Wild For Austen

 

Wild For Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane- Devoney Looser

St. Martin's Press

Release Date: September 2, 2025

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: Thieves! Spies! Abolitionists! Ghosts! If we ever truly believed Jane Austen to be a quiet spinster, scholar Devoney Looser puts that myth to rest at last in Wild for Austen. These, and many other events and characters, come to life throughout this rollicking book. Austen, we learn, was far wilder in her time than we’ve given her credit for, and Looser traces the fascinating and fantastical journey her legacy has taken over the past 250 years.

All six of Austen’s completed novels are examined here, and Looser uncovers striking new gems therein, as well as in Austen’s juvenilia, unfinished fiction, and even essays and poetry. Looser also takes on entirely new scholarship, writing about Austen’s relationship to the abolitionist movement and women’s suffrage. In examining the legacy of Austen’s works, Looser reveals the film adaptations that might have changed Hollywood history had they come to fruition, and tells extraordinary stories of ghost-sightings, Austen novels cited in courts of law, and the eclectic members of the Austen extended family whose own outrageous lives seem wilder than fiction.

______________________________________________

When you think about Jane Austen and her books, what comes to mind? Do you still imagine a quiet woman who never did anything and whose characters never challenge anyone? 

This image has been challenged more and more and in Wild for Austen Devoney Looser wants to put that out-dated Victorian fictional image to rest once and for all. She explores the real Austen, the women in her family who wrote, the ones who inspired her fictional characters, the brothers who spoke out against slavery, and more. Who would Austen have known whose actions and reputations would have been considered "wild" in her day? 

Looser explores what the word "wild" meant (both positive and negative) in Austen's time and how it is used in her books and letters. Each book, including the frequently forgotten Juvenilia, is explored for the "wildness" of its characters and what Austen might have been saying or satirizing on each occasion. It was an interesting angle of exploration that I quite enjoyed. Her research and arguements are interesting and cover a wide range of topics, several that I'd never heard before (like Austen's brothers in support of abolition).

Looser also explores our changing relationship with Austen's works. How has fan fiction, Hollywood interpretations, and our perhaps more willingness to accept Austen as a complete person, changed our relationship with her and her works? Can we accept her today in ways that were denied to her after her death? As perhaps more "wild" than "mild"? I think, based on Looser's arguments, we both can and should- and that an understanding of Austen like the one presented in Wild For Austen might make her more accessible in some ways to younger readers assigned the books in school who find them irrelevant today.   

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Penelope's Bones

Penelope's Bones: A New History of Homer's World Through the Women Written Out of It- Emily Hauser

University of Chicago Press

Release Date: June 13, 2025

Rating: 📚📚📚

Synopsis: In Mythica Emily Hauser tells, for the first time, the extraordinary stories of the real women behind some of the western world’s greatest legends. Following in their footsteps, digging into the history behind Homer’s epic poems, piecing together evidence from the original texts, recent astonishing archaeological finds and the latest DNA studies, she reveals who these women – queens, mothers, warriors, slaves – were, how they lived, and how history has (or has not – until now) remembered them.

A riveting new history of the Bronze Age Aegean and a journey through Homer’s epics charted entirely by women – from Helen of Troy, Briseis, Cassandra and Aphrodite to Circe, Athena, Hera, Calypso and Penelope – Mythica is a ground-breaking reassessment of the reality behind the often-mythologized women of Greece’s greatest epics, and of the ancient world itself as we learn ever more about it.

___________________________________________________

I had very mixed feelings with this book. On the one hand, there was some very cool information on the latest archaeaolgical research and discoveries. New technology means DNA can tell us about travel in the Late Bronze Age, if families are buried together, or prove that more warrior gravesites are women warriors than were earlier believed. Texts unearthed through the Hittite Empire introduce powerful queens helping to rule the Hittite world next to Troy, and letters and tablets have been unearthed that suggest enough similarities between pieces of Homer's poems and real life to make Hauser's arguments plausible that the epics contain fragments of memories for ways of life that would have probably been old when the Iliad and the Odyssey were written down. I enjoyed most of the archaeological information, because I like reading about that kind of thing. 

