In present day society an issue that tends to be repeated as a truism is the fact that solitary residence is common and an increasing number of people, particularly women, stay single or do not enter upon remarriage after a divorce or in widowhood. In some cases the discussion is linked to the housing stock, sometimes to loneliness as a social problem. More rarely do we hear echoes of the 1920s debate about the undesirability of women gaining too much authority by fending for themselves on the labour market.

One of the aims of the book Vivir en soledad is to question the stereotype of the scant existence of single women in past societies, or viewing them as poor, lonely, abandoned and in need of assistance. Another issue is the denial of female agency and regarding women as more helpless than men. However, the book also wants to highlight that not only gender but location, in historical time, has been saddled with, and sometimes still is saddled with, a bias. Why has singleness and sometimes widowhood in rural society been denied or understood as connected to deprivation, sorrow, fear, poverty and hardship, while singles in urban areas have been identified with freedom, individualism and modernity?

The contributors to the book have taken it upon themselves to demonstrate that living as a single woman or a widow, and being the head of a household, was not unusual in the past and that such households can be found in rural as well as urban societies. Equally, they can be found in different social groups. The authors also want to raise the question of whether there is really evidence that singleness in women can be seen as involuntary and not a personal choice. What impact might factors other than lack of success on the marriage market have had? What can be gleaned about the family circumstances of single and widowed women, what can be determined about kinship connections, did such women have opportunities to earn their living? Can anything be said about the economic status of women without partners? The authors explore these questions using demographic data creating age pyramids. They analyze household structure and co-residence patterns. They chart the economy of single women and widows using information about occupation, land and house ownership and in some cases even the presence of servants in the household. We are given insights into legal systems affecting inheritance, migration patterns affecting the presence or absence of kin and social stratification and change.

The book attempts to compare regional perspectives and a more international perspective, to analyze mechanisms in society related to singleness and question the notion that marriage was a self-evident ideal in traditional Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking societies. The background to this ambitious project can be found in several research collaborations, seminars and conferences engaged in the study of households, economy, social development and gender.

To tackle all these questions the book presents nine chapters from Spain, covering regions reaching from the north to the south and the east to the west, and eight chapters on Latin America including Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador and Costa Rica. The time span of the chapters stretches from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century, with many chapters dealing with individual-level data from the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The main sources are censuses, listings, legal documents, court records and fiscal documents, but narrative sources like manuals and literature have also been included.

Even with such an extensive number of contributions, naturally the whole of Spain cannot be covered, never mind Latin America. But as the aim has been to include localities presenting a large number of geographic and socioeconomic environments, one must conclude that the representativeness appears satisfactory. The extensive time span also gives the opportunity for a broad-ranging exploration and allows for comparisons between the past and the present. As a conclusion one cannot but agree with the editor that the contributions certainly demonstrate that to be single or widowed, i.e. devoid of a partner, a ‘soltera’ was definitely part of society in the past as it is today.