The Book of the City of Ladies
Christine de Pizan

Translated by Earl Jeffrey Richards Foreword By Natalie Zemon Davis                               

In dialogues with three celestial ladies, Reason, Rectitude, and Justice, Christine de Pizan builds an allegorical fortified city for women using examples of the important contributions women have made to Western civilization and arguments that prove their intellectual and moral quality with men. In this edition, the acclaimed Richards translation of the authoritative Harley 4431 manuscript is updated to correspond to Richard's critical edition of the original medieval French text; the Introduction is augmented to cover the latest scholarship; and a completely new Foreword by the historian Natalie Zemon Davis, Princeton University, is added. 

“The first work in praise and defense of women...available for the first time in print and in modern English—here is a real book event. We owe thanks to the translator for a fine, flowing, readable English prose, and to the publisher for the rebirth of this moving to remarkable work.”
—Barbara Tuchman

“An astonishing, original work...true eloquence resurrected from the silence of the past.”
—Maureen Quilligan, New York Times Book Review

“A volume without which no shelf of women's works should be considered complete.”
—San Fransisco Chronicle

Paperback / $13.95 (Can $17.00) / ISBN 978-0-89255-230-6 / 281 pages / Fiction