History of Feminism – serie

Sarah Grand was one of the most prominent New Women of the 1890s and a notable social purity feminist and suffragist. This collection offers important insights into the full range of her journalistic output and lesser-known fictional writings. It also makes available biographical and autobiographical material, and previously unpublished manuscript sources.The first volume reproduces Grand's articles and the contemporary critical reception of her work. The letters in volume two, written mostly in the 1920s and 1930s, shed light on Grand's genesis as a writer and her interaction with 1890s artistic and feminist circles. The third and fourth volumes contain a selection of short stories from three collections published at and after the turn of the century. These comment on some of the explosive issues of that time: feminism, decadence, eugenics, class, race and war. They also reflect Grand's exploration of the interplay between gender and genre.

This five volume set deals in detail with Josephine Butler's campaign for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts in Britain and the Colonies. At present, access to Butler's work is restricted as a number of relevant anthologies are out of print. The bulk of these can only be read in specialist libraries and the original copies are becoming increasingly fragile after a century of use. This edited collection makes her writing accessible once again, setting it in an appropriate historical context.In addition to Butler's own work, the thematically ordered volumes include related texts which are important for understanding her campaign. This allows the reader to position Josephine Butler in relation to her opponents and to follow the response to her activities. All the texts are complete and reproduced in facsimile - there are pamphlets, books, media responses to Butler's activities, letters to The Times, articles from The Lancet, Pall Mall Gazette, The Shield and The Dawn as well as private letters both to and from Butler. The set is introduced through a substantial essay by Jane Jordan, one of the leading international scholars on Butler's life and works, and each volume contains a short introduction by the editors which contextualises the selections.Butler writes clearly and vividly, combining impeccable logic with passionate commitment. She does not soften her message to protect the sensibilities of her audience. She is uncompromising in her analysis, determined to 'set a floodlight on your doings' as she told a stunned royal commission in 1871. Josephine Butler and the Prostitution Campaigns demonstrates the great importance of this fascinating campaigner's work.

This set reproduces seminal writings by three exceptional nineteenth-century women. Georgina Weldon, Louisa Lowe and Susan Willis Fletcher were certified as insane by the Victorian medical establishment and were threatened with incarceration for their eccentric and transgressive behaviour. All three were remarkably resourceful and very successfully manipulated the sensationalist press to expose the 'lunacy laws' to the late-Victorian public. In doing this, they contributed to the emerging feminist critique of medicine and science. Each volume is devoted to the work of one of these exceptional women.New introductions by the editors and the late Roy Porter provide context and discussion of the pieces included, pointing to the themes and issues that they raise. With an extensive index, this collection provides an invaluable resource for those studying the role of feminism in the history of medicine and the power of the medical profession in the Victorian era.

The Edwardian period experienced a particularly vibrant periodical culture, with phenomenal growth in the numbers of titles published that were either aimed specifically at women, or else saw women as a key section of their readership or contributor group. It was an era of political ferment in which a number of ‘progressive’ traditions were formulated, shaped or abandoned, including socialism, feminism, modernism, empire politics, trade unionism and welfarism.Organized around some of the central themes of political thought and utopian thinking, this impressive collection gathers together classic articles from key periodicals. The set presents a comprehensive sourcebook of readings on Edwardian/Progressive era feminist thought, exploring the intervention of the radical public intellectuals working in these traditions in North America and the UK from 1900-1918.

The Romantic Period saw a massive advance in British colonial expansion, which was accompanied by a corresponding expansion in travel writings. These published letters, journals and books provided British readers with detailed accounts of new and exotic locations and thus engaged the reading public with expansionist enterprises.Covering the period of the French Revolution up until Victoria’s ascendancy to the throne, and featuring journeys spanning France and central Europe, India, and South America, this collection brings together some of the most interesting travel accounts written by women at this time.The authors included come from a variety of social backgrounds and their written styles are as varied as their journeys. For instance, Williams and Morgan were professional writers who may be described as ‘feminists’, while Fay and Falconbridge were ordinary women who had been through extraordinary experiences.

