The subjects are not all English, despite the title: Frances Sheridan was Anglo-Irish, Hester Thrale Piozzi was Welsh-born, and Grizel Baillie, Anne Grant, Elizabeth Hamilton and Mary Brunton were Scottish.

In the brief preface, Elwood writes that she undertook the project as there was little else published to "gratify her curiosity" about "the lives and characters" of "Literary Females".

[1] She concludes, with the modesty that was in style at that time, that the work is not intended for scholars, and requests that critics not be too severe.

A portrait of Felicia Hemans forms the frontispiece for the first volume, and one of Letitia Elizabeth Landon serves in the second.

Linda Peterson writes that the gender of the writers was the basic principle for inclusion in the collection, rather than the more usual categories of nationality or poetic genre.