I was recently quite shocked - though I'm not sure why - when a cherished colleague upheld the study of women's history on the grounds that it was 'fashionable'. Most historians respond to contemporary trends in their discipline, though without being so frank about it. Would I have been as disturbed if he had defended his researches on Medieval literacy in similar terms? I suspect myself of reacting not to his reason for endorsing the subject but to the subject itself. Should I therefore be branded with the infamous three initials applied to so many of my sex?

LRB 19 June 1986 | PDF Download