Historical Memoirs Women

Inheritance charts the forgotten life of Mary Grosvenor, born in London during the Great Plague of 1665, and the land that she inherited as a baby. This estate would determine the course of her tragic life. Hollis restores this history of child brides, mad heiresses, religious controversy and shady dealing. The drama culminated in a court case that determined not just the state of Mary’s legacy but the future of London itself. Today, Mary’s inheritance is some of the most valuable real estate in the world; and her family, the Dukes of Westminster.

The 19th-century eccentric Ida C. Craddock was by turns a secular freethinker, a religious visionary, a civil-liberties advocate, and a resolute defender of belly-dancing. Arrested and tried repeatedly on obscenity charges, she was deemed a danger to public morality for her candor about sexuality. By the end of her life Craddock, the nemesis of the notorious vice crusader Anthony Comstock, had become a favorite of free-speech defenders and womens rights activists.

Joice Loch was an extraordinary Australian. She had the inspired courage that saved many hundreds of Jews and Poles in World War II, the compassion that made her a self-trained doctor to tens of thousands of refugees, the incredible grit that took her close to death in several theatres of war and the dedication to truth and justice that shone forth in her own books and a lifetime of astonishing heroism.

The best-selling revisionist biography of one of the great women of the 16th century. Orphaned in infancy, Catherine de Medici was the sole legitimate heiress to the Medici family fortune. Married at 14 to the future Henri II of France, she was constantly humiliated by his influential mistress, Diane de Poitiers. When her husband died as a result of a duelling accident in Paris, Catherine was made queen regent during the short reign of her eldest son (married to Mary Queen of Scots, and like many of her children he died young).

Decía Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) que «donde se celebra matrimonio sin amor, habrá amor sin matrimonio». La historia confirma esa máxima y por eso las aventuras amorosas de los monarcas siempre se contemplaron con una cierta indulgencia. Es evidente que, a día de hoy, las circunstancias han cambiado, pero lo cierto es que la «mujer del rey no siempre es la reina. Así lo demuestran, al menos, las veinte historias de amor que, desde el siglo XIV al XXI, desfilan por estas páginas.

The massive orphan train exodus whisked three-year-old Teresa from the safety of her New York orphanage, where the worst thing the Foundling nuns did was wash her curly black hair, to a desolate house and cold-hearted "parents" in Kansas. There, she entered a small and strange Volga German world whose inhabitants spoke a language she had never heard. In this odd world, she encountered whippings and sexual abuse. Mail-Order Kid looks at the orphan train movement through the eyes of one small child who yearns to know her "real" mother.

Agnès Humbert was an art historian in Paris during the German occupation in 1940. Though she might well have weathered the oppressive regime, Humbert was stirred to action by the atrocities she witnessed. In an act of astonishing bravery, she joined forces with several colleagues to form an organized resistance - very likely the first such group to fight back against the occupation. (In fact, their newsletter, Résistance, gave the French Resistance its name.)

Kitty Marion was sent across the country by the Pankhurst family to carry out a nationwide campaign of bombings and arson attacks, as women fought for the vote using any means necessary. But in the aftermath of World War One, the dangerous and revolutionary actions of Kitty and other militant suffragettes were quickly hushed up and disowned by the previously proud movement, and the women who carried out these attacks were erased from our history. Now, for the first time, their untold story will be brought back to life.

Who was the real George Eliot? In Love with George Eliot is a glorious debut novel which tells the compelling story of England’s greatest woman novelist as you’ve never heard it before.

Born on a Montana ranch in 1880, Jeannette Rankin knew how to ride a horse, make a fire, and read the sky for weather. But most of all, she knew how to talk to people, how to convince them of her vision for America. It was this rare skill that led her, in 1916, to become the first woman ever elected to the House of Representatives. As her first act, Rankin introduced the legislation that would become the 19th Amendment. Throughout her two terms in 1916 and 1940, she continued to introduce and pass legislation benefiting unions, protecting workers, and increasing aid for children in poverty.