Women's Suffrage Literature is a new Major Work from Routledge and Edition Synapse. It makes available in facsimile key texts which represent the wealth of creative writing that emerged around the issue of women’s suffrage in the early twentieth century. The collection includes five significant novels, a wide range of drama and representative short stories. Selected in order to illustrate the diversity of concerns and positions with the campaign for women's suffrage, the texts also reflect the different literary models adopted. They cover a range of key moments within and after the campaign for the vote, revealing changes in perspective and tactics between 1907 and 1924. The selected texts problematize categories such as pro- and anti-suffrage writing, reveal the complex relationship between definitions of a 'feminist' and a 'suffrage' text and raise questions about critical approaches to such politicized writings.The collection is organized so as to provide some historical coverage of this key period; to allow comparative analysis of different genres; and to demonstrate the variety of concerns and discourses which defined this campaign. It has been edited by a team of academics with long experience of researching and teaching in the field of women's suffrage.

The black women's club movement is frequently seen as definitive of "first-wave" African American feminism. However, this six-volume collection from the History of Feminism series draws together key documents that show the varied political work African American feminists were undertaking well before the turn into the 20th century. African American Feminismsbrings together writings that document distinctly African American feminist organizing from as early as the late 1820s through female benevolent and literary societies, as well as writings that document African American feminist participation in black political concerns such as emigration and colonization, discrimination in public transportation, and anti-lynching. African American women also negotiated competing demands within interracial reform movements like abolition, woman's rights, temperance and suffrage, as well as within organizations like the black church, making documents that offer insight into those unique demands key to understanding black feminist arguments and rhetoric. Pursuing a varied feminist rhetoric that ranged from advocating domestic and maternal feminism to defending black womanhood, African American feminists focused on larger social reforms as well as agitating for material changes in the lives of African American women and girls. African American feminists were also keenly attuned to opening useful venues to black feminist voices, from the pulpit to the press, and urged the women that followed them to continue this work.This collection, which includes a variety of genres from the spiritual autobiography to the platform speech and the pamphlet, goes beyond the more common focus on the "greats" of black feminism to include lesser known black feminists and some unidentified women who contributed to black feminist debate on a variety of topics. African American Feminisms, edited and with an introduction by Teresa Zackodnik, is destined to be welcomed by those interested in women's studies, feminism, and African American history as an invaluable reference resource.

Medical Advice for Women is a new five-volume collection from Routledge and Edition Synapse covering professional, scientific, and medical opinion, in addition to the popular guides aimed at the female reader, between the years 1830–1915.Medical literature from this period provides a fascinating insight into the interrelations between social proscriptions, often validated by appeals to religious authority, and medical prescriptions. The narrative contained within this largely chronological collection is not necessarily a progressive one from quackery to medical and scientific enlightenment; the situation was more nuanced than selective quotation from sensational examples has implied in the past. This collection, edited and with a new introduction by Ruth Robbins, illuminates the complexity and shifting grounds of opinion in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by bringing back into print a broad selection of texts offering medical advice to women, and will be of interest to all scholars and students working in gender and cultural studies, and particularly to historians and sociologists of medicine.

