By The Bluestocking Team Below are some recently released books and articles and some upcoming events, lectures, talks and exhibitions that may be of interest to Blue-Stocking readers. We'd love any suggestions for additional items you think are relevant. Simply email editor@blue-stocking.org.uk with the details. PUBLICATIONS: Constance Briscoe, 'Beyond Ugly' (Hodder and Stoughton, 2008). The… Continue reading Blue-Stocking Recommends
Tag: Issue Three
From the Editors of Issue 3
By Bluestocking Editors Rebecca Gregory, General Editor There is a real buzz about the term 'Bluestocking' at the moment. Not only have we as a journal grown in dynamism and scope, with new articles, events, design and patronage; but the other day on ODNB, the featured article was, I noticed, on one of the original… Continue reading From the Editors of Issue 3
Bluestocking Presents: Elisabeth Gray
By Yasmin Haji-Hassan Sitting in Starbucks armed with coffee and a pen, I await the arrival of Elisabeth Gray, a woman of immense talent. An actress, a playwright, a graduate from Oxford University and all this at the age 24. I knew I was meeting someone with a vast intellect and who has the potential… Continue reading Bluestocking Presents: Elisabeth Gray
From Private to Public: The Musical Lives of Fanny Hensel and Clara Schumann
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
Mary Fairfax Somerville: Queen of Nineteenth Century Science
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
A ‘Heroine of History’: Margaret Sanger, revolutionary birth control activist
By Jos Gibbons Margaret Higgins Sanger (1879 - 1966) was a major contributor to women's reproductive rights in the twentieth-century America. Her devout Catholic mother died of tuberculosis and cervical cancer after eighteen pregnancies, resulting in eleven live births, of which Margaret was the sixth. She enrolled in a nursing program after her mother's death.… Continue reading A ‘Heroine of History’: Margaret Sanger, revolutionary birth control activist
Lise Meitner : The Nucleus of Fission
By Nicola Davies 'In terms of 19th century stereotypes or rhetorical idealizations, a woman scientist was a contradiction in terms... Women scientists were thus caught between two almost mutually exclusive stereotypes: as scientists, they were atypical women; as women they were unusual scientists.' Lise Meitner's name is to many an unfamiliar one, occasionally found somewhere… Continue reading Lise Meitner : The Nucleus of Fission
Virginia Woolf and the search for A Room of One’s Own
By Joanna Kieschnick Virginia Woolf is celebrated for her innovative modernist novels, particularly Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves. However, her essays are often overlooked. As a woman writer, Woolf was passionate about proving that women were just as creative and intelligent as men and equally capable of producing quality writing. Woolf often… Continue reading Virginia Woolf and the search for A Room of One’s Own
Wholly Guilty and Wholly Innocent: Heloise, Sin and Intention
By Diana Jeske During her lifetime and beyond, Heloise captured hearts. Her intellectual brilliance in life attracted the love of the most famous philosopher of the day, Peter Abelard, and the passion revealed in her later letters to him has captivated scholars, from Petrarch to twenty-first century academics, ever since. Born, most likely, in… Continue reading Wholly Guilty and Wholly Innocent: Heloise, Sin and Intention
Grace Hopper: Pioneer of programming and ‘Man of the Year’
By Maike Kaufman In 1969 the US Data Processing Management Association awarded its first annual 'Man of the Year' Award for outstanding contributions to the information processing industry. That year's chosen recipient, although a pioneer in the area of computing, was nevertheless an unusual one: Captain Grace Murray Hopper, the first 'Man of the Year',… Continue reading Grace Hopper: Pioneer of programming and ‘Man of the Year’