Miss Muriel Matters

In 1908 Muriel Matters, known as 'that daring Australian girl', chained herself to an iron grille in the House of Commons to demand votes for women, thus becoming the first woman to make a speech in the House. The following year she made headlines around the world when she took to the sky over the Houses of Parliament in an airship emblazoned with 'Votes for Women'. A trailblazer in the suffrage movement, Muriel toured England in a horse-drawn caravan to promote the cause. But feminism was just one of her passions: Muriel's zeal for social change also saw her run for Parliament, campaign for prison reform, promote Maria Montessori's teaching methods and defend the poor. In this inspiring and long-overdue biography, bestselling author Robert Wainwright introduces us to an intelligent, spirited and brave woman who fought tirelessly for others in a world far from equal.

The Australian actress who became one of London's most famous suffragists. Discover the most inspiring woman you've never heard of ... In 1909, a young Australian actress made headlines around the world when she took to the sky over London in an airship emblazoned with the slogan 'Votes for Women' and dropped leaflets over the city. Muriel Matters was dubbed 'that daring Australian girl', and the American media declared it to be the world's first aerial protest. Just months earlier, Muriel had become the first woman to make a speech in the British House of Commons, after chaining herself to a brass grille to protest against the segregation of women in the Parliament. She went on to become one of the most famous suffragists of her day, her skill as an orator drawing crowds in their thousands. So why is the remarkable Muriel Matters a relative unknown in both Britain and her home country? In Miss Muriel Matters, bestselling writer Robert Wainwright discovers an extraordinary woman full of intelligence, passion and bravery who fought for women's rights in a world far from equal.

The Australian actress who became one of London's most famous suffragists. Discover the most inspiring woman you've never heard of ... In 1909, a young Australian actress made headlines around the world when she took to the sky over London in an airship emblazoned with the slogan 'Votes for Women' and dropped leaflets over the city. Muriel Matters was dubbed 'that daring Australian girl', and the American media declared it to be the world's first aerial protest. Just months earlier, Muriel had become the first woman to make a speech in the British House of Commons, after chaining herself to a brass grille to protest against the segregation of women in the Parliament. She went on to become one of the most famous suffragists of her day, her skill as an orator drawing crowds in their thousands. So why is the remarkable Muriel Matters a relative unknown in both Britain and her home country? In Miss Muriel Matters, bestselling writer Robert Wainwright discovers an extraordinary woman full of intelligence, passion and bravery who fought for women's rights in a world far from equal.

Australia's first female prime minister. The country's first female judge. The first woman to win the Archibald Prize for portraiture. Australia's first female chief diplomat. The nation's first female winemaker. These women were all trailblazers, but they have something else in common - every one of them was South Australian. And they are just a handful of the 100 remarkable women whose stories are told in this beautiful book, illustrated with hundreds of photographs. Written by historian Carolyn Collins and journalist Roy Eccleston, Trailblazers shines a light on the lives of these extraordinary women whose feats inspired their state, nation and, often enough, the world. Now they can inspire a whole new generation.

Lena Connell was one of a new breed of young professional women who took up photography at the turn of the 20th century. She ran her own studio in North London, only employed women, and made her mark on history by creating compellingly modern portraits of women in the British suffrage movement. The women that Connell captured on film are as class-inclusive a group as you could find: whether they were factory workers, schoolteachers, or aristocrats, they joined the cause to make a difference for future generations of women, if not for themselves. Connell's portraits created a new kind of visibility for these activists as hard-working, unrelenting women, whose spirits rose above injustice. This book examines Connell's artistic career within the Edwardian suffrage movement. It discusses her body of portraits within the British suffrage movement's propagandistic efforts and its goals of sophisticated, professional representations of its members. It includes all of her known portraits of suffragettes through 1914.

The Female Tradition in Physical Education re-examines a key question in the history of modern education: why did the remarkably successful leaders of female physical education, who pioneered the development of the subject in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, lose control in the years following the Second World War? Despite the later resurgence of second wave feminism they never regained a voice, with the result that male leadership was able to shift the curriculum in ways that neglected the needs and interests of girls and young women. Drawing on new sources and a range of historiographical approaches, and touching on related fields such as therapeutic exercise and dance, the book examines the development of physical education for girls in a number of countries to offer an alternative explanation to the dominant narrative of the ‘demise’ of the female tradition. Providing an important contextualization for the state of contemporary female physical education, this is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in the development of sport and physical education, women’s and gender history, and physical culture more generally.

