how in the hell do i post
When I can't... hey... wait... I'm posting in this window... ok, well, I don't know how I did it, but here goes...
Don't you love bibliographies? Here's a great one...
Historical
updated October 2004
Here is a selection of published historical secondary sources on single women, ranging from medieval to mid-20th century, Europe and North America.
Additions are greatly appreciated - please e-mail the compiler and I'll include them.
back to main bibliography page
Abbott, Elizabeth. A History of Celibacy. Toronto: HarperCollins, 1999.
Adams, Christine. "A Choice Not to Wed? Unmarried Women in Eighteenth-Century France." Journal of Social History 29, no. 4 (1996): 883-894.
Adams, Margaret. Single Blessedness: Observations on the Single Status in Married Society. New York: Basic Books, 1976.
Allman, Jean. "Rounding up Spinsters: Gender Chaos and Unmarried Women in Colonial Asante." Journal of African History 37, no. 2 (1996): 195-214.
Amussen, S.D. "Elizabeth I and Alice Balstone: Gender, Class, and the Exceptional Woman in Early Modern England." In Attending to Women in Early Modern England, eds. B.S. Travitsky and A.F. Seef. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994.
Anderson, Michael. "The Social Position of Spinsters in Mid-Victorian Britain." Journal of Family History 9, no. 4 (1984): 377-93.
Anderson, Robin John. "Domestic Service: The YWCA and Women's Employment Agencies in Vancouver, 1898-1915." Histoire Sociale 25, no. 50 (1992): 307-333.
Auchmuty, Rosemary. "Victorian Spinsters." Ph.D thesis, Australian National University [Australia], 1975.
Backhouse, Constance. "White Female Help and Chinese-Canadian Employers: Race, Class, Gender and Law in the Case of Yee Clun, 1924." Canadian Ethnic Studies 26, no. 3 (1994): 34-52.
Bair, Barbara. "Our Women and What They Think: Amy Jacques Garvey, the New Negro Woman, and the Woman's Page of the Negro World." In Feminist Forerunners: New Womanism and Feminism in the Early Twentieth Century, ed. Ann Heilmann. London: Pandora Press, 2003.
Barron, Dana L. "Sex and Single Girls in the Twentieth-Century City [Review Article]." Journal of Urban History 25, no. 6 (1999): 838-847.
Bauman, Paula M. "Single Women Homesteaders in Wyoming, 1880-1930." Annals of Wyoming 58, no. 1 (1986): 39-53.
Beattie, Betsey. Obligation and Opportunity: Single, Maritime Women in Boston, 1870-1930. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000.
Beattie, C. "A Room of One's Own? The Legal Evidence for the Residential Arrangements of Women without Husbands in Late Fourteenth- and Early Fifteenth-Century York." In Medieval Women and the Law, ed. N.J. Menuge. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2000.
Beattie, Cordelia. "Meanings of Singleness: The Single Woman in Late Medieval England." PhD thesis, University of York [UK], 2001.
________. "Governing Bodies: Local Courts, Male Householders and Single Women in Late Medieval England." In The Medieval Household in Christian Europe, c. 850-1550: Managing Power, Wealth and the Body, ed. Cordelia Beattie, Anna Maslakovic and Sarah Rees Jones. Brepols, 2003.
Bennett, J.M. "'Lesbian-Like' and the Social History of Lesbianisms." Journal of the History of Sexuality 9, no. 1/2 (2000): 1-24.
Bennett, Judith M., and Amy M. Froide, eds. Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
________. "A Singular Past." In Singlewomen in the European Past 1250-1800, eds. Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Berend, Zsuzsa. "Cultural and Social Sources of Spinsterhood in Nineteenth-Century New England." PhdD Thesis, Columbia University [US], 1994.
________. "'The Best or None!' Spinsterhood in Nineteenth-Century New England." Journal of Social History 33, no. 4 (2000): 935-957.
Bijsterveld, Karin, Klasien Horstman, and Jessica Mesman. "'Crying Whenever Monday Comes': Older Unmarried Women in the Netherlands and the Game of Comparison, 1955-1980." Journal of Family History 25, no. 2 (2000): 221-34.
