SOURCE: “Significant Stories Told,” in New Directions for Women, Vol. 14, July–August, 1985, p. 17.

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...