THE NEW QUOTABLE WOMAN: The Definitive Treasury...

THE NEW QUOTABLE WOMAN: The Definitive Treasury of Notable Words by Women From Eve to the Present compiled and edited by Elaine Partnow (Meridian: $15.; 714 pp.). Although it falls short of its subtitle, Partnow’s anthology contains a wealth of citations, both familiar (Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s “Laugh and the world laughs with you;/ Weep, and you weep alone”) and obscure (“Prosperity seldom chooses the side of the virtuous . . . “ --Heloise). Arranging the entries by the year of the author’s birth may offer “a sweeping flight through the timeline of women’s history and an awareness of the parallel time in which women from different nations and continents lived,” but it makes the book awkward to use. Partnow also fails to mention translators and only lists pseudonyms in the index.