Other parts of the book were, to me, more of a stretch. There was a lot of repetition. Hauser clearly didn't trust her audience to remember who any of the characters were, so would remind you every single time- especially the women already less well known like Briseis. Once or twice I can understand, but it was really annoying having her do it all the time. Each chapter would start with a short fictional story, which I know is the current fad, but personally I find throws me out of the nonfiction narrative and I always find off-putting. Some chapters were a stretch in terms of subject matter. In Circe's chapter, for example, I expected to learn about the ancient world's views on magic, or women living alone, or something else that might focus on women. Instead it is mostly about pigs. Yes, Circe and pigs go together and Hauser manages to connect them to religion and briefly to the mystery cults, but I was hoping for more. 

Frequently in the chapters Hauser brings up the modern retellings we see that are so popular today. Madeline Miller, Natalie Haynes, and some of her own books as well. These additions missed the mark for me. The readers of those books may be part of the audience she's trying to reach with this book, but adding the retellings here in the chapters themselves isn't part of the story of Homer's world. It would have worked better in the introduction or conclusion as part of the conversation on why women are now retelling the stories and focusing on reclaiming the lives and voices of the women in Homer's world.

I had high hopes going into Penelope's Bones, and while I would overall recommend reading it, I can't say I was as impressed with the book as I had hoped to be. Maybe I was expecting too much out if it. After all, Trying to uncover what has been pushed to the margins for thousands of years, both by the erosion of time, the men of the time period and by male archeologists until fairly recently, doesn't give you a lot to work with.

I received an ARC of this boon from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Sisterhood of Ravensbruck

 

The Sisterhood of Ravensbruck: How an Intrepid Band of Frenchwomen Resisted the Nazis in Hitler's All-Femal Concentration Camp- Lynne Olson

Random House

Release Date: June 3, 2025

Rating:📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: For decades after World War II, histories of the French Resistance were written almost exclusively by men and largely ignored the contributions of women. Many current overviews of the subject continue to underplay the extent and importance of women’s participation in the Resistance, treating the subject, in the words of one historian, as ‘an anonymous background element in an essentially male story’.

The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück corrects that omission, surveying the bond between four women — Germaine Tillion, Anise Girard, Genevieve de Gaulle, and Jacqueline d’Alincourt — who fought valiantly against Nazi oppression. While the women belonged to different Resistance movements and networks, they were united by a common they were arrested by the Gestapo, underwent merciless interrogations and beatings, were jailed — and, most significantly, survived, if just barely, the hell of Ravensbrück, the only concentration camp designed specifically for women. In an institution designed to dehumanise and kill, the sisterhood maintained their sense of self and joined together to face down death.

____________________________________________________________

Lynne Olson is one of my favorite historians, and has a wonderful talent for bringing out hidden voices and stories during World War 2 that help us discover so many new aspects to that time. Her last two books (Madame Fourcarde's Secret War and Empress of the Nile) explore the lives of two women who were trail-blazers both during and after the war, but who during the war helped build the French resistance against the Nazis. The Sisterhood of Ravensbruck follows the lives of four women: Germaine Tillion, Anise Girard, Genevieve de Gaulle, and Jacqueline d'Alincourt who were also part of the French Resistance- and who were sent to (and survived) Ravensbruck camp for that resistance.

The book is divided into three sections: before, during, and after Ravensbruck, and I was a little surprised at much of it focused on the after. As you'd expect with any book dealing with Nazis, concentration camps, etc. there are some parts that are hard to read. But the sisterhood that developed among the women in the camp, particularly the French women Olson focuses on, brought with it such surprising hope as well. They helped each other survive through so many acts that it brought tears to my eyes as I was reading. The Polish women (called "rabbits") who were used as medical experiments in the camp were helped by everyone, including being hidden when the order to kill them came at the end of the war (if you've read Martha Hall Kelly's Lilac Girls, it's based on the rabbit's story). The prisoners knew they all faced death for defying their captors, but they resisted the Nazis again. The strength of the women, sharing their tiny amounts of food, medicine, gathering evidence of the crimes against them in the hope that one day they would be free to use it, was staggering to me. As I read I could only wonder if I would have been that brave, and hope the answer would have been yes.

