In books, TV series and documentaries, stand-up comics of the 1970s have become nearly as mythologized as the auteurs of the New Hollywood. If Richard Pryor, David Letterman and Andy Kaufman were the Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola of the club scene, then Elayne Boosler is the Hal Ashby, the misunderstood master who never got proper due.

This makes the release of her new box set “Timeless,” which includes four of her old specials along with one new album, a prime opportunity to reassess her role in the comedy canon.

The Brooklyn-born Ms. Boosler, now 66, started performing at the fabled Improv in New York in 1973 and before the decade was out, she was widely regarded as an elite club comic on both coasts, one of the few female stars in male-dominated rooms. Richard Lewis called her the “Jackie Robinson of stand-up in my class.”

Yet she never got her big break in the form of her own network sitcom or talk show and had very limited success getting booked on the “Tonight” show, where Johnny Carson preferred female comics who were not aggressive. When Larry King asked Ms. Boosler on CNN, “Why is comedy considered not for women?,” the question answered itself. Ms. Boosler’s career clearly suffered from systemic sexism, the impossible bind that demanded women command the stage without being too, well, commanding. You see this perhaps most clearly in her positive reviews, which maintained that she was not abrasive or feminist, as if that would scare away audiences. (She actually could be both, but that was part of her charismatic power.)