Historical Memoirs Women

Mary Edwards Walker (1832-1919) defied the conventions of her era. Born and raised on a farm in Oswego, New York, Walker became one of a handful of female physicians in the nation - as well as a passionate believer in the rights of women. She campaigned for women's suffrage and against traditional male-dominated marriage vows, and any issue involving the sublimation of her sex. From the outset of the Civil War, Walker volunteered her services as a physician.

A heroine for our times, Etta Lemon campaigned for 50 years against the worldwide slaughter of birds for extravagantly feathered hats. Her legacy is the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (the RSPB), grown from an all-female pressure group of 1889 with the splendidly simple pledge: Wear No Feathers. Etta’s long battle against ‘murderous millinery’ triumphed with the Plumage Act of 1921 - but her legacy has been eclipsed by the more glamorous campaign for the vote, led by the elegantly plumed Emmeline Pankhurst.

This is the truly remarkable life story of the notorious Ethel Livesey, a serial fraudster and confidence trickster who became a media sensation after she ran out on her society wedding in 1945 and later was arrested for obtaining goods by false pretences. With a prologue by Ethel Livesey's granddaughter, this extraordinary tale of Australia's greatest fraudster is told for the first time in rich and fascinating detail.

Early in 1815, Louisa Catherine Adams and her young son left St. Petersburg in a heavy Russian carriage and set out on a difficult journey to meet her husband, John Quincy Adams, in Paris. She traveled through the snows of eastern Europe, down the Baltic coast to Prussia, across the battlefields of Germany, and into a France that was then experiencing the tumultuous events of Napoleon's return from Elba.

Anh Vu Sawyer is an acclaimed Christian author. The poignant memoir of her escape from war-torn Vietnam, Song of Saigon has touched the hearts of countless readers the world over.

The story of the family who rose from the Frankfurt ghetto to become synonymous with wealth and power has been much mythologised. Yet half the Rothschilds, the women, remain virtually unknown. Natalie Livingstone follows the extraordinary lives of the English branch of the Rothschild women from the dawn of the 19th century to the early years of the 21st.

This is the vivid, personal accounts of four women who lived and traveled as settlers in early British Columbia. The women in this book were trailblazers. The frontiers they lived on were not only geographical but personal. As they left the drawing rooms of England and Eastern Canada for new lives in the far West, social patterns were disrupted and the status quo dissolved. On the wagon roads and river boats of 19th-century British Columbia, they found risks, opportunities, and freedoms far beyond those familiar to their more-settled contemporaries.

Emmeline Pankhurst was a fierce campaigner for the rights of women, enduring hardship, prison, and male entitlement in her fight for equality. Here, Pankhurst tells her story in her own words, describing how the girl of fourteen who attended her first suffragette meeting, became a woman the world would remember as an unrelenting and courageous activist for the rights of women.

1657. The youngest daughter of Oliver Cromwell, 18-year-old Frances is finding her place at England's new centre of power. Following the turmoil of Civil War, a fragile sense of stability has returned to the country. Her father has risen to the unprecedented position of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, and Frances has found herself transported from her humble childhood home to the sumptuous palaces of Hampton Court and Whitehall, where she dreams of romance.

A fascinating, powerfully evocative story of four generations of Cuban women, through whose lives the author illuminates a vivid picture - both personal and historical - of Cuba in our century. In the Revuelta family, Gimbel has found a source of both mystery and revelation.

History is filled with people who stood up for what they believed in, facing countless adversity but staying strong in their beliefs – and in the end, changing the world. Now, this biography uncovers the lives and legacies of some of the most famous and beloved black influencers, from the incredible Martin Luther King Jr. to Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, and Harriet Tubman. You’ll discover the lives they lived, the hardships they encountered, and the powerful changes they left in their wake.

Cuando, en 1770, la archiduquesa María Antonieta de Habsburgo-Lorena, hija de la emperatriz María Teresa de Austria, deja Viena para unirse al futuro Luis XVI, es una de las princesas más afortunadas de Europa. Pero su innata gentileza se revela un arma de doble filo en la moralmente relajada corte que la recibe: la astucia de algunos nobles en Versalles nada tiene que envidiar a la de las cortesanas que van minando los cimientos de la centenaria monarquía francesa.

The daughter of a fallen woman, Mattie Armstrong’s life should have ended in poverty and failure. But at 14, Mattie escaped her gossiping neighbors and her loneliness, and went to work for Dr. Dinsmore. There, she began to nurture a dream that would take her to the Nebraska prairies as the state’s first woman doctor. This novel breathes life into the Old West, leaving the listener feeling as if Mattie is close by sharing her insights into life in the prairie towns.

يعد هذا الكتاب من أعظم الكتب التي تناولت السيرة النبيلة لواحدة من أهم نساء التاريخ العربي القديم؛ إنها أُم الشهداء (فاطمة الزهراء) ابنة النبي "محمد" من السيدة "خديجة " وذلك باعتبارها مصدرًا من مصادر القوة التاريخية التي تتابعت آثارها في دعوات الخلافة في صدر الإسلام إلى الزمن الأخير.

The only woman to serve as a soldier in the First World War, the Englishwoman Flora Sandes became a hero and media sensation when she fought for the Serbian Army and pursued a distinguished career in its ranks as officer. This account charts her incredible story.

With each sensational chapter, A Dangerous Woman documents the life of Florence Gould, a fabulously wealthy socialite and patron of the arts, who hid her dark past as a Nazi collaborator in 1940s Paris. Born in turn-of-the-century San Francisco to French parents, Florence moved to Paris, aged 11. Believing that only money brought respectability and happiness, she became the third wife of Frank Jay Gould, son of the railway millionaire Jay Gould.

Joan of Arc: The Story of the Defender and Patron Saint of France is more than just a history book—it's a journey of discovery. It is a bridge that connects us to the past, allowing us to walk through history, understanding the socio-political dynamics of Joan's time, and how they reverberate even today. It's a mirror that reflects our present, making us ponder upon the role of women, faith, and nationalism in society.

After growing up in Zanzibar as part of the ruling Omani Sultanate, Sayyida Salme, the daughter of the Sultan and his surie concubine Djilfidan, took a fateful step that shaped the rest of her life. She could not have imagined what challenges lay ahead. When she chose to follow her love and became Emily Ruete, she found herself on a path to self-exile, as she moved from East to West, South to North. Taking on a new culture, language, faith, even identity, she crossed borders only to find new barriers.

The Japanese army's brutal occupation of the city of Nanking during the 1937 Sino-Japanese War is known, for good reason, as the rape of Nanking. As they slaughtered an estimated 300,000 people, the invading soldiers raped more than 20,000 women - some estimates run as high as 80,000. Hua-ling Hu presents here the amazing untold story of the American missionary Minnie Vautrin, whose unswerving defiance of the Japanese protected 10,000 Chinese women and children.

Polish Catholics believed she was one of them. A devoted Nazi family took her in as if she was their own daughter. She fell in love with a German engineer who built aeroplanes for the Luftwaffe. What none of these people knew was that Mala Rivka Kizel had been born into a large Orthodox Jewish family in Warsaw, Poland, in 1926. By using her charm, intelligence, blonde hair, and blue eyes to assume different identities, she was the only member of her family to survive World War II.