Unsung women through history
History is often told as a series of battles and changing regimes, dissmissing the contributions of those that weren't generals or politicians. But behind this 'Great Man' theory of history, there's a wealth of largely untold stories about the people that not only lived through those times, but also helped shaped them. These six captivating histories are dedicated to unearthing women whose stories have been overlooked.
Normal Women By Philippa Gregory
Normal Women tells the stories of the women who helped create modern-day England: soldiers, highwaywomen, miners, ship owners, pirates and social campaigners. Women whose contributions to history were as diverse and varied as the women themselves.
This is not simply a book about heroines; it is a book about millions of women, who contributed to history in ways that are rarely acknowledged. The ‘normal women’ you meet in these pages rode in jousts, flew Spitfires, and built ships, mills and houses as part of their daily lives. They went to war, tilled fields, campaigned, wrote, cooked, nursed and rioted.
Private Revolutions By Yuan Yang
This is a book about the coming of age of four women born in China at the end of the twentieth century. Though they're different, each woman dreams of a better future than the one on offer, and whether through work, education or activism, each woman seeks to attain that dream.
With unprecedented access to the lives, hopes, homes and diaries of four ordinary women over a period of six years, Private Revolutions gives a voice to those whose stories go untold. At a time of rising state censorship and suppression, it unearths a unique chapter of modern histroy, and the identity of modern Chinese society.
The Women of Little Lon By Barbara Minchinton
While today a popular bar and a city lane are famously named after Madame Brussels, we don't remember the identities of the other ‘flash madams’ of Little Lonsdale Street, the ‘dressed girls’ who worked for them or the hundreds of women who solicited on the streets of Melbourne.
Sex workers in nineteenth-century Melbourne were labelled as morally corrupt, but it was an industry with strong links to the police and political leaders of the day, led by businesswomen that managed the cities most successful brothels. So, who were those women? And what became of them? Drawing on rare archival material and family records, historian Barbara Minchinton brings the fascinating world of Little Lon to life.
Read our staff review here.
Nothing Ever Just Disappears: Seven Hidden Stories By Diarmuid Hester
Under the dazzling lights of interwar Paris, Josephine Baker dances and discovers sexual freedom backstage at the Folies Bergère. On Jersey, in the darkest days of Nazi occupation, the surrealist artist Claude Cahun mounts an extraordinary resistance through art.
These are just two of the stories uncovered in Nothing Ever Just Disappears. Diarmuid Hester brings to life the stories of seven remarkable people, male and female, sharing stories most of us don't know and showing that a queer sense of place is central to the history of the twentieth century. Illuminating the connections between where these figures lived, who they loved and the art they created, this book powerfully evokes how much is lost when queer spaces are forgotten. This is a thrilling new history and a celebration of freedom, survival and the hidden places of the imagination.
A Woman I Know By Mary Haverstick
The true story of a filmmaker who unwittingly opened a new window onto the world of Cold War espionage, CIA secrets, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. While researching a biopic of a little-known aviation legend, Mary Haverstock discovered a remarkable set of women whose high-stakes intelligence work has left its only traces in redacted files.
Over a decade of work, Haverstock pulled together a story of double identities and female spies, a tangle of intrigue that stretched from the fields of the Congo to the shores of Cuba, from the streets of Mexico City to the dark heart of the Kennedy assassination in Dallas.
Wifedom by Anna Funder
From the award-winning author Anna Funder, Wifedom is a breathtakingly intimate view of one of the most important literary marriages of the 20th century. Eileen O'Shaughnessy's literary brilliance shaped George Orwell's work and her practical nous saved his life. But why - and how - was she written out of the story?
Using newly discovered letters from O'Shaughnessy to her best friend, Funder recreates the Orwells' marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and WW II in London. As she rolls up the screen concealing Orwell's private life she is led to question what it takes to be a writer - and what it is to be a wife. Compelling and utterly original, Wifedom speaks to the unsung work of women everywhere today.
