Jane Robinson

In 1869 Emily Davies signed the lease on a house in the small market town of Hitchin, and made history. In years to come, she would be joined by others and would move to larger accommodation in Girton, nearer to the town of Cambridge. But at first there were only five young women in her care: the first women ever to study a degree course at an English university. At the time, the average female brain was thought to be 150 grams lighter than a man's, and the country's leading doctors warned that if women studied too hard their wombs would wither and die. Almost thirty years later, when the Cambridge Senate held a vote on whether women students should be allowed official membership of the university, there was a full-scale riot. Despite the prejudice and the terrible sacrifices they faced, women from all backgrounds - from well-read debutantes bored by domesticity to hard-working servants from impoverished families - persevered and paved the way for the generations who have followed them since. By 1900 sixteen per cent of all students were women, studying at universities throughout Britain; by the 1920s, being an 'undergraduette' was considered quite the fashionable thing; by the 1930s, women were emerging from universities as anything from aviation engineers to professional academics. Using the words of the women themselves, Bluestockings tells their inspiring story - a story of defiance and determination, of colourful eccentricity and at times heartbreaking loneliness, as well as of passionate friendships, midnight cocoa-parties and glorious self-discovery.

The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education

Bluestockings

_______ '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.

The Untold Story of the Great Pilgrimage and How Women Won the Vote

Hearts And Minds

Real ladies do not travel - or so it was once said. This collection of women's travel writing dispels this notion by revealing that there are few corners of the world that have not been visited by women travellers. Jane Robinson takes us on an exhilarating journey through sixteen centuries of travel writing, in the company of Isabella Bird, Karen Blixen, Christina Dodwell, Jan Morris, Dervla Murphy, Freya Stark, Rebecca West, and many more.

An Anthology of Women Travellers

Unsuitable for Ladies

"Unmarried mothers, absent fathers, orphaned children - Jane Robinson's In the Family Way is a truly gripping book about long-buried secrets, family bonds and unlikely heroes. Only a generation or two ago, illegitimacy was one of the most shameful things that could happen in a family. Unmarried mothers were considered immoral, single fathers feckless and bastard children inherently defective. They were hidden away from friends and relations as guilty secrets, punished by society and denied their place in the family tree. Today, the concept of illegitimacy no longer exists in law, and babies' parents are as likely to be unmarried as married. This revolution in public opinion makes it easy to forget what it was really like to give birth, or be born, out of wedlock in the years between World War One and the dawn of the Permissive Age. By speaking to those involved - many of whom have never felt able to talk about their experiences before - Jane Robinson reveals a story not only of shame and appalling prejudice, but also of triumph and the every-day strength of the human spirit. In the Family Way tells secrets kept for entire lifetimes and rescues from the shadows an important part of all our family histories. In it we hear long-silent voices from the workhouse, the Magdalene Laundry or the distant mother-and-baby home. Anonymous childhoods are recalled, spent in the care of Dr Barnardo or a Child Migration scheme halfway across the world. There are sorrowful stories in this book, but it is also about hope: about supportive families who defied social expectations by welcoming 'love-children' home, or those who were parted and are now reconciled. Most of all, In the Family Way is about finally telling the truth."--Wheelers.co.nz.

illegitimacy between the Great War and the swinging sixties

In the family way

She was a black woman, and she flouted convention. In an age that put ladies in the parlor and preferred them to be seen and not heard, she was nursing the British wounded, not in hospital wards with Florence Nightingale but on the Crimean battlefields—and off them, she was running a restaurant and hotel. She purveyed homemade pickles in England; she mined for gold in Panama. For unabashed individuality, Mary Jane Grant Seacole knew no peer. Yet Punch, the Times, the Illustrated London News all ardently touted her, and Queen Victoria herself entertained her. Mary Seacole—childless widow of Horatio Nelson's godson and "good ole Mother Seacole" to the soldiers at Sebastopol—was Britain's first black heroine, and this robust, engaging biography by social historian Jane Robinson shows why. In a narrative driven by colorful adventure, Robinson charts Seacole's amazing odyssey from her native Kingston, Jamaica, to her adopted London, via Panama, where she lent her doctoring and nursing skills to catastrophic outbreaks of cholera and yellow fever, and the Crimea, where she founded the famous British Hotel. Seacole makes numerous other eventful stops along the way, and everywhere, even in the face of disappointment, disaster, and loss, her indomitable spirit prevails.

