Arguing that the voices of women still need to be heard, this collection assembles a diverse selection of writings to illustrate the daily lives of ordinary and extraordinary women and the historical significance of their thoughts and deeds. It features women who are shapers of history, as well as its victims.

Ruth Barnes Moynihan teaches history at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of Rebel for Rights: Abigail Scott Duniway and coeditor of So Much to Be Done: Women Settlers on the Mining Frontier (Nebraska 1990). A professor of history at Yale University. Cynthia Russett is the author of Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood. Laurie Crumpacker is an associate professor of history at Simmons College and coeditor of The Journal of Esther Edwards Burr, 1754-1757.