A thought-provoking insight into the stories of hope, determination, courage and sacrifice of those involved in the women’s suffrage movement in Kent. Discover an untold story of a young working-class Kent maid involved in the suffrage movement. See photographs of Ethel and learn of her arrest and imprisonment in March 1912 for participating in the window-smashing militant action. The 1908 Women’s Freedom League and the 1913 Women’s Social and Political Union tours of Kent are retraced, their messages and the Kent inhabitants’ reactions explored. Details are included of Kent’s involvement in the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’ mass pilgrimage from all parts of the country to London in 1913. Revealing the part Maidstone Gaol played in forcible feeding of suffragette prisoners the book includes an account written by the gaol’s lead medical man. The many links between national suffrage movement leaders and pioneers and Kent are included in accounts of the visits, speeches and actions of Charlotte Despard, Emmeline Pankhurst, Annie Kenney, Emily Wilding Davison and Millicent Fawcett. Discover who was imprisoned in Maidstone Gaol, which pioneer was stoned by a Kent audience during her speech, who interrupted a Kent Liberal meeting in Tunbridge Wells, which woman challenged their Kent audience to do more for the cause and who was much celebrated on her visit to a Kent seaside town. “Vivid accounts of the abuse of and hardships experienced by the suffragette movement in the county of Kent. One of the most moving histories of the movement in Pen and Sword’s brilliant series.” —Books Monthly

"Burning to get the Vote" was the message left by suffragettes in March 1913 after they fire-bombed Saunderton Station. This book draws on original research to re-create the suffrage campaign in Buckinghamshire of a century ago and brings alive the struggles of some notorious and some less well-known figures in the women's fight for the vote. Muriel Matters, Hugh Franklin and Frances Dove were key figures in this local and national struggle, which involved public meetings, propaganda and a pilgrimage, as well as more extreme methods: tax evasion, window-smashing and arson. This is a popular but thorough local history of the suffrage movement, unearthing previously undiscovered evidence and tracing the trajectories of both the law-abiding National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and the militant Women's Social & Political Union in the county.

From have-a-go Georgians to emancipated Edwardians, the lady aeronauts were actresses, writers, heiresses, scientists, engineers, explorers, showgirls and suffragettes. These unsung trailblazers for female freedom enjoyed lives shot through with sheer courage and joie de vivre. Yet they were all but forgotten. Hold on tight for a white-knuckle balloon ride through their remarkable real life stories Praise for Sharon Wright! - "Sharon Wright tells a fabulous tale, and has uncovered some terrific stories of long forgotten heroines of the air. Some stories are comic, many are tragic, many are a bit of both, and she tells it brilliantly." Bristol Post "A simply brilliant history that rescues from undeserved obscurity a roster of pioneering women in the very beginning of the age of aviation an inherently fascinating and impressively informative read from cover to cover." Midwest Book Review "You couldn’t want for a better antidote to pinkness than these tales of girls and women unleashing their pluck and inventiveness in the unregulated age of balloonomania This is history at its most satisfying." Damesnet "You don't need to be interested in ballooning or anything to enjoy this book - it is just a thoroughly entertaining read from a really good writer." Amazon review "History has never been so much fun!" What’sHerName podcast

Award-winning journalist Sharon Wright presents a fascinating account of the fabulous eighteenth and nineteenth-century female pioneers of balloon flight. More than a century before the first airplane took flight, women were heading for the heavens in crazy, inspired contraptions that brought both danger and glory. Women were in the vanguard of the “Balloonomania” craze that took hold in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, sweeping across Europe and then the world. Their exploits were a vital element of our first voyages into the sky. In a time when women’s lives were often severely limited by law and convention, these intrepid pioneers took on an exhilarating quest for spectacle, adventure, and danger. From the perilous ascent in 1784 by feisty French teenager Elisabeth Thible, female aeronauts have never looked back . . . or down. But who were these brave women who fearlessly—and scandalously—took to the air? In Balloonomania Belles, journalist Sharon Wright reveals the hair-raising adventures of the first flying women in a book that celebrates the brightest stars of an extraordinary era in human achievement.

Queen Victoria is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad wicked folly of women's rights, with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor sex is bent' - 1870 It was a bloody and dangerous war lasting several decades, won finally by sheer will and determination in 1928. Drawing on extracts from diaries, newspapers, letters, journals and books, Joyce Marlow has pieced together this inspiring, poignant and exciting history using the voices of the women themselves. Some of the people and events are well-known, but Marlow has gone beyond the obvious, particularly beyond London, to show us the ordinary women - middle and working-class, who had the breathtaking courage to stand up and be counted - or just as likely hectored, or pelted with eggs. These women were clever and determined, knew the power of humour and surprise and exhibited 'unladylike' passion and bravery. Joyce Marlow's anthology is lively, comprehensive, surprising and triumphant.