The Black Woman Who Invented Modern Nursing

Mary Seacole

Unmarried mothers, absent fathers, orphaned children - Jane Robinson's In the Family Way is a truly gripping book about long-buried secrets, family bonds and unlikely heroes. Only a generation or two ago, illegitimacy was one of the most shameful things that could happen in a family. Unmarried mothers were considered immoral, single fathers feckless and bastard children inherently defective. They were hidden away from friends and relations as guilty secrets, punished by society and denied their place in the family tree. Today, the concept of illegitimacy no longer exists in law, and babies' parents are as likely to be unmarried as married. This revolution in public opinion makes it easy to forget what it was really like to give birth, or be born, out of wedlock in the years between World War One and the dawn of the Permissive Age. By speaking to those involved - many of whom have never felt able to talk about their experiences before - Jane Robinson reveals a story not only of shame and appalling prejudice, but also of triumph and the every-day strength of the human spirit. In the Family Way tells secrets kept for entire lifetimes and rescues from the shadows an important part of all our family histories. In it we hear long-silent voices from the workhouse, the Magdalene Laundry or the distant mother-and-baby home. Anonymous childhoods are recalled, spent in the care of Dr Barnardo or a Child Migration scheme halfway across the world. There are sorrowful stories in this book, but it is also about hope: about supportive families who defied social expectations by welcoming 'love-children' home, or those who were parted and are now reconciled. Most of all, In the Family Way is about finally telling the truth. Praise for Bluestockings 'A gem of a book. Social history of the best kind' Sunday Times 'Fascinating. Inspiring. Impassioned and wonderfully entertaining' Scotsman Jane Robinson was born in Edinburgh and brought up in North Yorkshire. After reading English at Somerville College, Oxford, she became an antiquarian book dealer, and later a writer and lecturer. In the Family Way is her ninth book, and like her previous work, including the acclaimed Bluestockings and A Force to Be Reckoned With, it confirms her as one of our most engaging and original social historians. Jane lives near Oxford with her husband and two sons.

Illegitimacy Between the Great War and the Swinging Sixties

In the Family Way

Catching a parrot and building the hearth to bake it was all in a day's work for the woman pioneer. This riveting anthology tells the story of over 100 such women who settled everywhere from Africa and India to North America and Canada in the age of Empire, from the early 17th to the early 20th centuries.

An Anthology of Women Pioneers

Parrot Pie for Breakfast

Robinson presents some three hundred and fifty woman travellers, mostly British or American, and examines the almost one thousand books they produced. Spanning sixteen centuries, she reveals a fascinating body of literature, full of insight, wit, and courage.

A Guide to Women Travellers

Wayward Women

Everyone knows three things about the Women's Institute: that they spent the war making jam; the sensational Calendar Girls were WI; and, more recently, that slow-handclapping of Tony Blair. But there's so much more to this remarkable Movement. Over 200,000 women in the UK belong to the WI and their membership is growing. They cross class and religion,include all ages -from students and metropolitan young professionals, such as the Shoreditch Sisters,to rural centenarians -with passions that range from supporting the 1920s Bastardy Bill (in response to a wartime legacy of illegitimate babies) to the current SOS for Honey Bees campaign. It was founded in 1915, not by worthy ladies in tweeds but by the feistiest women in the country, including suffragettes, academics and social crusaders who discovered the heady power of sisterhood, changing women's lives and their world in the process. Certainly its members boiled jam and sang ' Jerusalem ', but they also made history. This fascinating book reveals for the first time how they are - and always were - a force to be reckoned with.

