Historical Heroines: One Hundred Women You Should Know About

This book, by Michelle Rosenberg and Sonia D. Picker, certainly has a catchy title – I wanted to know more about women who have made important contributions to the world but have been ignored in history books. The authors chose 100 women they felt were “interesting, compelling or just fun.” But, unfortunately, this book was a disappointment.

First of all, it’s unclear what the authors meant by ‘heroine’. They write that “what unites our cast of characters is that they have all suffered being miscast, type cast or simply cast aside.” But quite a few women chosen do not fit any of those three categories. And many are just not my idea of a ‘heroine.’ For example: Madam Stephanie Queen St. Clair was a gangster and a murderer; Mary Willcocks was a con artist; Maw Broon is a cartoon character; and the ‘Queen of the Amazons’ is a character from mythology (why not include the mythological goddesses?). And in the chapter on Madam Sacho there is no information about her at all; it is even mentioned that there is no source for the story. For some reason, even two characters from the Bible and the fossilised bones of a hominid known as ‘AL 288-1’ are included. Why are these women in the book? To make an even 100? Weren’t there enough women to write about that really were heroines?

Each “biography” is very short. It reads as if the authors wanted to keep each entry down to one or two pages – only a couple are longer than that (like Mary Shelley, who has 4 pages with information included about her half sister and her husband’s first wife for some reason – were they heroines too?). And the organization is strange: the names are listed in alphabetical order of first names, except for some woman who had a title; so that Empress Wu Zetian is listed under E, but Queen Sonduk is listed under S. So the overall feel is disjointed.

The writing style was incongruent with the intention of the book. I prefer non-fiction to sound authoritative, serious – not like a teenager’s blog entry. In the introduction, Sonia D. Picker writes that “this is a lighthearted glimpse at some of these women,” but I felt the writing was just too ‘lighthearted’ for my taste. The flippant tone undermined the authors’ intent to give these women their due. In addition, each chapter has informal personal interjections, with many references to people, films or characters from popular culture that I found distracting and unnecessary.

Even worse, there were many factual inaccuracies that called into question the quality of the authors’ research skills, such as inconsistent or just plain wrong information. For example: the entry for Neerja Bhanot has two different birth years for her; in the chapter on Princess Olga, the Drevlians are referred to twice as Vikings, even though they were a Slavic tribe in the area of the Ukraine; and in the entry for Isabel Godin des Odonais (1728-92) she is referred to as living in the “17^th century”.

There is also very poor editing – probably not the authors’ fault, but they must have read the proofs before the book was published. The name Sojourner Truth was misspelled as “Soujourner” in both the Table of Contents and in the chapter heading, and the entry for Gerda Gottlieb also spells her name Gerta. On one page alone there are three spellings of Hugh le Depenser, Dispenser and Despenser. In the entry for Hedy Lamarr, the word that should be spelled soul is written as sole: “Nevertheless, behind her artificially enhanced chest lay the sole of a science nerd.” Some ‘heroines’ have an exact birth/death date, but others don’t, even when that information is available. And there are too many punctuation errors to mention. I find these kinds of errors distracting, especially when I read non-fiction. I begin to doubt the quality of the publication.

There were many women whom I had never heard of, and it would be interesting to learn more about many of them. However, there are no references in the book – only websites for the photo sources. So, ultimately, it is difficult to know what the authors really intended with this book. Perhaps women who have been “miscast, type cast or simply cast aside” would have been better served if there were fewer entries – of women who were truly heroic – with a lot more information that illustrates why they deserve a place in the history books.