Wayward Women: A Guide to Women Travellers

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B011DB8WIQ/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i8

1990

Unsuitable for Ladies: An Anthology of Women Travellers

(Jane Robinson's first book, Wayward Women, was a guide to...)

Jane Robinson's first book, Wayward Women, was a guide to women travellers and their writing, and having read over a thousand of their books she is uniquely qualified to compile this anthology. Life is never dull for her intrepid women, whether diving to the bed of the Timor Sea or reaching the summit of Annapurna. From an encounter with a snake in the Amazon jungle to shipwreck and kidnap on the Barbary Coast, there are tales of adventure, derring-do, and great danger. There are also moving accounts of unimaginable hardship, including caring for a family in an ammunition cart during the siege of Delhi and a journey through Tibet that leaves its author childless and widowed. There is no such thing as a typical woman traveller - and there never has been - as this exhilarating anthology shows on a journey of its own through sixteen centuries of travel writing, aboard almost anything from a Bugatti to a Bath chair. You are taken as far afield as it is possible to go, in the company of some of the most extraordinary characters you are ever likely to meet.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00JFY1OLQ/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i3

1994

Angels of Albion: Women of the Indian Mutiny

(This study is about the Indian Mutiny of 1857, told mainl...)

This study is about the Indian Mutiny of 1857, told mainly from the women`s point of view. It is a narrative history of the various sieges, massacres, "triumphs" and debacles of the mutiny based on these passive eye-witness accounts, dealing not so much with the military action as with the immediate consequences of it on the women involved. The mutiny is a particularly interesting campaign to explore in this way since many blamed the memsahibs' behavior for exacerbating it in the first place, while once the uprising was underway and some of the massacres of British women and children grew apparent, it became a sort of crusade to avenge the daughters of Albion. This book is not a "public" history, narrated by the professional fighters, but a very personal one, witnessed by the memsahibs, the British women who found themselves swept into the melee by default, and who were able to chronicle the whole campaign.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0670846708/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i10

1996

Parrot Pie For Breakfast: An Anthology of Women Pioneers

(There is nothing quite like parrot pie for breakfast. Fir...)

There is nothing quite like parrot pie for breakfast. First, one must catch one's parrot, of course, and build the hearth to bake it, but that is all in a day's work for the woman pioneer. This riveting anthology tells the story of over 100 such women spanning the age of Empire from the early seventeenth century to the early twentieth. Almost half of them are settlers in North America and Canada, a quarter in Africa, many in Australasia and India, and the rest scattered around the globe from Egypt to Jamaica, Sarawak to Samoa, and many points in between. From the lowliest kitchen skivvy to ambassadors' wives, this book celebrates the emigrants who settled the wildernesses of the world in search of new and better lives. Many were lured abroad by the promise of work or fortune; some went because imperial duty called, while for others it was a most unfeminine lust for adventure that drew them away. But all faced challenges in their homes from home that were to test to the limit their spirits, their resourcefulness, even their survival.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0192880209/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i7

1999

Pandora's Daughters: The Lives and Work of History's Career Women

(This enthralling history, full of anecdotes and first-han...)

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.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0094805105/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i6

2002

Mary Seacole: The Charismatic Black Nurse Who Became a Heroine of the Crimea

(The 'Greatest Black Briton in History' triumphed over the...)

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.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07XMHLTG2/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i9

2005

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

(Jane Robinson's Bluestockings is the incredible story of ...)

Jane Robinson's Bluestockings is the incredible story of the fight for female education in Britain. In 1869, when five women enrolled at university for the first time in British history, the average female brain was thought to be 150 grams lighter than a man's. Doctors warned that if women studied too hard their wombs would wither and die. 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 persevered and paved the way for the generations who have followed them since.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002ZJSUOW/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i1

2009

A Force To Be Reckoned With: A History of the Women's Institute

(Everyone knows three things about the Women's Institute: ...)

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.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005IYIA5A/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i2

2011

A Force to be Reckoned with

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1445846365/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p2_i0

2012

In the Family Way: Illegitimacy Between the Great War and the Swinging Sixties

(Only a generation or two ago, illegitimacy was one of the...)

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.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00OPJV3RG/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i4

2015

Hearts And Minds: The Untold Story of the Great Pilgrimage and How Women Won the Vote

(Set against the background of the campaign for women to w...)

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.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06Y5VX5VP/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i5

2018

Ladies Can't Climb Ladders: The Pioneering Adventures of the First Professional Women

(It is a myth that the First World War liberated women. Th...)

It is a myth that the First World War liberated women. The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919 was one of the most significant pieces of legislation in modern Britain. It should have marked a social revolution, opening the doors of the traditional professions to women who had worked so hard during the War, and welcoming them inside as equals. But what really happened? Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders focuses on the lives of pioneering women forging careers in the fields of medicine, law, academia, architecture, engineering and the church.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07V7VD82K/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i0

2020