It should come as no surprise that none of the Ravensbruck women stopped being amazing after leaving the camp. They continued to stand together to ensure whoever needed medical help got it, to help each other reintergrate into post-War life. They stood as witnesses for the dead against the crimes the Ravensbruck Nazis had committed. They helped the "rabbits" get to America for medical tretment. And continued to stand up against injustices and crimes against humanity wherever they saw them for the rest of their lives. 

The inspiration brought to me by this story leaves me speechless. It is hard and uplifting, often at the same time– and absolutely a book we should all read and learn from. As we should learn from these women.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Affiliate link

Cure for Women

 

The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine THat Changed Women's Lives Forever- Lydia Reeder

St. Martin's Press

Release Date: December 3, 2024

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: After Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to graduate from medical school, more women demanded a chance to study medicine. Barred entrance to universities like Harvard, women built their own first-rate medical schools and hospitals. Their success spurred a chilling backlash from elite, white male physicians who were obsessed with eugenics and the propagation of the white race. Distorting Darwin’s evolution theory, these haughty physicians proclaimed in bestselling books that women should never be allowed to attend college or enter a profession because their menstrual cycles made them perpetually sick. Motherhood was their constitution and duty.

Into the midst of this turmoil marched tiny, dynamic Mary Putnam Jacobi, daughter of New York publisher George Palmer Putnam and the first woman to be accepted into the world-renowned Sorbonne medical school in Paris. As one of the best-educated doctors in the world, she returned to New York for the fight of her life. Aided by other prominent women physicians and suffragists, Jacobi conducted the first-ever data-backed, scientific research on women's reproductive biology. The results of her studies shook the foundations of medical science and higher education. Full of larger than life characters and cinematically written, The Cure for Women documents the birth of a sexist science still haunting us today as the fight for control of women’s bodies and lives continues.

_____________________________________________________

Once Elizabeth Blackwell broke the glass ceiling and became the first women to graduate medical school, more women demanded the chance to study medicine. In America, men did their best to prevent this so women with means traveled to Europe, getting degrees in France and returning to practice and teach other women. In The Cure For Women Lydia Reeder introduces readers to a few of these early medical pioneers and the challenges they faced, then focuses the rest of the book through Mary Putnam and her research, challenges, and advances.

Like many of the early women who were able to travel to Europe to become doctors, Putnam was from a wealthy family (she was the eldest daughter of publisher George Putnam), though money alone never smoothed all her ways. A combination of money, charm, brilliance, stubbornness, and a refusal to fail when she knew she was in the right were the characteristics needed of all of the early women doctors, and Mary had most of these in spades. 

I knew when I started this book I was going to spend a lot of it angry or fustrated by the challenges men placed in the way of women trying to reach their highest potential. I was blown away by the arrogance shown by many of the male doctors in these pages. There are doctors who treat surgery like a grand spectacle to show off their skills, doctors who refuse anesthesia to their female patients for a variety of horrific reasons. Doctors who seem to genuinely believe women aren't capable of the thought necessary for anything because of their menstral cycles, and plenty of men willing to use (and distort) Darwin's theories to promote eugenics for their own ends to control women's bodies. 

It was fascinating to watch doctors like Mary Putnam Jacobi develop theories and entire processes that we now take for granted (like surveys of patients) to begin undertanding and developing new sciences of the time- hygiene, pediatrics, and women's health and gynecology. But more interesting to me was watching them take these sciences and common sense and begin to apply them to the fight for women's rights across a large spectrum of issues, such as voting and education. Jacobi became a proponent of educating women equally to men, preferrably in equal settings, and she worked with all the big names of the era in women's suffrage to fight for the causes she believed in. 

The Cure for Women is overall a really interesting and well-written book, certainly well researched, accessible to everyone. I do wish the author had used more quotes from the writings of Jacobi and the other women involved to help us get more into their heads, but that's my only real complaint. 

For anyone interested in the development of medical science in the nineteenth century, women's education and fight for equality, or readers of Olivia Campbell's Women in White, The Cure for Women is a book to add to the TBR list!