A History of the Women's Institute

A Force to be Reckoned with

Ann Brown

Jane Pomeroy

Practical Applications of Software for the Adult Educator

For over sixteen centuries, women have been undertaking great journeys and writing about their experiences, yet the traditional image of them is still that of an intrepid Victorian lady vigorously prodding the ends of the earth with her parasol. But by their very nature, women travel writersare a non-conformist breed. The abbess Etheria's fourth-century account of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land relates not only the religious significance of her journey, but also the difficulties of mountaineering on Mount Sinai. Mary Wollstonecraft, who is celebrated as a pioneer feminist, wrote of hersecret voyage in 1795 to Scandinavia - all for the love of a cad. Isabella Bird was a meek and dutiful woman at home, but once let loose in 'the congenial barbarism of the desert', she assumed an unladylike 'up-to-anything free-legged air'; while her contemporary Mary Kingsley canoed herselfserenely through the white waters of West African rivers impeccably dressed in black silk and bonnet. Closer to our own time, some of the most glamorous women of the 1920s and 1930s were likely to feel just as comfortable in The Tatler as in the cockpit of a Gypsy Moth or stalking dinner in acentral-Asian wasteland. In fact, the only thing these women have in common is that they all wrote first-hand accounts of their journeys. Wayward Women recounts the adventures of some 400 of these travellers, together with full bibliographical details of all the books they produced between them. These writings, many of which are brought to light here for the first time in generations, form a significant and previously neglected bodyof literature, full of insight, courage, and humour.

It is a myth that either of the World Wars liberated women. The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919 was one of the most significant pieces of legislation in modern Britain. It marked at once political watershed and a social revolution; the point at which women of 21 and over were recognised in law as being as competent as men. But were they? What actually happened when this bill was passed? This is the story of what happened next. Ladies Can't Climb Ladders focuses on the lives of six women - six pioneers - forging paths in the fields of medicine, law, academia, architecture, engineering and the church. Robinson's startling study into the public and private lives of these women sheds light not on the desires and ambitions of her subjects but how family and society responded to the working woman and what their legacy looks like today. This book is written in their honour. It is a book about live subjects: equal opportunity, the gender pay gap, and whether women can expect, or indeed deserve, to have it at all. 'An important and crackingly good read.' - Telegraph

The Pioneering Adventures of the First Professional Women

Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders

This enthralling history, full of anecdotes and first-hand accounts, centres on women through the ages who have sidestepped restraint and raised the eyebrows of their contemporaries by choosing to make their own, often highly idiosyncratic, way of life. The pedigree of the modern career woman is not generally supposed to be long, reaching back only as far as those late-Victorian pioneers who stormed the bastions of male professions. Jane Robinson looks back over some 25 centuries and proves that theory quite wrong. The 100 or so women portrayed here were busy behind the scenes of recorded history, in the cause of earning an honest (or perhaps not) independent living. Their enterprise and flair led them to careers as diverse as they are improbable, ranging from engineers, plumbers and surgeons, to a naval commander in the Persian Wars, a Dark-Age Pope, a successful Orcadian wind-seller, some pirates, a Royal Marine and a stockbroker who ran for President of the United States. The author considers such achievements against their place and time and the result is a tribute to an inspirational body of women whose significance has too long been ignored, as well as a wonderfully entertaining read.

The Secret History of Enterprising Women

Pandora's Daughters

The 'Greatest Black Briton in History' triumphed over the Crimea and Victorian England. "The Times" called her a heroine, Florence Nightingale called her a brothel-keeping quack, and Queen Victoria's nephew called her, simply, 'Mammy' - Mary Seacole was one of the most eccentric and charismatic women of her era. Born at her mother's hotel in Jamaica in 1805, she became an independent 'doctress' combining the herbal remedies of her African ancestry with sound surgical techniques. On the outbreak of the Crimean War, she arrived in London desperate to join Florence Nightingale at the Front, but the authorities refused to see her. Being black, nearly 50, rather stout, and gloriously loud in every way, she was obviously unsuitable. Undaunted, Mary travelled to Balaklava under her own steam to build the 'British Hotel', just behind the lines. It was an outrageous venture, and a huge success - she became known and loved by everyone from the rank and file to the royal family. For more than a century after her death this remarkable woman was all but forgotten. This, the first full-length biography of a Victorian celebrity recently voted the greatest black Briton in history, brings Mary Seacole centre stage at last.

The Charismatic Black Nurse Who Became a Heroine of the Crimea

A Force To Be Reckoned With

An astonishing and moving picture emerges when one reads the diaries and journals written by the women who were involved in the Indian Mutiny of 1857. Some survived, but most were killed. A female perspective on the subject of war is offered here.

Jane Robinson

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