WHISPERS FROM THE PAST: SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF NEW BRUNSWICK WOMEN. Edited by Elizabeth W. McGahan. Fredericton, Fiddlehead Poetry Books/Goose Lane Editions, c1986. 190pp. paper, $9.95, ISBN 0-86492-090-3. CIP Grades 10 and up Reviewed by Joan M. Payzant Volume 15 Number 3 1987 May Dr. Elizabeth McGahan, a native of Boston, has taught history at the University of New Brunswick, and is the author of The Port of Saint John (1367-1927), Volume I (National Harbours Board. 1982),and of articles in Urban History Review, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, and the Canadian Encyclopedia. Here she has collected the writings of women of New Brunswick, gleaned mostly from archives, and written between the 1830s and 1954. There are selections from a school paper. The Witan: extracts from young girls’ diaries, including that of Clara Winifred Fritz, who sailed with her sea-captain father to Indochina in 1903-1904; minutes of the Young Women's Patriotic Association and of the Daughters of Israel; letters from mothers to their adult children; a list of housekeeping expences (sic); and other miscellaneous accounts of life in New Brunswick. I found that some of the selections dragged, and had not been edited severely enough. Selection number six. "She Never Told Her Love." the 1873 diary of Emma Alice Pit was one of these, and selection sixteen, "The Costs of Life," was another. The book is printed on good quality paper, with appropriate illustrations, and is nicely designed. There is no index, but an introduction by the author explains the reasons for her choice of material, and gives background information for each selection. As I read through the book, and referred constantly back to these first pages, I wished that, for convenience, this information had preceded individual articles. Recommended for New Brunswick readers. Joan M. Payzant, Dartmouth, N.S.