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review 

Affiliate link

Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective

 

The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective- Sara Lodge

Yale University Press

Release Date: November 5, 2024

Rating: 📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis:  From Wilkie Collins to the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the traditional image of the Victorian detective is male. Few people realise that women detectives successfully investigated Victorian Britain, working both with the police and for private agencies, which they sometimes managed themselves.

Sara Lodge recovers these forgotten women’s lives. She also reveals the sensational role played by the fantasy female detective in Victorian melodrama and popular fiction, enthralling a public who relished the spectacle of a cross-dressing, fist-swinging heroine who got the better of love rats, burglars, and murderers alike.
 
How did the morally ambiguous work of real women detectives, sometimes paid to betray their fellow women, compare with the exploits of their fictional counterparts, who always save the day? Lodge’s book takes us into the murky underworld of Victorian society on both sides of the Atlantic, revealing the female detective as both an unacknowledged labourer and a feminist icon.

___________________________________________________________

This was a fascinating book exploing the early days of women in the world of detective work- both in fiction and reality. Sara Lodge makes an impressive argument that women were involved in police work long before they 'officially' began being counted as police women, and it was these women who perhaps became the inspiration for the 'female detectives' of the early fictional stories.

Stories of female detectives were being sold by the 1860s, with the detectives donning disguises and blending into the background as servants to gather the proof needed to solve their cases because, the stories argued, it was easier for women to hide in plain sight than men. Often (possibly a case of wish fulfillment?) these fictional detectives were saving women from cruel husbands and bad marriages, accidental bigamy, or other abuses that they didn't see coming, but which the law couldn't protect them from. I loved how Lodge was able to find 19th century plays of female detectives where the women became early action heroes- beating the villanous men and police alike to save the day, with frequent disguises, cross-dressing, guns, and the physical ability to protect both themselves and their clients.

But as much as these heroines of the stage were looked up to, real life detectives occupied a murkier reality. As divorce became more common, many were involved in gathering evidence against spouses - and sometimes creating that evidence.  At a time when public and private spheres was undergoing a shift, the private detective's role itself was being defined, and the women in the profession tended to take the blame if things went wrong. 

Brilliantly researched and well-written, this is a book for any mystery lover to read. If you think the lady detective begins with Agatha Christie, think again!

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review 

Affiliate link

The Northwomen

 

The Northwomen- Heather Pringle

National Geographic

Release Date: September 10, 2024

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: Until Scandinavia converted to Christianity and came under the rule of powerful kings, the Vikings were a dominant force in the medieval world. Outfitted with wind-powered sailing ships, they left their mark, spreading terror across Europe, sacking cities, deposing kings, and ransacking entire economies. After the Vikings, the world was never the same.

But as much as we know about this celebrated culture, there is a large missing piece: its women. All but ignored by contemporary European writers, these shadowy figures were thought to have played little part in the famous feats of the Vikings, instead remaining at home as wives, mothers, and homemakers.

In this cutting-edge, revisionist portrait, renowned science journalist Heather Pringle turns those assumptions on their head, using the latest archaeological research and historical findings to reveal this group as they actually were. Members of a complex society rich in culture, courage, and a surprisingly modern gender ideology, the women of the Viking age were in fact forces to be reckoned with, serving as: Sorceresses, Warriors, Traders, Artisans, Explorers, Settlers, Landowners, Power brokers, Queens

Both ambitious and compelling, THE NORTHWOMEN is the true story of some of the most captivating figures of the Viking world—and what they reveal about the modern age.

______________________________________________________________

I'm always interested people who look at history and ask the question: where are the women? Obviously they were there, but women and their stories aren't recorded as often as men, and so are frequently overlooked and forgotten. 

In The Northwomen, journalist Heather Pringle searches for women in Viking world and talks to expert archaeologists who are looking at new (and old) evidence to rewrite what has been "established fact" for so long about the Viking world. 

Pringle does an amazing job here, helping to tell the stories that archaeologists are discovering in ways that laypeople can understand, bringing us into the world of explorers, traders, artisans, raiders, and sorceresses to think about how Viking women could have lived- and when (and if) they might have held power in that world.   

