Harriet's Blodgett's selection of diary extracts presents a picture of changing attitudes in women's lives over four centuries, from 1599 to the World War II. Each writer is introduced by a short biographical essay, placing her personal life in the wider context of the period. Here are Lady Margaret Hoby, a 16th-century landed gentlewoman, and Hannah Cullwick, a domestic in a Victorian household, recording their very different daily labours. Mary, Countess Cowper, observes events at the court of George II and Queen Caroline; Mary Hardy, a yeoman's daughter in Norfolk, struggles to save her eldest son from death. Elizabeth Raper and Clarissa Trant, almost a century apart, suffer similar disappointments in love. Virginia Woolf bitches about Katherine Mansfield, Vera Britain worries over her intense, uneasy relationship with novelist Phyllis Bentley, and Nella Last ruminates on the changes brought about by World War II. That so many women kept diaries has created a literature rich in detail, broadening our understanding not merely of the practicalities of women's lives, but of their anxieties, fears, conflicts, ambitions, loves and friendships.