Bowie, Fiona, Deborah Kirkwood, and Shirley Ardener, eds. Women and Missions: Past and Present. Oxford: Berg, 1993.
Brodsky Elliott, V. "Single Women in the London Marriage Market: Age, Status and Mobility, 1598-1619." In Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage, ed. R.B. Outhwaite. London: Europa Publications, 1981.
Brodsky, Vivien. Single Women in the London Marriage Market: Age, Status and Mobility, 1598-1619. Chicago: Newberry Library, 1980.
Broussard, Joyce Linda. "Female Solitaires: Women Alone in the Lifeworld of Mid-Century Natchez, Mississippi, 1850-1880." PhD Thesis, University of Southern California [US], 1998.
Bryan, Mary Lynn McCree, Barbara Bair, and Maree de Angury, eds. The Selected Papers of Jane Addams. Volume One: Preparing to Lead, 1860-1881. Urbana: U of Illinois Press, 2002.
Carter, Christine Jacobson. "Southern Single Blessedness: Unmarried Women in Savannah and Charleston, 1800-1865." PhD Thesis, Emory University [US], 2001.
Carter, Patricia A. "Housing the Women Who Toiled: Planned Residences for Single Women, Cincinnati 1860-1960." Ohio History 105 (Wint-Spr 1996): 46-71.
Cashmere, J. "Sisters Together: Women without Men in Seventeenth-Century French Village Culture." Journal of Family History 21 (1996): 44-62.
Chambers-Schiller, Lee. "The Single Woman Reformer: Conflicts between Family and Vocation, 1830-1860." Frontiers 3, no. 3 (1978): 41-8.
________. Liberty, a Better Husband: Single Women in America: The Generations of 1780-1840. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.
Chandler, Joan. Women without Husbands: An Exploration of the Margins of Marriage. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991.
Chojnacka, Monica. "Women, Charity and Community in Early Modern Venice: The Casa Delle Zitelle." Renaissance Quarterly 51, no. 1 (1998): 68-91.
Chojnacka, M. "Singlewomen in Early Modern Venice: Communities and Widows in Early Modern England." In Singlewomen in the European Past 1250-1800, eds. Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Cox, Virginia. "The Single Self: Feminist Thought and the Marriage Market in Early Modern Venice." Renaissance Quarterly 48, no. 3 (1995): 513-581.
Creese, Gillian. "The Politics of Dependence: Women, Work and Unemployment in the Vancouver Labour Movement before World War II." Canadian Journal of Sociology 13, no. 1/2 (1988): 121-142.
Darroch, Gordon. "Home and Away: Patterns of Residence, Schooling, and Work among Children and Never Married Young Adults, Canada, 1871 and 1901." Journal of Family History 26, no. 2 (2001): 220-250.
Davidoff, Leonore, Megan Doolittle, Katherine Holden, and Janet Fink. The Family Story: Blood, Contract and Intimacy, 1830-1960. London: Longman, 1999.
Dillon, Lisa. "Women and the Dynamics of Marriage, Household Status, and Aging in Victorian Canada and the United States." History of the Family 4, no. 4 (1999): 447-83.
Dollard, Catherine Leota. "The Female Surplus: Constructing the Unmarried Woman in Imperial Germany, 1871-1914." PhD Thesis, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill [US], 2000.
Donoghue, Emma. Passions between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801. London: Scarlet Press, 1993.
Elder, Catriona. "'It Was Hard for Us to Marry Aboriginal': Some Meanings of Singleness for Aboriginal Women in Australia in the 1930s." Lilith 8 (1993): 114-38.
________. "'The Question of the Unmarried': Some Meanings of Being Single in Australia in the 1920s and 1930s." Australian Feminist Studies, no. 18 (1993).
Ericsson, Tom. "Women, Family, and Small Business in Late Nineteenth Century Sweden." History of the Family 6, no. 2 (2001): 225-39.
Errington, Jane. "Single Pioneering Women in Upper Canada." Families 31, no. 1 (1992): 5-24.
Fahrni, Magda. "Ruffled Mistresses and Discontented Maids: Respectability and the Case of Domestic Service, 1880-1914." Labour, no. 39 (1997): 69-97.
