In the Middle Ages half of those who chose the religious life were women, yet historians have overlooked entire generations of educated, feisty, capable and enterprising nuns, condemning them to the dusty silence of the archives. What, though, were their motives for entering a convent and what was their daily routine behind its walls like? How did they think, live and worship, both as individuals and as a community? How did they maintain contact with the families and communities they had left behind? Henrike Lähnemann and Eva Schlotheuber offer readers a vivid insight into the largely unknown lives and work of religious women in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Why are some figures hidden from history? Eliza Orme, despite becoming the first woman in Britain to earn a university degree in Law in 1888, leading both a political organization and a labour investigation in 1892, and participating actively in the women’s suffrage movement into the early twentieth century, is one such figure.
Destins de femmes is the first comprehensive overview of French women writers during the turbulent period of 1750-1850. John Isbell provides an essential collection that illuminates the impact women writers had on French literature and politics during a time marked by three revolutions, the influx of Romantic art, and rapid technological change.
This rich history illuminates the lives and partnerships of five married couples – two British, three American – whose unions defied the conventions of their time and anticipated social changes that were to come in the ensuing century. In all five marriages, both husband and wife enjoyed thriving professional lives: a shocking circumstance at a time when wealthy white married women were not supposed to have careers, and career women were not supposed to marry.
This revised and expanded edition of Susan Isaacs: A Life Freeing the Minds of Children by Philip Graham, provides a comprehensive biography of a highly influential educationist and psychoanalyst. The book covers Isaacs’ childhood through to the end of her life, making it of great interest to historians of British education and of psychoanalysis as well as to practicing early years teachers and psychoanalysts.
Women and Migration(s) II draws together contributions from scholars and artists showcasing the breadth of intersectional experiences of migration, from diaspora to internal displacement. Building on conversations initiated in Women and Migration: Responses in Art and History, this edited volume features a range of written styles, from memoir to artists’ statements to journalistic and critical essays. The collection shows how women’s experiences of migration have been articulated through art, film, poetry and even food.
This biography illuminates the life and thought of Baroness Mary Warnock, whose active years spanned the second half of the twentieth century, a period during which opportunities for middle-class women rapidly and vastly improved.
Liminal Spaces is an intimate exploration into the migration narratives of fifteen women of Guyanese heritage. It spans diverse inter-generational perspectives – from those who leave Guyana, and those who are left – and seven seminal decades of Guyana’s history – from the 1950s to the present day – bringing the voices of women to the fore. The volume is conceived of as a visual exhibition on the page; a four-part journey navigating the contributors’ essays and artworks, allowing the reader to trace the migration path of Guyanese women from their moment of departure, to their arrival on diasporic soils, to their reunion with Guyana.
This book vividly presents the story of Margery Spring Rice, an instrumental figure in the movements of women’s health and family planning in the first half of the twentieth century. Margery Spring Rice, née Garrett, was born into a family of formidable female trailblazers – niece of physician and suffragist Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, and of Millicent Fawcett, a leading suffragist and campaigner for equal rights for women. Margery Spring Rice continued this legacy with her co-founding of the North Kensington birth control clinic in 1924, three years after Marie Stopes founded the first clinic in Britain.
In these powerful and stylishly written essays, Maria Manuel Lisboa dissects the work of Paula Rego, the Portuguese-born artist considered one of the greatest artists of modern times. Focusing primarily on Rego’s work since the 1980s, Lisboa explores the complex relationships between violence and nurturing, power and impotence, politics and the family that run through Rego’s art.
The essays in this book chart how women’s profound and turbulent experiences of migration have been articulated in writing, photography, art and film. As a whole, the volume gives an impression of a wide range of migratory events from women’s perspectives, covering the Caribbean Diaspora, refugees and slavery through the various lenses of politics and war, love and family.
Russian women of the nineteenth century are often thought of in their literary incarnations, but their real counterparts are now becoming much better understood as active contributors to Russia’s varied cultural landscape. This collection of essays examines the lives of women across Russia – from wealthy noblewomen in St Petersburg to desperately poor peasants in Siberia – discussing their interaction with the church and the law, and their rich contribution to music, art, literature and theatre. It shows how women struggled for greater autonomy and, both individually and collectively, developed a dynamic but often overlooked presence in nineteenth-century Russia’s culture and society.
The Book of Judith has fascinated artists and authors for centuries, and is becoming a major field of research in its own right. This book is the first multidisciplinary collection to discuss representations of Judith through the centuries. Bringing together scholars from around the world, it transforms our understanding of Judith’s enduring story across a wide range of disciplines. The book includes sections on Judith in Christian, Jewish and secular textual traditions, and representations of Judith in art, music and theatre. It also includes new archival source studies, and translations of unpublished manuscripts and texts previously unavailable in English.