By Professor Ruth Watts.Science, a vast field of knowledge so important in the modern world, has traditionally been perceived as ‘masculine’, and women have generally been excluded or pushed to the periphery. Modern studies have explored the reasons for this and have found many examples of women who managed to break through the barriers. The… Continue reading Scientific Women: Finding ‘a way in’ through the centuries
Click here to read the extended version of this interview. On behalf of Bluestocking, Ali Nihat interviewed Professor Jane Martin, of the Institute of Education in London, whose work focuses on the relation between education and politics. Professor Martin spoke to us about her recently published work Making Socialists: Mary Bridges Adams and the Fight… Continue reading Recovering Lost Voices: An Interview with Professor Jane Martin
By Rebekah Lee.The concluding decades of the Nineteenth century marked a series of major developments for the growing political voice of English women. Events such as the female-led Campaign Against the Contagious Diseases Acts and the establishment of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage in 1897 provided ample evidence to suggest the emergence of a… Continue reading Rossetti’s Other Woman: The silent contribution of models and muses
By Mona Sakr Minnie Stewart Rhodes James (1865 – 1903) was appointed Head Librarian in the People’s Palace Library, East London in 1889. She was a respected member of the Library Association, and presented a number of papers to the Association, some of which discussed opportunities for women to take up paid positions in libraries.… Continue reading A Life’s Work: Minnie James and Images of the Woman Librarian
By M. S. Lovelace The rapid educational and social developments of the late 19th century were underpinned not just by policy and public documentation but by the 'unrecorded but resourceful improvisations’ (Donald, 1992, p. 2) of the everyday. The latter occur in the physical spaces in which education operates and these spaces and improvisations can… Continue reading Education and Social Change in George Eliot’s Middlemarch
By Jack Coombs Mary Anning is a name little known, even in the fields of palaeontology, and geology, which she so influenced. Born in 1799 in Lyme Regis, Dorset, she was conveniently placed, both in an era when these early sciences were set to undergo a renaissance of advancement, and beside a three-mile long stretch… Continue reading ‘I do like a contest with the bigwigs’: How Mary Anning Struck Scientific Gold
The Relationship Between Space and Loneliness in the Poetry of Christina Rossetti By Mona Sakr and Ali Nihat Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) is perhaps best known for her religious poetry. And yet, her work is often an exploration of the ultimate loneliness of human existence, mourning the absence of all others, including God, in the innermost… Continue reading Where Loss Resides
By Megan Price Sarah Belzoni was an extraordinary woman. Between 1815 and 1819 she travelled to Egypt, supporting her husband Giovanni Battista Belzoni who was attempting to find employment in Cairo. Their voyage to Egypt was a symptom of the early nineteenth century 'gold-rush' to North Africa where a new and exotic world was being… Continue reading A Buried Woman of Egyptology
By Marissa Pueschel Two of the most outstanding female composers of the nineteenth century were Felix Mendelssohn's sister Fanny Hensel and Robert Schumann's wife Clara. While their talents were respected by their male relatives, the two women responded to the challenges of breaking into the male-dominated world of music in different ways. While Hensel found… Continue reading From Private to Public: The Musical Lives of Fanny Hensel and Clara Schumann
By Lamorna Newcombe Fifteen year old Mary Fairfax was one day shown an intriguing problem in a ladies' fashion magazine at an Edinburgh tea-party. However, she was more fascinated by the code that the answer was presented in than the answer itself. At that time, little did she know that her interest in algebra would… Continue reading Mary Fairfax Somerville: Queen of Nineteenth Century Science
