[In the following review, Wyngaarden offers a favorable assessment of Significant Sisters.]

Illuminated in this compellingly written book [Significant Sisters] is the progression of women's rights in England and America. Forster weaves together the stories of the life work of eight extraordinary women into a satisfying whole.

The book's importance lies in telling not of how radicals have always been treated—ridiculed, abused, ostracized, isolated—but how and why these sisters persevered in the fact of such treatment and, more important, the meaning of their accomplishments.

Divided into eight sections, the book covers eight major areas of experience and includes a brief biography of a woman who effected vital change in that area, benefitting women and men of every subsequent generation.

Forster's subjects' lives span 1808 to 1966. Caroline Norton, an Englishwoman little known to an American audience, was the first born. She succeeded in dramatically changing English law as it applied to married women. And the last to die, Margaret Sanger in 1966, whose magnificent contribution was to publicly separate sex from procreation, freed women from a seemingly implacable biological imperative.

In between, the author considers Elizabeth Blackwell's life and its impact on the professions; Florence Nightingale and employment; Emily Davies and education; Josephine Butler and sexual morality; Elizabeth Cady Stanton (whose BBC Hulton Picture Library photograph is the first this reviewer has seen which conveys Stanton's joy of life, intelligence and comeliness) and politics; Emma Goldman and ideology.

This well-written, lively book will be enjoyed even by those already familiar with the lives of the subjects. It could admirably serve as the text of a Women's History introductory course.

An interesting chart in the back of the book, applicable only to Great Britain, shows feminist progress in the context of general changes. Forster states that a comparable chart of American progress is not possible because of the varying developments from state to state. Sounds like 50 terrific research projects for students across the country.