Virginia Brown is Senior Fellow, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto.

In 1362, Boccaccio…wrote specifically ‘for the ladies,’ this time in Latin…[on] a subject as stately as the city’s soaring ruins and luminous marble statues: “Famous Women”…(biographies of 106 women, beginning with “Eve Our First Mother” and ending with the monarch to whose lady-in-waiting he dedicated the book, Queen Joanna “of Sicily and Jerusalem”)… In a pungent new translation by Virginia Brown, [Boccaccio’s] famous women hold up very well indeed. This beautiful little book…spearheads a new publication program designed to make accessible important works of Renaissance Latin to modern readers…the success of Famous Women suggests that the ladies read their Boccaccio as we are invited to read him: with forbearance for his foibles and delight in the tales he tells with such gusto and skill.

Virginia Brown is Senior Fellow, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto.

In 1362, Boccaccio…wrote specifically ‘for the ladies,’ this time in Latin…[on] a subject as stately as the city’s soaring ruins and luminous marble statues: “Famous Women”…(biographies of 106 women, beginning with “Eve Our First Mother” and ending with the monarch to whose lady-in-waiting he dedicated the book, Queen Joanna “of Sicily and Jerusalem”)… In a pungent new translation by Virginia Brown, [Boccaccio’s] famous women hold up very well indeed. This beautiful little book…spearheads a new publication program designed to make accessible important works of Renaissance Latin to modern readers…the success of Famous Women suggests that the ladies read their Boccaccio as we are invited to read him: with forbearance for his foibles and delight in the tales he tells with such gusto and skill.

Virginia Brown is Senior Fellow, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto.

In 1362, Boccaccio…wrote specifically ‘for the ladies,’ this time in Latin…[on] a subject as stately as the city’s soaring ruins and luminous marble statues: “Famous Women”…(biographies of 106 women, beginning with “Eve Our First Mother” and ending with the monarch to whose lady-in-waiting he dedicated the book, Queen Joanna “of Sicily and Jerusalem”)… In a pungent new translation by Virginia Brown, [Boccaccio’s] famous women hold up very well indeed. This beautiful little book…spearheads a new publication program designed to make accessible important works of Renaissance Latin to modern readers…the success of Famous Women suggests that the ladies read their Boccaccio as we are invited to read him: with forbearance for his foibles and delight in the tales he tells with such gusto and skill.