The year is 1649 and Lady Jean Wemyss has a headache. Since paracetamol won’t be invented for another several hundred years, Jean reaches for the next best thing: a handwritten recipe book. The cure, written down in her mother’s neat…
Category: Blog
The Women’s History Network blog
Empire on Fire: The Institutionalisation of Widow Immolation by the British Colonial State in India – Ghazah Abbasi
Please note that this article includes discussion of state violence against women, racism, and violent death. Thousands of Hindu widows burned alive on pyres in colonised India, fanning the flames of British imperial rule. During much of the 19th century,…
‘She has never let her faculties grow dull’: Constance Chellingworth Radcliffe Cooke – Clare Wichbold
Born in London in 1877, Constance Chellingworth Radcliffe Cooke was the eldest child of Charles and Frances Radcliffe Cooke. The family moved to Herefordshire in 1881 when Charles inherited Hellens at Much Marcle. After an unadventurous rural upbringing Constance challenged…
Eva Gonzalès: Pupil, Muse, Artist – Catherine Pell
A small but important work in the collection of the Leeds Castle Charitable Foundation is a pastel portrait, created by the French artist Eva Gonzalès. Born in Paris in 1849, Gonzalès went on to become one of the great female…
An analysis of liminality in the context of Irish migrant women – Aisling Keavey
An analysis of liminality in the context of Irish migrant women I completed a practice-led research Masters in August 2022, the purpose of the study was to explore and answer the question, “How have female members of the Irish diaspora…
Breaking Barriers: The Typewriter That Rewrote History – Ina Ilkova
Breaking Barriers: The Typewriter That Rewrote History In 1969, a legal battle unfolded in the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Attorney Sylvia Roberts stepped forward to argue the first sex discrimination case appealed under Title VII of the Civil…
Re(discovering) Miss Lister: The Rise of Collaborative Research in the Anne Lister Community – Packed With Potential
When Anne Lister rose to worldwide fame in the summer of 2019, new stories emerged beyond those featured in the BBC series Gentleman Jack, which contributed to a new wave of interest in Lister’s story and those of her contemporaries.…
Commemorating the Life of Jan Morris – Jane Lilly and Bette Baldwin
When Jan Morris died, aged 94, the Guardian obituary said the ‘greatest distance travelled by Jan’ was not across the Earth’s surface ‘but between extraordinary identities: from being the golden-boy newspaper reporter James Morris to the female voyager and historian…