The first collection of biographies in Western literature devoted exclusively to women, Famous Women affords a fascinating glimpse of a moment in history when medieval attitudes toward women were beginning to give way to more modern views of their potential. Virginia Brown's acclaimed translation, commissioned for The I Tatti Renaissance Library, is the first English edition based on the autograph manuscript of the Latin.

"In a pungent new translation by Virginia Brown, [Boccaccio's] famous women hold up very well indeed...The success of Famous Women suggests that [Renaissance] ladies read their Boccaccio as we are invited to read him: with forbearance for his foibles and delight in the tales he tells with such gusto and skill." - New York Times Book Review

"For good or evil, as wife, mother, or whore, these women have the splendor of clarity; their individual destinies are sharply defined." - New York Review of Books

"Whatever his intentions--and it may be that feminism was a long-term outgrowth of the humanism that he pioneered--Boccaccio launched a lasting genre that urged women, as well as men, to reach for glory, and gave them examples to live by." - The New Republic