Farge, Arlette, and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, eds. Madame Ou Mademoiselle? Itinéraires De La Solitude Féminine, XVIIIe-XXe Siècle. Paris: Montalba, 1984.
Farmer, S. "'It Is Not Good That [Wo]Man Should Be Alone': Elite Responses to Singlewomen in High Medieval Paris." In Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800, eds. Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Fink, Janet, and Katherine Holden. "Pictures from the Margins of Marriage: Representations of Spinsters and Single Mothers in the Mid-Victorian Novel, Inter-War Hollywood Melodrama and British Film of the 1950s and 1960s." Gender & History 11, no. 2 (1999): 233-255.
Franzen, Trisha. Spinsters and Lesbians: Independent Womanhood in the United States. New York: New York University Press, 1996.
Freeman, Ruth, and Patricia Klaus. "Blessed or Not? The New Spinster in England and the United States in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries." Journal of Family History 9, no. 4 (1984): 394-414.
Froide, Amy M. "Single Women, Work and Community in Southampton, 1550-1750." PhD Thesis, Duke University [US], 1996.
________. "Marital Status as a Category of Difference: Singlewomen and Widows in Early Modern England." In Singlewomen in the European Past. 1250-1800, eds. Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Gastle, B.W. "'Femme Sole' and Mercantile Writing in Late Medieval England." Ph.D thesis, University of Delaware [US], 1998.
Gordon, Wendy M. "Highland Daughters, Lowland Wage: The Migration of Single Women from the Scottish Highlands to Abbey Parish, Paisley, C.1851." Scottish Labour History Society Journal 32 (1997): 23-39.
________. Mill Girls and Strangers: Single Women's Migration in England, Scotland, and the United States, 1850-1881. New York: SUNY Press, 2002.
Gothard, Jan. "Space, Authority and the Female Emigrant Afloat." Australian Historical Studies 30, no. 112 (1999): 96-115.
________. Blue China: Single Female Migration to Colonial Australia. Carlton South, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2001.
Hajnal, J. "European Marriage Patterns in Perspective." In Population in History: Essays in Historical Demography, eds. D.V. Glass and D.E.C. Eversley. London: Arnold, 1965.
Hammerton, A. James. Emigrant Gentlewomen: Genteel Poverty and Female Emigration, 1830-1914. London: Croom Helm, 1979.
Hareven, T.K., and L.A. Tilly. "Solitary Women and Family Mediation in American and French Textile Cities." In Annales De Démographie Historique, 1981.
Harzig, Christiane, ed. Peasant Maids - City Women: From the European Countryside to Urban America. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell U. P., 1997.
Hassel, Julie Bond. Choosing Not to Marry: Women and Autonomy in the Katherine Group. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Heineman, Elizabeth Diane. "`Standing Alone': Single Women from Nazi Germany to the Federal Republic." PhD Thesis, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill [US], 1993.
Heineman, Elizabeth D. What Difference Does a Husband Make?: Women and Marital Status in Nazi and Postwar Germany. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
Hill, Bridget. Women Alone: Spinsters in England 1660-1850. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
Holden, Katherine. "The Shadow of Marriage: Single Women in England, 1919-1939." PhD Thesis, University of Essex [UK], 1996.
________. "'Nature takes no notice of morality': singleness, and Married Love in Inter-war Britain' Women's History Review 11, no.3 (2002).
________. "Personal Costs and Personal Pleasures: Care and the Unmarried Woman in Inter-war England." In Care: Personal Lives and Social Policy, ed. Janet Fink. Policy Press: April 2004.
________. The Shadow of Marriage: Singleness in England 1914-1960. London: Pearsons, forthcoming.
Holmes, Katie. "'Spinsters Indispensable': Feminists, Single Women and the Critique of Marriage, 1890-1920." Australian Historical Studies 29, no. 110 (1998): 68-91.
Howsam, Leslie. "Sound-Minded Women: Eliza Orme and the Study and Practice of Law in Late-Victorian England." Atlantis 15, no. 1 (1989): 44-55.
Hufton, Olwen. "Women without Men: Widows and Spinsters in Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century." Journal of Family History 9, no. 4 (1984): 355-76.