I loved how archaologically focused this book was, making the world very concrete and evidence based. One of my favorite chapters, surprisingly, was on weavers. Pringle interviewed people who have been studying and actually re-creating as much as possible the original Viking weaving methods, and used them to help make a woolen sail for a recreated Viking ship. The amount of work that went into the project and what they learned about the work the women would have done was amazing, and really captured me. There were even descriptions of woolen 'armor' that men would have worn when going into battle- in much of the world, not just among the Vikings! And all of it would have been created by women. 

Pringle doesn't try to completely rehabilitate the Vikings as a people, but recognizes the negative aspects of their society as well as the positive. She talks about them as a slave trading society (as were most societies of their day) and does a really interesting comparison to modern psychological studies in the slave trade to try to understand what it would have been like for women who were subjected to this. 

Overall, The Northwomen was a wonderfully written, well researched book that makes the latest archaeological research on women in the Viking world accessible to anyone who is interested in finding out about it. I definitely recommend this book!

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Affiliate link

Shakespeare's Sisters

 

Shakespeare's Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance- Ramie Targoff

Knopf

Release Date: March 12, 2024

Rating: 📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: This remarkable work about women writers in the English Renaissance explodes our notion of the Shakespearean period by drawing us into the lives of four women who were committed to their craft long before there was any possibility of “a room of one’s own.”

In an innovative and engaging narrative of everyday life in Shakespeare’s England, Ramie Targoff carries us from the sumptuous coronation of Queen Elizabeth in the mid-sixteenth century into the private lives of four women writers working at a time when women were legally the property of men. Some readers may have heard of Mary Sidney, accomplished poet and sister of the famous Sir Philip Sidney, but few will have heard of Aemilia Lanyer, the first woman in the seventeenth century to publish a book of original poetry, which offered a feminist take on the crucifixion, or Elizabeth Cary, who published the first original play by a woman, about the plight of the Jewish princess Mariam. Then there was Anne Clifford, a lifelong diarist who fought for decades against a patriarchy that tried to rob her of her land in one of England’s most infamous inheritance battles. These women had husbands and children to care for and little support for their art, yet against all odds they defined themselves as writers, finding rooms of their own where doors had been shut for centuries. Targoff flings those doors open, revealing the treasures left by these extraordinary women; in the process, she helps us see the Renaissance in a fresh light, creating a richer understanding of history and offering a much-needed female perspective on life in Shakespeare’s day.

_____________________________________________________

If you're looking for an introduction to the world of Renaissance England through women's eyes and how they worked to make their voices heard through writing- look no further than Shakespeare's Sisters by Ramie Targoff. She takes the long-held belief that Tudor women didn't read, didn't write, and certainly weren't anything but meek and mild wives and daughters and throws it out the window. 

Queen Elizabeth might not have been trying to break the glass ceiling for women, but that doesn't mean other women weren't looking for ways to express themselves. Mary Sidney is someone readers might have heard of- at least because her brother was famous. She took that and ran with it, adding translations and poems of her own to published works of his (some that she only recently got credit for!). Aemilia Lanyer was the first woman to publish a book of original poetry in the 17th century, and she did it while worrying about money for her family because she wasn't nobly born! She made it more shocking by writing a feminist take on the crucifixion- including a poem from the point of view of the wife of Pontius Pilate arguing that if he condemned Christ he is basically erasing Eve's original sin and women are no longer the 'lesser sex'. Elizabeth Carey was the first woman to publish an original play, a feminist take on the Jewish princess Mariam. Anne Clifford is probably the first woman diarist who also wrote down her life and her family's history, all while fighting 40 years of legal battles for her inheritance.

Each of these women were ahead of their time in so many ways, determined to live life as they wanted to. This incredibly well-written and well-researched book gives them back their voices and introduces us to women we may not have known before, but will now definitely want to know more about. The book is designed to tell us more about their lives than to be literary analyses, but at the end we get a great chapter on why their writing is so rarely taught, where we can find their books, and other Renaissance women we might want to read. 

