Anna Comnena

First edition. 96pp. Black cloth-covered boards, gilt titles on spine; embossed design on front cover. Lightly bumped spine ends. Top corner lightly bumped. Previous owner’s name on front free end paper. Outer edge uncut. Internally neat, clean, bright and tight. 8vo. Frontispiece portrait drawn by J. Gower Parks. Part of the Representative Women Series. Anna Comnena is described as the first female historian, the author of her father’s celebratory biography. She was an educated princess in eleventh-century Constantinople, the daughter of the Emperor Alexius. Expected to succeed him, and raised as heir, her hopes were dashed by the birth of a younger brother. In what is over-modestly described as a biography, Naomi Mitchison combines her story with that of her father, and the whole civilisation of the Eastern Empire,