A poetic interlude on a windswept seashore. Café au lait with the society page. A stolen moment with a letter of love and longing. Images of readers offer stories in and of themselves. These extraordinary works of art by sixteenth- to twentieth-century European artists invite your imagination to fill in the details of each reading woman's experience. Quotations about books and reading accompany images by William Orpen, Carl Holsøe, Frederick Carl Frieseke, Alexander Mann, Jean-Étienne Liotard, and Henri Ottmann, among others.
