A glorious sun rose on Christmas-day, and the moments were melting ones. The weather had been very wet through June, July and August; September, October, and November had been almost perfect. The bright beautiful green clothing the valleys and hills,…
Category: Blog
The Women’s History Network blog
Susan Cochrane, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne (c.1710-1754) Part 2
After her husband’s death and a widow probably before she was twenty, Susan settled into Castle Lyon. Like other women of her status, she had access to significant wealth and property, and indeed, spent part of the 1730s in legal…
Susan Cochrane, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne (c.1710-1754) Part 1
Susan Cochrane was the second daughter of the 4th Earl of Dundonald and Lady Anne Murray. Her parents married in April 1706 and her mother died in November 1710; she was one of four siblings. Susan was the second daughter,…
Margaret Treager and the Craft Industries
I would like to announce the publication of my new book, Embroidering History: An Englishwoman?s Experience as a Humanitarian Aid Volunteer in Post-War Poland, 1924-1925. The book provides a glimpse inside the inner workings of an early humanitarian aid project…
Sojourner Truth
26 November 1883 Sojourner Truth (born as Isabella Hardenbergh), speaker and preacher, charismatic religious and political leader, died on this day at her home in Battle Creek, Michigan, USA. The day of her death is known but the day of…
Ruby Side Thompson and the London Blitz
I am the Great Granddaughter of Ruby Side Thompson. I inherited her forty-three diaries that span from 1909–1969. They were passed down to my grandmother, Ruth Ferris Thompson who was married to Ruby’s son, John Thompson. Ruby’s Diaries had several…
Adolescent angst and wartime woes in World War Two France
The Second World War saw France defeated and subsequently occupied by the Germans. Young girls’ literary responses to the period – their diaries and memoirs – serve a dual purpose: they convey their own personal story whilst providing a historical…
British women at work in the British zone of occupied Germany, 1945-49
The complexities surrounding women’s place in post-war British society have been well documented by historians. This debate centres on whether the Second World War had a liberating effect on women or if, instead, it served to cement women’s place in…
Black History Month: Eslanda Goode Robeson
Background As Carol Boyce Davies has noted, black women have been consistently written out of accounts of black international radicalism. The life and work of Eslanda Goode Robeson is a case in point. Born in Washington, D.C. in 1896, Eslanda…