La llegada al trono de Isabel II, cuando aún era una niña, suscitó una guerra civil y abrió el camino para la ruptura liberal con el absolutismo. Reinó bajo la larga sombra de una madre poderosa que la despreciaba, de un marido que la odiaba y de unos partidos liberales que, incapaces de entenderse entre ellos, trataron de manipularla en beneficio propio.

People always asked her if she was ever afraid, living out in the desert alone with all those rough and scruffy men. But Minnie Berrington was not the faint-hearted type, and never had been. Being tough came naturally to her, growing up with three brothers and a family that went from riches to ruins. Only a slip of a girl, Minnie could match any man in stamina, perseverance and strength. She arrived in Coober Pedy when camels still brought in essential supplies, and water was so scarce that no-one washed. Together with the other miners, she braved the heat, the flies and the dust.

A poignant biography as told to Olive Gilbert by Isabella Bomefree - a slave who later took the name of Sojourner Truth. She recounts the harshness of life under slavery, and after winner her freedom, became a vociferous abolitionist for which she has been long remembered and revered.

Inez Burns was adored by the desperate women who sought her out - and loathed by the power-hungry men who plotted to destroy her. During a time when women risked their lives with predatory practitioners lurking in back alleys, Inez and her team of women, clad in crisp, white nurse's uniforms, worked night and day in her elegantly appointed clinic, performing 50,000 of the safest, most hygienic abortions available during a time when even the richest wives, Hollywood stars, and mistresses had few options when they found themselves with an unwanted pregnancy.

Author Tobin T. Buhk recounts the thrilling tales of Detroit's most violent, clever, and misunderstood female criminals. "Queen of the Underworld" Sophie Lyons faced off with detective Teresa Lewis in court three times, and twice in the street, rendering both women battered and bloodied. Nellie Pope goaded her lover to axe her husband in what the press called "one of the most atrocious, cold-blooded, and deliberately-planned murders" in city history.

Mary Wollstonecraft is the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. She has been called Britain’s first feminist. Her daughter Mary Shelley is the author of the novel Frankenstein (1818). This biography was written by Elizabeth Robin Pennell. It was her first book, written before she was thirty. She was married that year to illustrator and artist Joseph Pennell.

Catalina de Aragón, esposa de Enrique VIII y reina de Inglaterra, es un personaje sorprendente y esencial para comprender un capítulo importantísimo en la historia de Europa: la separación de Inglaterra de la Iglesia de Roma. Hija de los Reyes Católicos, se trasladó a Inglaterra a los dieciséis años para casar con el príncipe Arturo, cuyo matrimonio, por oscuras razones que en parte se desvelan en este libro, no llegó a consumarse. Viuda y virgen, casó con Enrique VIII, hermano de su difunto esposo, ambos profundamente enamorados como queda patente en este relato.

Popular biographer Carolly Erickson creates intimate and richly detailed portraits of her historical subjects. In this book she offers a provocative new perspective on Josephine and her fabled marriage to Napoleon.

Midnight is a study in the courage of three women - Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, and Joan of Arc. Jane Austen was poor in 1802, unmarried and homeless. She had outlines, ideas, and first drafts of her future novels but no place to sit and write them. Then she receives an offer of marriage from a rich man. When 16-year-old Mary Godwin elopes to France with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, she scoffs at the cost - life as an outcast. Joan of Arc, imprisoned in chains, kept her faith for a long year.

In 1955, the AP thrummed with the news of Lulu Bell Parr's death. The incongruity of her final years as a pauper in a shack with her time as a Wild West star could not be ignored. Then, she was forgotten. Nearly fifty years later, small town history buffs stumbled upon her unmarked grave and set out to give her the recognition she deserved. They raised over seven thousand dollars, erected a monument on her grave (with a parade through town and celebration), and then went on to have her inducted in the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame.