Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #568520 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

The Independent, June 11, 2007
'A meticulously researched background to our contemporary
interest.'

Review
[This] books provides a meticulously researched background to our contemporary interest. This is an elegantly argued, highly readable history of women whose lives have, until recently, remained shrouded beneath fears and prejudices. (Julie Wheelwright, The Independent (Extra) )

Nuns is a serious book by a serious thinker...Evangelisti is a conscientious historian with a wonderful subject...[a] meticulously researched history. (Mary Wakefield, Daily Telegraph (Review) )

A rich and direct insight into convent life. (Judith Champ, The Tablet )

[An] important new book. (Jonathan Wright, New Statesman )

[A] fascinating book...It is a powerful record and a fine contribution to the history of women. (Joan Bakewell, Sunday Times )

This graphic, elegantly composed and often piognant study stands out in its attempt to weigh the positive and negative aspects of the convent experience. (Olwen Hufton, BBC History )

A richly researched book... and one that constantly manages to surprise. (The Times )

A radically different and intriguing picture. (The Economist )

Nuns is a serious and readable study of convent life: it rescues from history the lives of women whom British and American feminists have tended to ignore because they have generally searched in secular places. (Mary Kenny, Literary Review )

this is an elegantly argued, highly readable history of women whose lives have, until recently, remained shrouded beneath fears and prejudices. (Julie Wainwright, The Monday Book, The Independent )

...a highly readable text... (S. Karly Kehoe, University of Guelph )

BBC History, March, 2007
"[A] graphic, elegantly composed and often poignant study."

Customer Reviews

Excellent overview of history of nuns
This excellent overview of the history and achievment of nuns should be of interest in all who wish to explore women's history in the early modern period. Evangelisti, who has mainly been concerned academically with Italy around 1600, ranges widely here, not only in Italy, Spain, France and Germany, but in the Spanish and French-speaking New Worlds: all readers, whether from Catholic or non-Catholic backgrounds will learn a great deal about these often intrepid and creative nuns. There have been several fascinating studies of the culture of nuns in recent years - of nuns as mystics, musicians, writers, and art patrons - which Silvia Evangelisti has helped make accessible here to non-specialists. The multi-faceted character of convents emerges - sometimes sites of fervent, austere devotion or communal creativity, sometimes comfortable refuges for the genteel, sometimes near-prisons for daughters of impecunious families.
The writing is clear and lively, the topics covered well balanced. However, Evangelisti is not a native English speaker, and there are quite a number of occasions when the word used is very clearly wrong, for example, 'lockers' for 'locks'. The editor,or friends of the author, really should have ironed these out. This is a minor quibble, however, and many general readers will surely find the topic of nuns very much more interesting than they might have anticipated.