Before Victoria: Extraordinary Women of the British Romantic Era

This book was to accompany an exhibition at the New York Public Library. It is profusely and vividly illustrated with manuscripts, hand-colored prints, broadsides, drawings, oil paintings, notebooks, and early photographs, as well as works of brilliant graphic satire by James Gillray and others. Mothers and wives, courtesans and prostitutes, actresses and artists, writers, scientists, and travelers are all represented, providing a colorful and sometimes shocking view of the time.