This volume provides a systematic analysis of various aspects of women's lives between 1500 and 1800, concentrating on detailed research into specific groups of women where it has been possible to build up a picture in some detail rather than attempting an eclectic survey. There are chapters on life and work, the Church and the State, and intellectual life, and the collection covers a range of studies of marital fertility, widowhood, women and the urban economy and recusant women.