This new collection from Routledge and Edition Synapse provides the documentary backdrop to this growing critical interest in anti-feminism. Based on the premise that to understand the social and intellectual context of the women’s movement and feminism, it is crucial that all contributions to the debate be explored, and not just those of the ‘winning side’, the collection meets an urgent need to restore to the historical record a sense of how feminism was a deeply marginalized position, and to remember that anti-feminism in many cases better represents public opinion concerning the gender politics of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Especially in recent years, late nineteenth-century novels, short stories, and essays have attracted considerable scholarly interest. Research into texts by and about the New Woman has played a major role in shaping a critical understanding of fin-de-siècle literature, New Journalism, gender politics, activism, work, and education. Serious academic work has, in particular, focused on changing gender roles and women’s participation in the public sphere and urban spaces. This new title in the History of Feminism series, co-published by Routledge and Edition Synapse, is a four-volume collection of primary materials which builds on this existing scholarship. It brings together a wide range of fiction and non-fiction texts first published between the 1800s and the early twentieth century to present different aspects of what it meant to be a female journalist at the turn of the nineteenth century.Making readily available such materials—which are currently very difficult for scholars, researchers, and students across the globe to locate and use—Female Journalists of the Fin de Siècle is a veritable treasure-trove. The gathered works are reproduced in facsimile, giving users a strong sense of immediacy to the texts and permitting citation to the original pagination. The collection is also supplemented by a detailed and comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which contextualizes the material in terms of fin-de-siècle publishing, journalism, and authorship. And with a detailed appendix providing data on the magazines, newspapers, and periodicals in which the articles and stories of the period were originally published, the collection is destined to be welcomed as a vital reference and research resource.

SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICE!(Valid until three months after publication.)Co-published by Routledge and Edition Synapse, the History of Feminism series makes key archival source material readily available to scholars, researchers, and students of women’s and gender studies, women’s history, and women’s writing, as well as those working in allied and related fields. Selected and introduced by expert editors, the gathered materials are reproduced in facsimile, giving users a strong sense of immediacy to the texts and permitting citation to the original pagination. This new title in the series brings together in six volumes a unique range of Victorian and Edwardian texts on Women, Beauty, and Fashion.The learned editor has organized the set around three principal thematic categories (‘Personal Beauty and Care’, ‘Beauty, Fashion, and Health’, and ‘Beauty Education and Self-Management’) which move chronologically from the late 1830s to the 1910s. The materials gathered here are representative of the body of texts written on beauty and fashion with reference to women’s (self-) perception and (self-) definition. Combining the issues of fashion with those of economy, education, and physical culture, the collection offers a range of diverging views. The diversity of the gathered materials is mirrored in their generic range and in the varied professional background of their authors. The collection includes, but is not limited to, religious treatises and dress reformers’ pamphlets, personal-care manuals by society ladies, advice books by (alleged) specialists, and manufacturers’ attempts at self-advertising.Making readily available materials which are currently very difficult for scholars, researchers, and students across the globe to locate and use, Women, Beauty, and Fashion is a veritable treasure-trove. The gathered works are reproduced in facsimile, giving users a strong sense of immediacy to the texts and permitting citation to the original pagination. Each volume is also supplemented by substantial introductions, newly written by the editor, which contextualize the material. And with a detailed appendix providing data on the provenance of the gathered works, the collection is destined to be welcomed as a vital reference and research resource.

As part of on-going projects to retrieve women writers from the side-lines of literary and cultural history, the collections explore the growing interest from scholars of literature, history and gender studies in girls?€? print culture . School stories generate particular interest because of their significance to the history of girls reading, their engagement with cultural ideas and the education and socialization of girls. This collection is edited by two literary scholars with expertise in Victorian literature and children?€?s literature and will appeal to scholars working on girls?€? and women?€?s popular fiction, and the history of girls?€? education and women?€?s higher education.

An indispensable reference and research resource, International Woman Suffrage (originally Ius Suffragii) was the monthly periodical of the early twentieth-century worldwide women's movement. Its function was to inform women working for equal citizenship in one part of the world about the oppression and/or struggle against that oppression and the achievements of women elsewhere. The periodical was read by all the leading figures of the suffrage movement in more than thirty countries, who would then disseminate the most relevant information in their own national and regional journals.This four-volume collection reprints eight years of the journal and contains source material found nowhere else that is invaluable for researchers in women's history and feminism. With a thorough introduction by the editor, the collection sets the material in its social and historical context.