THE CONTINUUM DICTIONARY OF WOMEN’S BIOGRAPHY <i> edited by Jennifer S. Uglow (Continuum/Crossroad: $39.50; 621 pp.) </i>

The second edition of this reference book adds more than 250 entries to a fascinating international list of 1,700 women. The entertaining short entries and excellent cross-referencing (how would one know to seek Moll Cutpurse’s story under Mary Frith?) make for rewarding browsing. Mary Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, turns out to have been a controversial feminist author who challenged Rousseau’s views on the position of women. There is also a subject index, listing such useful categories as Social Reform and Criminals--pirates, pickpockets and poisoners.

Engaging as the text is, the book contains disappointingly few portraits. It is clear that extensive illustration would greatly have increased the length (and complicated the layout) of the book. But given the small number of pictures--12 pages of four portraits each, plus 12 unidentified on the book jacket--one wishes the editors had chosen the less known or harder to locate portraits of women one would really like to see. Why print the picture of Virginia Woolf that is so often reproduced? And who does not know the portrait of Elizabeth I? Conversely, with so few selections possible, why include turn-of-the-century dancer Loie Fuller? On the other hand, how wonderful to see what Dorothy Sayers looked like.