Ms Steadman
The Five by Hallie Rubenhold (available in the library, Year 9+)
In this brilliant work of non-fiction, writer and historian Hallie Rubenhold tells the story of the five victims of Jack the Ripper – women who have been ignored, misrepresented and exploited for over 130 years. The Five is a painstakingly researched yet compulsively readable account that focuses on the lives of the women who were killed, rather than on their murders or the identity of their killer. It provides a fascinating – and utterly enraging – glimpse into the ways in which Victorian women were trapped by circumstance, powerless to forge their own paths in the world and at the mercy of strict social expectations and institutional sexism. The Five is full of insight and compassion, as well as many surprises for those familiar with the gruesome narrative espoused by so-called “Ripperologists”. Winner of the prestigious Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction in 2019 and adapted as a podcast series (find Bad Women: The Ripper Retold on BBC Sounds), The Five is my recommendation this Women’s History Month.
Mr Hanson
Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter (available in the library)
Nights at the Circus, my favourite book from the brilliant Angela Carter, follows the adventures of a woman named Fevvers, a 6'2" Cockney aerialiste with an enormous pair of wings sprouting from her back. Her journey from the underbelly of Victorian London to the circus, high-society St. Petersburg and then through to the wilds of Siberia is hugely entertaining, and throughout the novel Carter playfully subverts and confounds stereotypes of femininity and submissiveness.
Mrs Sewell
The King's Curse by Philippa Gregory
My claim to fame is that I am directly descended from the heroine of a book by Philippa Gregory. It is called The King's Curse and is about Margaret Plantagenet who was my thirteenth Great Grandmother. She was a threat to Henry VIII because she was from the Royal house ( Plantagenet) which was in power before the Tudors came along. She married Sir Richard Pole and their son was the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury. They also had a daughter, Ursula, who is my twelfth Great Grandmother. Margaret Plantagenet was made a Catholic Saint in 1886 because she opposed Henry VIII for divorcing Queen Katherine of Aragon and paid for her convictions with her life. She was beheaded in the tower of London in 1541 by an apprentice executioner. An eye witness account says that he was "a wretched and blundering youth who hacked her head and shoulders to pieces in the most pitiful manner." Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury was one of just two women in 16th-century England to be a peeress in her own right without a husband in the House of Lords. Philippa Gregory has written many amazing books about courageous women, and The King's Curse is one of them.
Mrs Swan
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang (available in the library)
This sprawling family history, spanning a tumultuous century, recounts the lives of three female generations in China. First published in 1991, Wild Swans contains the biographies of author Jung Chang's grandmother and her mother, then finally her own autobiography. Her grandmother had bound feet and was married off at a young age as the concubine of a high-status warlord. Chang's mother rose in status as a member of the Communist Party, before Chang herself took part in the Cultural Revolution as a member of the Red Guards. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping and ultimately uplifting detail the cycles of violence visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.
Be sure to come and check out these titles in the library, and feel free to peruse our Women's History Month display and selection too!
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