?”—Lesley McDowell, Independent on Sunday
-- Lesley McDowell * Independent on Sunday *
