-Brady (bibliographer for Irish and Women's Studies at Queen's College, CUNY) has compiled a bibliography of 2,312 books, book chapters, periodical articles, theses, and dissertations that treat all aspects of Irish women's lives. References were gathered from approximately 90 bibliographies, indexes, and abstracts and are drawn from nearly 500 periodicals. . . The greater portion of the material listed is in English and descriptive annotations are provided for these. . . Recommended for women's studies and Irish studies collections. —Choice

-Connecticut's Greenwood Press has given us Alan Eager's Guide to Irish Bibliographical Material (2nd ed., 1980) and an impressive series of bibliographies and indexes in women's studies. Now their commitment to feminist inquiry and their interest in Irish material have met and conjoined with the publication of the first comprehensive annotated bibliography of Irish women's studies. The scope of Anna Brady's impressive bibliography is best indicated in a paraphrase of her criteria for selecting material to be included: she is concerned with all aspects of women's life in Ireland, both those of Irish women in general and those of noteworthy women in Ireland, whether they be Irish by virtue of their residence or of their significance in affairs Irish. It is an ambitious undertaking. Yet despite Brady's claim that her bibliography `is neither exhaustive, definitive, nor fully comprehensive,' she has produced an annotated list of 2312 items of remarkable diversity, ranging from editions of Old Irish legal tracts dealing with the status of women, to hortatory pamphlets addressed by nuns to Catholic working girls, to the most recent sociological analyses of women's position in Ireland. This garland of delights for the would-be researcher has been garnered through a search of more than forty serial indices, more than forty bibliographies, and the catalogues of six major libraries in three countries. Indicative of the remarkable breadth of this search is, to cite just one example, item 625, an article published in a somewhat out-of-the-way Welsh journal that deals with onomastic and other folklore connected with the cult of St. Brigid in Wales . . . This is a volume which can be used by undergraduates and postdoctoral students alike. For both it will serve admirably as a means of access to an already defined subject or as a means of defining one. —ILS