The anonymous 'Old Soldier' who compiled this anthology of passages from Shakespeare, published in 1877, states in the preface that he was inspired to make his selection by a passage in The Gentle Life: Essays in Aid of the Formation of Character, by the now largely forgotten Victorian essayist James Hain Friswell: 'If a man wanted to make a sugar-sweet book ... let him go through the plays of the great national Poet, and make an extract of those passages wherein he has exalted woman.' In thirty-three sections (four plays are omitted), extensive quotations present examples of 'exalted woman' and give an insight into the taste of the educated middle class in the mid-Victorian period.