I absolutely recommend Shakespeare's Sisters to anyone interested in Tudor England and English literature, or the increasing discoveries of women's lives throughout history, some of which are only recently being brought back into the light.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

A Rome of One's Own

 

A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Romane Empire- Emma Southon 

Abrams Press

Release Date: November 7, 2023

Rating:📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: The history of Rome has long been narrow and one-sided, essentially a history of “The Doing of Important Things,” and as far as Roman historians have been concerned, women don’t make that history. From Romulus through “the political stab-fest of the late Republic,” and then on to all the emperors, Roman historians may deign to give you a wife or a mother to show how bad things become when women get out of control, but history is more than that.

 
Emma Southon’s A Rome of One’s Own is the best kind of correction. This is a retelling of the history of Rome with all the things Roman history writers relegate to the background, or designate as domestic, feminine, or worthless. This is a history of women who caused outrage, led armies in rebellion, wrote poetry; who lived independently or under the thumb of emperors. Told with humor and verve as well as a deep scholarly background, A Rome of One’s Own highlights women overlooked and misunderstood, and through them offers a fascinating and groundbreaking chronicle of the ancient world.

______________________________________________________________

Emma Southon is my absolute favorite historian when it comes to exploring ancient Rome. First off, she literally wrote a book on murder in Rome (A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) and I feel like that is a book everyone needs in their life.  I know I did. Secondly, she examines Roman history a)within its historical context b)looking at the historical sources in their context and c)with a dry wit and humor that makes me feel like I'm having a conversation with a friend about something that I would actually regularly talk to a friend about (because that's the kind of person I am). It's also the sort of humor that would make people not necessarily interested in ancient history really get into it. And have I mentioned that she doesn't look at what Traditional Historians usually look at: Important Battles In History? 

Instead, Emma Southon has been on the cutting edge of examining ancient Roman history from the point of view of women since her fabulous book on Agrippina came out in 2019 and she hasn't looked back since. In A Rome of One's Own she builds on Agrippina's success by exploring the lives of 21 Roman women who historians both past and present have relegated to footnotes (if they get mentioned at all) and reframe the story to remind us that really, it's the women who are incredibly important in the story of Rome. Even the Romans knew that, little though some of them liked to admit it. 

A Rome of One's Own spans the entire length and timeline of the Roman Empire, from the early women of Rome (Tarpeia and Hersilia- you probably never heard of them) to one of the most famous (Lucretia- Roman men loved to turn her into a literary trope and make it all about them). From Boudicca (you might have heard of her, here's as close to the real story as Southon can get) to Julia Felix (a Pompeii businesswoman you've never heard of, but she'll make you question what you think you know about Romane women) and into the strange world of Christian martyrdom (Perpetua, in her own words) and the end of the Roman Empire, when Christians ruled and everyone was still fighting (Galla Placidia). Some of these women ruled behind the scenes, or not so behind the scenes, some just wanted to run a business and stay away from the murder-happy aristocrats. But Southon gives us compelling arguments that their stories, and the thousands like them that are not told here, are more the "real" Roman Empire than all of the Important Things and Battles we read so much about. Here are the true people of Rome, the lives both small and large, overlooked and misunderstood, and completely fascinating to read.

Full of fascinating facts and delightful humor, A Rome of One's Own is one of those books everyone should read!

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review

The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes

 

The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes- Kate Strasdin

Chatto & Windus/Vintage/Pegasus

Release Date: February 23, 2023

Rating: 📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: In 1838, a young woman was given a diary on her wedding day. Collecting snippets of fabric from a range of garments she carefully annotated each one, creating a unique record of her life and times. Her name was Mrs Anne Sykes.

Nearly two hundred years later, the diary fell into the hands of Kate Strasdin, a fashion historian and museum curator. Strasdin spent the next six years unravelling the secrets contained within the album's pages.

Piece by piece, she charts Anne's journey from the mills of Lancashire to the port of Singapore before tracing her return to England in later years. Fragments of cloth become windows into Victorian life: pirates in Borneo, the complicated etiquette of mourning, poisonous dyes, the British Empire in full swing, rioting over working conditions and the terrible human cost of Britain's cotton industry.

