My memoir, Inspired and Outraged: The Making of a Feminist Physician, is both a chronicle of my life in the 1950s in a first-generation Jewish family, coming of age in the 1960s, and my embrace of feminism as I encountered…
Category: Blog and News
News items of interest to WHN Members
Health, Death and Trauma in Middling Sort Women’s Letters during the Eighteenth Century – Isabella Smith
Sources taken from Karen Harvey’s Social Bodes project which contains transcribed letters between c.1680-1820 categorised by state, emotion and body part.[1] Why do we study old letters? What is it about them? Or as historian Susan Whyman asks, ‘filled with…
Hidden history and vital identity with a First World War servicewoman’s suitcase of memory – Robert MacKinnon and Denby Humphries
Scanning Auntie Emmie’s attic with torchlight, a time-worn leather suitcase caught Susan’s eye. Emmie would regularly retrieve the suitcase from the attic, but its contents were never shared. Opening it up carefully, Susan was presented with material traces of a…
Taking the Page: Asserting Agency Through Letter Writing in 19th Century Britain
What’s in a letter? For a woman living in England in the nineteenth century with limited access to social freedoms and even paper—everything. Historians have given mixed reviews on the value of Jane Austen’s surviving personal letters. Some brush off…
Hidden in Plain Sight: Women in Archives, Libraries and Museums
The 33rd annual conference, which will take place on 4-5 September, 2025 will explore and celebrate women in the archives, libraries and museums and the challenge of uncovering their presence. We encourage approaches that foreground marginalised voices and imaginative approaches.…
Resurrecting Dina Dobson: Archaeologist, Educator and Radio Broadcaster – Jan Lewis
During my PhD research on the role of professional archaeologists on BBC radio, one of the first files I accessed from the BBC Written Archives at Caversham was that of archaeologist Dina Dobson. I quickly became a little obsessed with…
Women’s History Network Book Prize Winners
We are delighted to announce the winners of our annual book prize for 2021 and 2022. The 2021 winner is Siobhan Hearne for her book, Policing Prostitution: Regulating the Lower Classes in Late Imperial Russia (Oxford University Press) There are joint…
The ‘Secret’ Children’s Books of Marie Stopes – Morgan M. Miller
Content warning: this blog post includes discussions of eugenics and racism which some readers may find upsetting. This blog post is a brief introduction to my research on Marie Stopes’ children’s books written under the pseudonym ‘Erica Fay’ between 1926…