In 1907, in a quiet English village, Theodora Bosanquet answered Henry James’s call for someone to transcribe his edits and additions to his formidable body of work. The aging James had agreed to revise his novels and tales into the twenty-four-volume New York Edition. Enter Bosanquet, a budding writer who would record the dictated revisions and the prefaces that would become a lynchpin of his legacy. Embracing the role of amanuensis and creative counterpoint cautiously at first, Bosanquet kept a daily diary over the nine years that she worked with James, as their extraordinary partnership evolved. Bosanquet became the first audience for James’s compositions and his closest literary associate—and their relationship ultimately resulted in James’s famed “deathbed dictations.” At the same time, the homosexuality of each was an unspoken but important influence on their mutual support and companionship. Susan Herron Sibbet’s posthumous novel gifts us with the voice of a young woman writer drawn into the intimate circle of an aging master, and is a moving addition to previous literary treatments of James and Bosanquet, even as it hews closer to fact than other works do. The Constant Listener is itself the work of an accomplished poet, and will speak to fans of James, historical fiction, and themes of art, love, sexuality, and identity.

Nellie Melba is remembered as a squarish, late middle-aged woman dressed in furs and large hats, an imperious Dame whose voice ruled the world for three decades and inspired a peach and raspberry dessert. But to succeed, she had to battle social expectations and misogyny that would have preferred she stay a housewife in outback Queensland rather than parade herself on stage. She endured the violence of a bad marriage, was denied by scandal a true love with the would-be King of France, and suffered for more than a decade the loss of her only son - stolen by his angry, vengeful father. Despite these obstacles, she built and maintained a career as an opera singer and businesswoman on three continents which made her one of the first international superstars. Award-winning biographer Robert Wainwright presents a very different portrait of this great diva, one that celebrates both her musical contributions and her rich and colourful personal life.

The Little Book of Aviation is a collection of facts, figures and interesting stories from the world of flight. Sad, humorous, baffling and astounding stories abound, from the pioneering days of the Wright Brothers to the present day, and covering everything from great milestones, famous names who’ve served, and the greatest of aircraft icons; phantom pilots and aircraft and a glossary of slang; the origins of plane-spotting and unusual aircraft names; great feats and enduring mysteries; lucky escapes and great aircraft in the movies... the trivia is limitless and will appeal to everyone, whether you want help telling your Spitfire from your Messerschmitt or you know a Spitfire I from a Spitfire II!

_______ 'A history book that should be read by all' - Stylist. Set against the background of the campaign for women to win the vote, this is a story of the ordinary people effecting extraordinary change. 1913: the last long summer before the war. The country is gripped by suffragette fever. These impassioned crusaders have their admirers; some agree with their aims if not their forceful methods, while others are aghast at the thought of giving any female a vote. Meanwhile, hundreds of women are stepping out on to the streets of Britain. They are the suffragists: non-militant campaigners for the vote, on an astonishing six-week protest march they call the Great Pilgrimage. Rich and poor, young and old, they defy convention, risking jobs, family relationships and even their lives to persuade the country to listen to them. Fresh and original, full of vivid detail and moments of high drama, Hearts and Minds is both funny and incredibly moving, important and wonderfully entertaining.

This text draws on a variety of sources including branch records, personal papers and local newspapers to offer a detailed regional study of women's politics in the United Kingdom in the period before the First World War.

ETTA LEMON: THE WOMAN WHO SAVED THE BIRDS is the story of a pioneering conservationist who led the campaign against the slaughter of wild birds for extravagantly feathered hats and coaxed the world to care for birds.

Her sister paid a terrible price. Can she avoid the same fate? A quest for revenge leads a young woman to a new friend, but also puts her in grave danger. Can love triumph over evil? Chester, 1907. Emma Griffiths’ sister took her own life when she became pregnant out of wedlock to a man who refused to take responsibility. Now Emma is out to avenge her sister’s death. Emma leaves her job as a maid, no longer willing to put up with unwanted attention from her employer. As poverty threatens to engulf her, she meets another young servant, Alice, who is struggling to escape her own unhappy past. Emma and Alice become close and it soon becomes apparent that the two girls’ lives may be linked in more ways than one. Just as she finds love Emma’s newfound happiness is threatened when she realises that she may not be the only one seeking revenge...

This lavishly illustrated, bilingual art book presents drawings by Ramón Casas in the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections at the Northwestern University Library and oil paintings by Casas from private collections and the Art Institute of Chicago. Charles Deering and Ramón Casas follows the development and dramatic dissolution of a three-way friendship that connected the Spanish painter Ramón Casas (1866–1932); the Chicago industrialist Charles Deering (1852–1927), who was a collector and admirer of Casas’s work as well as a patron of Northwestern University; and the Spanish artist Miguel Utrillo (1862–1934), Casas’s lifelong friend and the father of the French painter Maurice Utrillo. Casas introduced Deering to Sitges, a beach town near Barcelona, Spain, where the latter created a palatial estate with a museum to house his art collection. Miguel Utrillo served as director of the museum. The text explores the treasures housed at Maricel and what happened among the three men that led Casas to abandon Utrillo and Deering to depart Spain, taking his art collection with him.