Women of the World.

Women of the World..

(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1988. 275 pp. $17.95)

Although journalism is a field in which independent women have enjoyed success for well over one hundred years, most studies of the subject have relegated female reporters to brief mention in footnotes, or have ignored them altogether. This has been particularly true in the field of foreign correspondence, including war correspondence. The accomplishments of women war correspondents have been lumped together in chapters or parts of chapters with cutesy titles such as "femininity at the front" or "ladies at the front lines."

In fact, women have worked as foreign correspondents since the early 19th century, and have covered armed conflicts since the Mexican War and the Italian revolution, both of which took place in the 1840's. Finally, in the late 1980's, these brave women are being recognized in articles and books, such as Julia Edwards' Women of the World.

Julia Edwards was a foreign correspondent for twenty-five years, and has covered wars and revolutions. She knew most of the women correspondents of her generation, and set about to give them the serious attention they deserved and to write them back into journalism history. Women of the World is an amusing, informative, and fascinating account of the lives and careers of women foreign correspondents beginning with Margaret Fuller, whose reports from Rome during the revolution of 1848-1849 thrilled readers of Horace Greeley's New York Tribune.

By the end of the nineteenth century, Edwards...