Feminists and Flourbombs
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Books:
Early
feminists| 1950s, 1960s |
1970s
1980s, 1990s
to date | Films
Organisations
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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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A
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