Feminists and Flourbombs

Books

Early feminists
A Room of One’s Own/Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf (Penguin Books, 2000) £5.99.
An essay regarded as the first work of feminist literary criticism. It argues that to write a woman needs independent income and a room of her own.

An African Victorian Feminist by Adelaide M Cromwell (Frank Cass, 1986) £35.
The life and times of African-American feminist, Adelaide Smith Casely Hayford from 1868-1960.

Anarchism, and Other Essays by Emma Goldman (Dover Publications, 1970) £7.95.
Writing about anarchism and free love in the 1920s, Goldman was way ahead of her time.

Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain by K D Reynolds (Oxford University Press, 1998) £35.
Examines the contribution made by women to the public culture of the British aristocracy in the 19th century, challenging the view that power and authority were predominantly masculine attributes and showing that a partnership of authority between men and women was integral to aristocratic life.

City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of sexual danger in late-Victorian London by Judith Walkowitz (Virago Press, 1992) £12.99.
A study of late-Victorian London life: the music hall; spectator sports; the mingling of high and low life; sexual repression; scandal and the policing of women.

Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage by Ellen Carol Dubois (Yale University Press, 1999) £12.95.
In 1918, Harriot Stanton Blatch wrote Mobilising Woman-Power on how women could improve their self-esteem. This is a biography and an appraisal of the suffrage movement in the US.

Love of Worker Bees/A Great Love by Alexandra Kollontai (Virago Press, 1999) £8.99.
Russian life and sexual practice in the 1920s by an early feminist.

Political Writings by Mary Wollstonecraft edited by Janet Todd (Oxford University Press, 1999) £5.99.
Contains all the major political writings of Mary Wollstonecraft from the 1790s, including her famous treatise, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Sex Politics and Society: The regulation of sexuality since 1800 by Jeffrey Weeks (Longman Group, 1989) £17.99.
A study of the regulation of sexuality in Britain since 1800, examining changes in ideas, the law, sexual morality, the family, birth control and sexual practice.

The Awakening and other Stories by Kate Chopin (Oxford University Press, 2000) £6.99.
Edna Pontellier's sexuality is awakened, along with her sense of self in this landmark novel, released in 1899, which was banned as immoral.

The Politics of Housework by Ellen Malos (New Clarion Press, 1995) £11.95.
Anthology, first published in 1980, which offers a debate on housework and who should do it. A new chapter reviews the way the debate has developed since 1980.

The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner (Oxford University Press, 1998) £6.99.
It tells the story of three white children, one of whom, a rebellious young woman, Lyndall, dies after having an illegitimate child. Caused a scandal but was acclaimed as a work of genius.

The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill (Dover Publications, 1997) £1.25.
Classic text first published in 1869. Mill was one of the most influential men in the history of feminism.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman (Virago, 1981) £4.99.
A young mother is driven to madness. Published in 1892, it was highly controversial but rediscovered in the 1970s and read as a feminist text

Women, Suffrage and Politics Parts 1 and 2 by Sylvia Pankhurst (Adam Matthew Publications, 1991) £20.
Sylvia became a full-time writer in 1924 but her first book was a history of the suffrage movement. An interesting chronicle of the time by the daughter of Emmeline and sister of Christabel.

1950s and 1960s

Art of the Sixties by Thomas Crow (Weidenfeld Illustrated, 1996) £7.99.
On the relationship between art and politics, during the period 1955-69. Includes artists from Europe and America who were involved in the Civil Rights movement, the anti Vietnam War campaign and the other social crises of the time.

Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath (Faber, 1981) £12.99.
Plath’s final collection, Ariel was published in 1965, after her suicide. Her despair over her relationship with her husband, poet Ted Hughes and the manner of her death, led to her becoming an icon for feminists.

Loose Change (Three Women of the Sixties) by Sara Davidson (University of California Press, 1997) £9.50.
Feminism was just one of the social movements of the 1960s but young people were at the centre of them all. This portrays the hopes and confusion of three young women who were at the University of California at Berkeley.

S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting up Men) Manifesto by Valerie Solanas (AK Press, 1996) £3.50.
Written in place of an autobiography. Avant-garde writer and artist, Solanas, became notorious for shooting Andy Warhol. Contains an afterword on her life.

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (Penguin, 1965) £9.99.
Women are defined only in relation to men but can find a way to end their oppression through education and a career. Friedan has been called the mother of feminism but many feminists felt she later betrayed the cause. First published in 1963.

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (Flamingo, 1989) £8.99.
Anna Wulf is an intellectual trying to live a life that is not defined by men. An influential novel in its time and after.

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (Vintage, 1997) £9.99.
Translated into English in 1952, it draws on history, philosophy and myth, arguing that men define women as ‘the other’. The inspiration for many feminist thinkers.

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