Conclusion: Understanding Women Historians’ Lives and Scholarly Reputations Both Within and Outside the Academy

Abstract

Women historians from Western Europe and the United States produced massive amounts of diverse history in the modern period. They did so as amateurs and occasionally, if ever more frequently, as members of university faculties. Many were committed politically to feminism, others to radical or conservative politics. Virtually all of them showed an extraordinary commitment to writing history, often overcoming financial difficulties and impediments to accessing sources. Their histories ranged from investigating the centuries-old paradoxes in women’s legal position to researching nineteenth-century neurotic men or chronicling the Thirty Years War. This collection of biographies has demonstrated the extraordinary range of personalities, life and scholarly trajectories, and historical thought among these historians.