Showing titles in Women

Ellen Ann Willmott was a remarkable woman whose achievements in horticulture, botany, landscape architecture, photography and more should have made her one of the most well-known trailblazers of her age. Yet, both posthumously and within her lifetime, she instead became known as a bitter, cantankerous and eccentric miser, and her reputation has been forever stained by the image of her maliciously seeding other people's gardens with thorns.

Brought to you by Penguin. A beautifully written blend of memoir, first-person stories and social history that uncovers the most enigmatic yet revealing aspect of human behaviour: secrecy The average person is keeping thirteen secrets at any one time, five of which they’ve never shared with a...

Immaculate Forms examines all the ways in which medicine and religion have played a gatekeeping role over women's organs. It explores how the womb was seen as both the most miraculous organ in the body and as a sewer; uncovers breasts' legacies as maternal or sexual organs - or both; probes the mystery of the disappearing hymen, and asks, did the clitoris need to be discovered at all?

Lady Grace Wyatt is content as a wallflower, focusing on scientific pursuits rather than the complications of society matches. But when a handsome, celebrated naturalist returns from abroad, Grace wishes, for once, to be noticed. Her solution: to create the perfect man, to act as her suitor, and help her catch his eye. Grace’s colleague, anthropologist Sebastian Holloway, is just the blank slate she requires. 

What did it feel like to be a woman living in Paris during the years 1939 to 1949? These were years of fear, power, aggression, courage, deprivation and secrets until, finally, there was renewal and retribution. Even at the darkest moments, dogs and cats might be abandoned howling on the street, the swastika flew from the Eiffel Tower and danger lurked on every corner, but glamour was ever present.

Rome, 1659. Months after the plague has ravaged Rome, men are still dying in unnatural numbers, and rumour has it that their corpses do not decay as they should. The Papal authorities commission prosecutor Stefano Bracchi to investigate, telling him he will need considerable mettle to reach the truth. To the west of the Tiber, Girolama and her female friends are at work, helping other women with childbirths and foretelling their futures. Elsewhere in the city, a young wife, Anna, must find a way to escape her abusive husband. But in a city made by men for men, there are no easy paths out.

On Sarah A. Chrisman's 29th birthday, her husband, Gabriel, presented her with a corset. The material and the design were breathtakingly beautiful, but her mind immediately filled with unwelcome views. Although she had been in love with the Victorian era all her life, she had specifically asked her husband not to buy her a corset - ever. She'd heard how corsets affected the female body and what they represented, and she wanted none of it.

From the twentieth century onward, women took on an extraordinary range of roles in intelligence, defying the conventions of their time. Across both world wars, far from being a small part of covert operations, women ran spy networks and escape lines, parachuted behind enemy lines, and interrogated prisoners. And, back in Bletchley and Whitehall, women's vital administrative work in MI offices kept the British war engine running. In this major, panoramic history, Helen Fry looks at the rich and varied work women undertook as civilians and in uniform.

The magnetic portrait of Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon, and a swiftly vanishing age of British history. 'A vivid portrayal of a remarkable and unusual woman, her world, and her times. Hugely enjoyable.' - JUNG CHANG, multi-million-copy bestselling author of Wild Swans Clarissa Eden, Countess...

They were crop dusters and debutantes, college girls and performers in flying circuses—all of them trained as pilots. Because they were women, they were denied the opportunity to fly for their country when the United States entered the Second World War. But Great Britain, desperately fighting for survival, would let anyone—even Americans, even women—transport warplanes. Thus, twenty-five daring young aviators bolted for England in 1942, becoming the first American women to command military aircraft.

Brought to you by Penguin. Award-winning classicist and historian Emily Hauser takes readers on an epic journey to uncover the astonishing true story of the real women behind ancient Greece’s greatest legends, and the real heroes of those ancient epics, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey . . . Contrary...

What was life really like for women in the medieval period? How did they think about sex, death and God? Could they live independent lives? And how can we hear the stories of women from this period?

At least a dozen or so young women at large in Blitz-era London have a claim to this title. But Lost Girls concentrates on just four: Lys Lubbock, Sonia Brownell, Barbara Skelton and Janetta Parlade. Chic, glamorous and bohemian, as likely to be found living in a rat-haunted maisonette as dining at the Ritz, they cut a swath through English literary and artistic life in the 1940s. 

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2023 A WATERSTONES BOOK OF YEAR FOR POLITICS 2023 ‘I learned something new on every page of this totally essential book’ Sathnam Sanghera ‘By thinking about gendered inequality as rooted in something unalterable within us, we fail to...

It is 1940, and the Final Solution is about to begin. The Nazis have occupied The Netherlands, but resistance is growing and two Jewish sisters - Janny and Lien Brilleslijper - are risking their lives to save those being hunted, through their clandestine safehouse 'The High Nest'. It becomes one of the most important safehouses in the country, but when the house and its occupants are betrayed, the most terrifying time of the sisters' lives begins. This is the beginning of the end. 

English novelist Barbara Pym’s career was defined, in many senses, by rejection. Her first novel Some Tame Gazelle was turned down by every publisher she sent it out in 1935, finally published only 15 years later. Though she picked up a publisher from there and received modest praise, the publishing industry grew restless and her sales spiralled downwards. By her seventh novel, she had been dropped. This brilliant biography, brimming with Pym’s private diaries and intimate letters, offers a first full insight into Barbara Pym’s life and how it informed her writing.

Two women in Nazi-occupied Paris created a daring escape line that rescued dozens of Allied servicemen. With one still in a German prison camp, the other wrote a book about it—a memoir built on fabrications. Now the bestselling author of Eighty Days shares their incredible, never-before-told...

Nova Reid, author of The Good Ally, delves into the untold stories of extraordinary, unsung Black women who created and shaped pivotal moments in world history, British culture and society. Through powerful storytelling, personal insights and new research, Nova delves into the lives of pioneers, journalists and rule-breakers who made vital contributions to civil rights, yet have been mythologised, are unknown or erased from history.

Brought to you by Penguin. 'This book is an act of excavation, and an act of remembering.' As Kim Willis drifts from the traditional path of marriage and motherhood, she yearns for a new set of stories to light her way. Here, she is pulled towards the source of the Severn, hearing whispers of...

Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries. Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists - mostly women, mostly queer - whose public contribution has risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience and appreciate the universe.