Hunt, M.R. "The Sapphic Strain: English Lesbians in the Long Eighteenth Century." In Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800, eds. Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Hunter, Kathryn M. "The Drover's Wife and the Drover's Daughter: Histories of Single Farming Women and Debates in Australian Historiography." Rural History [Great Britain] 12, no. 2 (2001): 179-94.
Israel, Betsy. Bachelor Girl: The Secret History of Single Women in the Twentieth Century. New York: W. Morrow, 2002.
Jeffreys, Sheila. The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality, 1880-1930. 2nd ed. North Melbourne: Spinifex, 1997.
Johnson, Karen Sue. "Single Women and Men in the United States since the Turn of the Century." PhD Thesis, University of Texas, Austin [US], 1975.
Karras, Ruth M. "The Regulation of Brothels in Later Medieval England." In Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages, eds. J.M. Bennett et al. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
________. Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
________. "Sex and the Singlewoman." In Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800, eds. Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Katz, Susan Leslie. "`Singleness of Heart': Spinsterhood in Victorian Culture." PhD Thesis, Columbia University [US], 1988.
Kelly, Kathleen Coyne. Performing Virginity and Testing Chastity in the Middle Ages. London: Routledge, 2000.
King, Alyson. "Centres of Home-Like Influence: Residences for Women at the University of Toronto." Material History Review, no. 49 (1999): 39-59.
King, Alyson Elizabeth. "The Experience of the Second Generation of Women Students at Ontario Universities, 1900-1930." PhD Thesis, University of Toronto [Canada], 1999.
Klapisch-Zuber, C. "Female Celibacy and Service in Florence in the Fifteenth Century." In Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, ed. C. Klapisch-Zuber. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Klinghoffer, Judith Apter , and Lois Elkis. "'The Petticoat Electors': Women's Suffrage in New Jersey, 1776-1807." Journal of the Early Republic [US] 12, no. 2 (1992): 159-93.
Kowaleski, M. "Singlewomen in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: The Demographic Perspective." In Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800, eds. Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Kranidis, Rita S. The Victorian Spinster and Colonial Emigration: Contested Subjects. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.
Krueger, R.L. "Transforming Maidens: Singlewomen's Stories in Marie De France's Lais and Later French Courtly Narratives." In Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800, eds. Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Lanser, S.S. "Singular Politics: The Rise of the British Nation and the Production of the Old Maid." In Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800, eds. Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Levy Simon, Barbara. Never Married Women. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987.
Liladhar, Janine, and Evelyn Kerslake. "No More Library Classes for Catherine: Marital Status, Career Progression and Library Employment in 1950s England." Women's Studies International Forum 22, no. 2 (1999): 215-224.
Lintelman, Joy Kathleen. "`More Freedom, Better Pay': Single Swedish Immigrant Women in the United States, 1880-1920." PhD Thesis, University of Minnesota [US], 1991.
Litchfield, R.B. "Single People in the Nineteenth-Century City: A Comparative Perspective on Occupations and Living Situations." Continuity and Change 3 (1988): 83-100.
Macdonald, Charlotte. A Woman of Good Character: Single Women as Immigrant Settlers in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand. Wellington, N.Z.: Bridget Williams Books, 1990.
Malmud, Anne Deborah. "Widows, Spinsters, and Modern Mannish Maidens: Femmes Soles in Nineteenth-Century English Law and Literature." PhD Thesis, Columbia University [US], 1996.
Mansker, Andrea. "'The Pistol Virgin:' Feminism, Sexuality, and Honor in Belle Epoque France." PhD Thesis, University of California - Los Angeles, 2003.
Mendelson, Sara Heller. "'To Shift for a Cloak': Disorderly Women in the Church Courts." In Women and History: Voices of Early Modern England, ed. V. Frith. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1995.
Meyerowitz, Joanne. "Women and Migration: Autonomous Female Migrants to Chicago, 1880-1930." Journal of Urban History 13, no. 2 (1987): 147-68.
Michalke, Debbie Kindt. "'Fortunate Enough and Plucky Enough': The Unattached Women of the Cherokee Outlet." Chronicles of Oklahoma 75, no. 1 (1997): 52-69.
