This publication highlights how, from the 16th to the 19th centuries, European women, as readers and writers, contributed to the construction of national identities. The book, which presents twenty countries, is divided into four parts. First, it examines how women belonged to nations: they represented territories and political or religious communities in their own style. Second, it deals with the ways in which women wrote the nation: the network of relationships in which they were involved that were not necessarily national or territorial. The legitimation that women writers succeeded in finding is emphasised in the third section, while in the fourth is analysed how and why women were open to the outside world, beyond the country's borders.
This publication examines English women's legal rights to land and the reality and consequences of their land ownership over four centuries. More specifically, the book is about how gender shaped opportunities for and experiences of owning property, particularly for women. The focus is especially on land, residential buildings and commercial property, but livestock, common and personal property also feature. Included are the very latest qualitative and quantitative research on women's landownership.
This volume places female criminality within its everyday context. It reveals how their socio-economic and cultural contexts provided women with 'agency' against a range of European backdrops, despite a fundamentally patriarchal criminal justice system, and includes in-depth analysis of original sources to show how changing living standards, employment, schooling and welfare arrangements had a direct impact on the quality of life of working class women, their risk of becoming involved in crime, and the likelihood of being prosecuted for it.