Women's world

by Irene M. Franck

Women have been ignored by history - and historians - for so long that many thought women had no history. It's only in recent years that our society, and others around the world, have begun to take an interest in the extraordinarily rich history of women and their achievements. And it's only recently that thousands of long-obscured women, works, and events have been uncovered for the first time. Here are the famous, and the little-known ... from Hatshepsut, a queen and pharaoh in Egypt in the 15th century B.C., to Janet Reno, the first woman attorney general of the United States ... from Phillis Wheatley born in 1753, the first published African-American poet, to Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, a pioneering novel on lesbian themes published in 1928 ... and from Jane Sharp, the British midwife who published The Midwive's Book - the first textbook of its kind - in 1671, to Mary Baker Eddy, who published Science and Health, the cornerstone of the new Christian Science faith, in 1