Aggravating Ladies: Being a List of Works Published Under the Pseudonym of "A Lady," with Preliminary Suggestions on the Art of Describing Books Bibliographically

In 1880, a bibliographer with a gift for dry wit compiled an exhaustive catalog of every book ever published under the deceptively simple credit "a lady" , then offered a treatise on why this seemingly small publishing convention drove cataloguers to distraction. Olphar Hamst's Aggravating Ladies is part frustrated lament, part rigorous methodology. He laments the "stubborn anonymity" of women writers who published under the evasive "a lady" credit, then rolls up his sleeves to fix the chaos they've created. The preliminary remarks establish systematic rules for describing books , distinguishing anonymous from pseudonymous from autonymous works , while arguing that titles, author names, publication data, and physical format all matter enormously when you're trying to trace authorship centuries later. The book then delivers its main attraction: a meticulously annotated list of titles attributed only to "a lady," a ghost catalog of hidden voices. What makes this endure is its dual nature as both period curiosity and genuine bibliographic rigor. It captures a specific historical moment when women needed anonymity to publish at all, yet that very anonymity now frustrates every scholar trying to trace literary history. For bibliographers, publishing historians, and anyone who loves a good scholarly tantrum.