Nolan, Janet. Ourselves Alone: Women's Emigration from Ireland, 1885-1920. Lexington [KY]: University Press of Kentucky, 1989.
Nord, Deborah Epstein. "'Neither Pairs nor Odd': Female Community in Late Nineteenth-Century London." Signs 15, no. 4 (1990): 733-54.
Oram, Alison. "Repressed and Thwarted or Bearer of the New World? The Spinster in Inter-War Feminist Discourses." Women's History Review 1, no. 3 (1992): 413-433.
Otis, Leah Lydia. Prostitution in Medieval Society: The History of an Urban Institution in Languedoc. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Palazzi, Maura. "Female Solitude and Patrilineage: Ummarried Women and Widows During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries." Journal of Family History 15, no. 4 (1990): 443-459.
Perry, Adele. "Oh I'm Just Sick of the Faces of Men: Gender Imbalance, Race, Sexuality, and Sociability in Nineteenth-Century British Columbia." BC Studies, nos. 105-106 (1995): 27-43.
Peters, Christine. "Single Women in Early Modern England: Attitudes and Expectations." Continuity and Change 12, no. 3 (1997): 325-345.
Phillips, K.M. "The Medieval Maiden: Young Womanhood in Late Medieval England." Ph.D. Thesis, University of York [UK], 1997.
Phillips, Kim M. "Maidenhood as the Perfect Age of Woman's Life." In Young Medieval Women, eds. K.J. Lewis, N.J. Menuge and K.M. Phillips. Stroud: Sutton, 1999.
Pickles, Katie. "Single British Women as New Zealand Domestic Servants During the 1920s." The New Zealand Journal of History 35, no. 1 (2001): 22-44.
Porter, Susan L. "Victorian Values in the Marketplace: Single Women and Work in Boston, 1800-1850." Social Science History 17, no. 1 (1993): 109-33.
Rink, Deborah, and the Sisters Association of Vancouver Archdiocese. Spirited Women: A History of Catholic Sisters in British Columbia. Vancouver: Sisters Association of Vancouver Archdiocese, 2000.
Rizzo, Betty. Companions without Vows: Relationships among Eighteenth-Century British Women. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994.
Roberts, Barbara. "'A Work of Empire': Canadian Reformers and British Female Immigration." In A Not Unreasonable Claim: Women and Reform in Canada, 1880s-1920s, ed. Linda Kealey. Toronto: Canadian Women's Educational Press, 1979.
Rooke, Patricia T., and R. L. Schnell. "Chastity as Power: Charlotte Whitton and the Ascetic Ideal." American Review of Canadian Studies 15, no. 4 (1985): 389-403.
Roper, Roger. "Homemakers in Transition: Women in Salt Lake City Apartments, 1910-1940." Utah Historical Quarterly 67, no. 4 (1999): 349-366.
Rossiaud, Jacques. Medieval Prostitution. Translated by L.G. Cochrane. Oxford: Blackwell, 1988.
Sebire, Dawn. "'To Shield from Temptation': The Business Girl and the City." Urban History Review 17, no. 3 (1989): 203-8.
Sharpe, Pamela. "Literally Spinsters: A New Interpretation of Local Economy and Demography in Colyton in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries." Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 44, no. 1 (1991): 46-65.
________. "'The Barking Ladies': Work, Neighbourhood and Female Self-Identity 1866-1891." London Journal 22, no. 1 (1997): 51-62.
________. "Dealing with Love: The Ambiguous Independence of the Single Woman in Early Modern England." Gender & History 11, no. 2 (1999): 209-232.
Showalter, Elaine. The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985.
Smith, R.M. "Geographical Diversity in the Resort to Marriage in Late Medieval Europe: Work, Reputation, and Unmarried Females in the Household Formation Systems of Northern and Southern Europe." In Woman Is a Worthy Wight: Women in English Society C. 1200-1500, ed. P.J.P. Goldberg. Wolfeboro Falls [NH]: S. Sutton, 1992.
Snell, James G. "Regulating Nuptiality: Restricting Access to Marriage in Early Twentieth-Century English-Speaking Canada." Canadian Historical Review 69, no. 4 (1988): 466-489.
Spicksley, J. "The Early Modern Demographic Dynamic: Celibates and Celibacy in 17th Century England." Ph.D. Thesis, University of Hull [UK], 2001.
Strange, Carolyn. Toronto's Girl Problem: The Perils and Pleasures of the City, 1880-1930. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995.
Stuard, S.M. "Single by Law and Custom." In Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800, eds. Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Swaisland, Cecillie. Servants and Gentlewomen to the Golden Land: The Emigration of Single Women from Britain to Southern Africa, 1820-1939. Providence, R.I.: Berg, 1993.
Takai, Yukari. "Shared Earnings, Unequal Responsibilities: Single French-Canadian Wage-Earning Women in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1900-1920." Labour, no. 47 (2001): 115-132.
Tijsseling, Anna. "Betsy Perk Disputes the Boundaries of Feminine Spheres. The Strategical Use of 'Odd Women' in Debates About Schooling for Girls, 1860-1870, the Netherlands." PhD Thesis, Erasmus University, 2001.
Van-Helten, Jean Jacques, and Keith Williams. "'The Crying Need of South Africa': The Emigration of Single British Women to the Transvaal, 1901-10." Journal of Southern African Studies [Great Britain] 10, no. 1 (1983): 17-38.
Van Kessel, Elisja Schulte. "Virgins and Mothers between Heaven and Earth." In Renaissance and Enlightenment Paradoxes, ed. Natalie Zemen Davis and Arlette Farge. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
VanNoord, Carl. "The Decline in Employment of Young Single Women in Service Occupations, England and Wales, 1871-1961." PhD Thesis, New School for Social Research [US], 1983.
Vicinus, Martha. Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Wall, R. "Woman Alone in English Society." In Annales De Démographie Historique, 1981.
Watkins, Susan Cotts. "Spinsters." Journal of Family History 9, no. 4 (1984): 340-354.
Webb, Anne B. "Forgotten Persephones: Women Farmers on the Frontier." Minnesota History 50, no. 4 (1986): 134-48.
Weiner, Lynn Y. From Working Girl to Working Mother: The Female Labor Force in the United States, 1820-1980. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1985.
Weir, D. R. "Rather Never Than Late: Celibacy and Age at Marriage in English Cohort Fertility, 1541-1871." Journal of Family History 9 (1984): 340-354.
Wiesner, Merry E. "Having Her Own Smoke: Employment and Independence for Singlewomen in Germany, 1400-1750." In Singlewomen in the European Past,1250-1800, eds. Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Wulf, Karin A. Not All Wives: Women of Colonial Philadelphia. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000.
Don't you love bibliographies? Here's a great one...
Historical
updated October 2004
Here is a selection of published historical secondary sources on single women, ranging from medieval to mid-20th century, Europe and North America.
Additions are greatly appreciated - please e-mail the compiler and I'll include them.
back to main bibliography page
Abbott, Elizabeth. A History of Celibacy. Toronto: HarperCollins, 1999.
Adams, Christine. "A Choice Not to Wed? Unmarried Women in Eighteenth-Century France." Journal of Social History 29, no. 4 (1996): 883-894.
Adams, Margaret. Single Blessedness: Observations on the Single Status in Married Society. New York: Basic Books, 1976.
Allman, Jean. "Rounding up Spinsters: Gender Chaos and Unmarried Women in Colonial Asante." Journal of African History 37, no. 2 (1996): 195-214.
Amussen, S.D. "Elizabeth I and Alice Balstone: Gender, Class, and the Exceptional Woman in Early Modern England." In Attending to Women in Early Modern England, eds. B.S. Travitsky and A.F. Seef. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994.
Anderson, Michael. "The Social Position of Spinsters in Mid-Victorian Britain." Journal of Family History 9, no. 4 (1984): 377-93.
Anderson, Robin John. "Domestic Service: The YWCA and Women's Employment Agencies in Vancouver, 1898-1915." Histoire Sociale 25, no. 50 (1992): 307-333.
Auchmuty, Rosemary. "Victorian Spinsters." Ph.D thesis, Australian National University [Australia], 1975.
