mistresspiece

English

Etymology

From mistress +‎ piece, by analogy with masterpiece.

Noun

mistresspiece (plural mistresspieces)

1. A work by a woman that exhibits outstanding creativity, skill or cleverness.
   • 1752, Nich. Culpepper, The English Physician Enlarged With Three Hundred and Sixty-Nine Medicines, Made of English Herbs, That were not in any Impression until This, London: for S. Ballard, R. Ware, S. Birt, C. Hitch and L. Hawes, and J. Hodges, page 158:

     This Herb is Venus’s Miſtreſs[-]piece, and is as gallant and univerſal Medicine for all Diſeaſes coming of Heat, whereſoever they be, or in what Part of the Body ſoever they be, as the Sun ſhines upon; […]

   • 1836, “On Galleries in General, and on the Ladies’ Gallery in Particular”, in The Court Magazine, Containing Original Papers, by Distinguished Writers, and Finely Engraved Portraits, Landscapes, and Costumes, from Paintings by Eminent Masters, London: Edward Churton, page 201, column 1:

     I am not about to wax eloquent or magniloquent—a very different style of thing—on the subject of galleries of art. For in that case I should be obliged to say much of the master-pieces and mistress-pieces of all the collections of all the countries on the face of the earth.

   • 1872, Woman’s Rights and the Wife at Home, London: Robert Hardwicke, page 21:

     He might have drawn her picture, standing, with arms akimbo, in the act of addressing the House, and demanding, in stentorian tones, the rights of those whose interests she represented; her speech a mistresspiece of powerful rhetoric, its peroration a threat!

   • 1923, Frederick Niven, The Wolfer:

     I have lately been reading novels for grown-ups instead of for boys. They mostly bore me. Too much petticoats in them, Deadwood! The puffs about them read like this: “Deals with the relations of man and wife and the struggle between the sexes that characterizes our day.” Or they are about “the feminine lure and modern passion.” Modern passion! What do you know? as they say in the Black Hills. Bored stiff with these masterpieces and mistresspieces I wrote this book, partly for money to pay for the feed of my wife, my horses, myself, and partly for fun.

   • 1991, Christine Brooke-Rose, Stories, Theories and Things, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 253:

     Burgess himself is very careful to welcome the republication by Virago of ‘the masterpiece of Dorothy Richardson’. Does he really mean that? Or is it really ‘only’ a mistresspiece? In which case I would personally agree with him but would have the courage to say so: there are secondary works of historical interest in both masculine and feminine writing.

   • 2018, Mark Fisher, Simon Reynolds (foreword), edited by Darren Ambrose, K-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher from 2004 – 2016, Repeater Books, →ISBN:

     Exhibit one: the cover of Roxy Music’s For Your Pleasure, 1973. / The cover image is a mistresspiece of ambivalence.