The picture cannot pretend to be complete. The Seventeenth Century provides such a wealth of historical material that only a small fraction could be examined, and though the selection has been as representative as possible, much that is of the greatest importance from the point of view from which the enquiry has been made, is not yet available. Many records of Gilds, Companies, Quarter Sessions and Boroughs which must be studied _in extenso_ before a just idea can be formed of women’s position, have up to the present been published only in an abbreviated form, if at all. Another difficulty has been the absence of knowledge regarding women’s position in the years preceding the Seventeenth Century. This want has to some extent been supplied through the kindness of Miss Eileen Power, who has permitted me to use some of the material collected by her on this subject, but not yet published. The Seventeenth Century itself forms a sort of watershed between two very widely differing eras in the history of Englishwomen—the Elizabethan and the Eighteenth Century. Thus characteristics of both can be studied in the women who move through its varied scenes, either in the pages of dramatists or as revealed by domestic papers or in more public records. Only one aspect of their lives has been described in the present volume, namely their place in the economic organisation of society. This has its own special bearing on the industrial problems of modern times; but Life is a whole and cannot safely be separated into watertight departments. The productive activity which is here described was not the work of women who were separated from the companionship of married life and the joys and responsibilities of motherhood. These aspects of their life have not been forgotten, and will, I hope, be dealt with in a later volume, along with the whole question of girls’ education. How inseparably intertwined are these different threads of life will be shown by the fact that apprenticeship and service are left to be dealt with in the later volume as links in the educational chain, although in many respects they were essential features of women’s economic position. The conception of the sociological importance of past economic conditions for women I owe to Olive Schreiner, whose epoch-making book “Women and Labour” first drew the attention of many workers in the emancipation of women to the difference between reality and the commonly received generalisations as to women’s productive capacity. From my friend, Dr. K. A. Gerlach came the suggestion that I, myself, should attempt to supply further evidence along the lines so imaginatively outlined by Mrs. Schreiner. To Dr. Lilian Knowles I am indebted for the unwearied patience with which she has watched and directed my researches, and to Mrs. Bernard Shaw for the generous scholarship with which she assists those who wish to devote themselves to the investigation of women’s historic past.