Backhouse, Constance. "White Female Help and Chinese-Canadian Employers: Race, Class, Gender and Law in the Case of Yee Clun, 1924." Canadian Ethnic Studies 26, no. 3 (1994): 34-52.
Bair, Barbara. "Our Women and What They Think: Amy Jacques Garvey, the New Negro Woman, and the Woman's Page of the Negro World." In Feminist Forerunners: New Womanism and Feminism in the Early Twentieth Century, ed. Ann Heilmann. London: Pandora Press, 2003.
Barron, Dana L. "Sex and Single Girls in the Twentieth-Century City [Review Article]." Journal of Urban History 25, no. 6 (1999): 838-847.
Bauman, Paula M. "Single Women Homesteaders in Wyoming, 1880-1930." Annals of Wyoming 58, no. 1 (1986): 39-53.
Beattie, Betsey. Obligation and Opportunity: Single, Maritime Women in Boston, 1870-1930. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000.
Beattie, C. "A Room of One's Own? The Legal Evidence for the Residential Arrangements of Women without Husbands in Late Fourteenth- and Early Fifteenth-Century York." In Medieval Women and the Law, ed. N.J. Menuge. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2000.
Beattie, Cordelia. "Meanings of Singleness: The Single Woman in Late Medieval England." PhD thesis, University of York [UK], 2001.
________. "Governing Bodies: Local Courts, Male Householders and Single Women in Late Medieval England." In The Medieval Household in Christian Europe, c. 850-1550: Managing Power, Wealth and the Body, ed. Cordelia Beattie, Anna Maslakovic and Sarah Rees Jones. Brepols, 2003.
Bennett, J.M. "'Lesbian-Like' and the Social History of Lesbianisms." Journal of the History of Sexuality 9, no. 1/2 (2000): 1-24.
Bennett, Judith M., and Amy M. Froide, eds. Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
________. "A Singular Past." In Singlewomen in the European Past 1250-1800, eds. Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Berend, Zsuzsa. "Cultural and Social Sources of Spinsterhood in Nineteenth-Century New England." PhdD Thesis, Columbia University [US], 1994.
________. "'The Best or None!' Spinsterhood in Nineteenth-Century New England." Journal of Social History 33, no. 4 (2000): 935-957.
Bijsterveld, Karin, Klasien Horstman, and Jessica Mesman. "'Crying Whenever Monday Comes': Older Unmarried Women in the Netherlands and the Game of Comparison, 1955-1980." Journal of Family History 25, no. 2 (2000): 221-34.
Bowie, Fiona, Deborah Kirkwood, and Shirley Ardener, eds. Women and Missions: Past and Present. Oxford: Berg, 1993.
Brodsky Elliott, V. "Single Women in the London Marriage Market: Age, Status and Mobility, 1598-1619." In Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage, ed. R.B. Outhwaite. London: Europa Publications, 1981.
Brodsky, Vivien. Single Women in the London Marriage Market: Age, Status and Mobility, 1598-1619. Chicago: Newberry Library, 1980.
Broussard, Joyce Linda. "Female Solitaires: Women Alone in the Lifeworld of Mid-Century Natchez, Mississippi, 1850-1880." PhD Thesis, University of Southern California [US], 1998.
Bryan, Mary Lynn McCree, Barbara Bair, and Maree de Angury, eds. The Selected Papers of Jane Addams. Volume One: Preparing to Lead, 1860-1881. Urbana: U of Illinois Press, 2002.
Carter, Christine Jacobson. "Southern Single Blessedness: Unmarried Women in Savannah and Charleston, 1800-1865." PhD Thesis, Emory University [US], 2001.
Carter, Patricia A. "Housing the Women Who Toiled: Planned Residences for Single Women, Cincinnati 1860-1960." Ohio History 105 (Wint-Spr 1996): 46-71.
Cashmere, J. "Sisters Together: Women without Men in Seventeenth-Century French Village Culture." Journal of Family History 21 (1996): 44-62.
Chambers-Schiller, Lee. "The Single Woman Reformer: Conflicts between Family and Vocation, 1830-1860." Frontiers 3, no. 3 (1978): 41-8.
________. Liberty, a Better Husband: Single Women in America: The Generations of 1780-1840. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.
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