Lost Girls

Nicholas Terpstra is a professor of history at the University of Toronto and author of Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance: Orphan Care in Florence and Bologna, also published by Johns Hopkins, and Cultures of Charity: Women, Politics, and the Reform of Poor Relief in Renaissance Italy.

• List of FiguresAcknowledgmentsNote on Dates, Currency, and Measures1. Mystery and Silence2. The Setting: Sex and the City3. Renaissance Teenagers: Working Girls4. Teenage Girls and Birth Control5. Renaissance Fundamentalists and Girls in Trouble6. Virgin Girls and Venereal Disease7. Conclusion: Friction in the ArchivesAppendix: Sexual Politics: Giulia and the Crown Prince GonzagaNotessBibliographyIndex

The book contains fascinating, and sometimes shocking, information about Terpstra's topic. I appreciated that Terpstra does not exclusively limit himself to the subject of Casa della Pieta, but uses the mystery of what happened to the home's residents as a way to examine related issues. -- Erin Schowalter Feminist Review Lost Girls is a fine addition to any history collection, especially those with a focus on the Renaissance. Midwest Book Review The Casa della Pieta, or House of Compassion, was one of Renaissance Florence's earliest shelters for orphaned or otherwise abandoned adolescent girls... Of the 526 girls who lived there during the 14 years it was open, 324 died there. What was killing these girls? Terpstra attempts to solve this mystery. Choice [Terpstra's] study of Pieta can be recommended highly not only to those interested in women's history, social history, medical history, and economic history but also to anyone who cares about the historian's craft. -- Jonathan Davies Reviews in History A masterpiece of historical writing and an invaluable contribution to the study of premodern Italy... This book should be welcomed by anyone interested in social history, gender history, the history of sexuality, religious history or the history of medicine. -- Tamar Herzig Journal of Modern History Energetic, archival scholarship. -- Elizabeth S. Cohen Literary Review of Canada Unusual and ingenious... Those interested in the history of early-modern Catholic Europe and Catholic institutions on the Italian peninsula will find much to think about while reading this book. -- Kate Lowe Catholic Historical Review It is well written and well researched by an established and erudite historian of this period, and it treats a difficult subject: the situation of Florentine orphaned or abandoned adolescent girls in the sixteenth century. -- R. Burr Litchfield Renaissance Quarterly Terpstra weaves literary evidence, intelligent guesswork, and vivid historical imagination into an eminently readable micro-history that forms part of a growing body of scholarship that challenges long-held historical assumptions about female honor in the Mediterranean world. -- Philip Gavitt American Historical Review In this finely crafted microhistory he exposes the social and cultural contradictions often lost in more general studies that were critical to the existence and functioning of the Casa della Pieta. -- Duane J. Osheim Sixteenth Century Journal