"Provides coverage on the best-known American women writers spanning from colonial days to the present, including biography, criticism, and bibliography for each; also includes lesser-known writers whose work is found in journals, letters, stories, and even hymns...

"Contains more than 20,000 brief biographical entries on women, including thousands of entries on non-U...

Contains articles on "issues of sex and gender at the personal and the social level; examines issues of identity, status, class, ethnicity, race, and nation; of sexuality and the body; of social institutions and the structures of representation...

Covers the history of women and feminism throughout literature, from classical antiquity to modern times...