This is life writing that celebrates ordinary people: the hidden figures, the participants in everyday life. Through the evidence of waistcoats, ball gowns and mourning outfits, Strasdin lays bare the whole of human experience in the most intimate of mediums: the clothes we choose to wear.

___________________________________________________________

This was a book I was excited to read since I first heard about it through social media. Author and fashion historian Kate Strasdin was given an album, a 'dress diary' in 2016. The album consisted of swatches of fabrics from the 1830s through about the 1870s and, with the exception of brief captions identifying the fabric in a way only the album's creator would have recognized, there was no writing. Strasdin spent years researching the people named in the captions and the stories she could connect to them and their fabrics. The result is the fascinating book The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes: Secrets from a Victorian Woman's Wardrobe (called The Dress Diary: Secrets from a Victorian Woman's Wardrobe in the US). 

Anne Sykes grew up in Lancashire, the daughter of a cloth merchant in a part of England focused at the time on the cloth industry. She married a cloth merchant from a family of fabric printers, so needless to say Anne understood the importance of fabric in daily life- both as fashion, gifts, and probably the basis for family economics. Anne and her husband Adam traveled to Singapore for his work and lived there (and briefly Shanghai) for nearly ten years before returning to England. Strasdin scoured records, newspapers, ship's logs and more for hints of the Sykes and other names that appear in Anne's diary, often with surprising success. While no letters have been found from Anne, Strasdin helps us discover what her life in Singapore might have been like through letters of other women who lived there at the time, and who knew Anne and donated fabric to her album.

But this book isn't just a biography of a middle-class cloth merchant's wife. It is a history of the textiles and fashion in England during Anne's lifetime. From the textile mills of northern England to the machines that increased production and put hundreds of employees out of work; to a chapter on how the patterns were created (which I'd always wondered about!) and how the printing of cloth changed over time; the change in colors with the discovery of aniline dyes in the 1850s and 1860s (along with the associated poisons for both the workers and occasionally the wearers of the material); and the fancy dress costume balls that became the rage in both England and Singapore, Strasdin connects each chapter of fashion history to swatches of fabric in Anne's diary. The fabric acts as a starting point in each chapter for something Anne would have known about or been affected by, from mourning clothes to Singaporean pirates (there's a piece of a pirate flag in the album that an admiral gave her!)

The Dress Diary of Anne Sykes and Kate Strasdin proves beyond a doubt that fashion history stands as a part of the social history of any time period that must be considered when we truly try to know a time and place. Women were hugely influential in the choices connected to fashion, letting us find some of their stories within the shadows of "important" history as so often focused on by men, but Strasdin reminds us in this book of the huge web of social and global economic influences a phrase like "fashion history" truly means. Not something to be scoffed at, it is a growing field of study that should be both celebrated and encouraged.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the social or fashion history of the Victorian era. It is a great adventure that Strasdin allows us to share along with her.

Woman of Influence

 

A Woman of Influence: The Spectacular Rise of Alice Spencer in Tudor England- Vanessa Wilkie

Atria Books

Release Date: April 18, 2023

Rating: 📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: Alice Spencer was born in 1560 to a family on the rise. Her grandfather had amassed a sizeable estate of fertile grazing land and made a small fortune in sheep farming, allowing him to purchase a simple but distinguished manor house called Althorp.

With her sizable dowry, Alice married the heir to one of the most powerful aristocratic families in the country, eventually becoming the Countess of Derby. Though she enjoyed modest renown, it wasn’t until her husband’s sudden death (after he turned in a group of Catholics for plotting against Queen Elizabeth I) that Alice and her family’s future changed forever.

Faced with a lawsuit from her brother-in-law over her late husband’s fortune, Alice raised eyebrows by marrying England’s most powerful lawyer. Together, they were victorious, and Alice focused her attentions on securing appropriate husbands for her daughters, increasing her land ownings, and securing a bright future for her grandchildren and the entire Spencer family. But they would not completely escape scandals, and as the matriarch, Alice had to face an infamous trial that threatened everything she had worked so hard for. 

Now, the full story of the remarkable Alice Spencer Stanley Egerton is revealed in this comprehensive and colorful biography. A woman both ahead of and part of her time, Alice’s ruthless challenging of the status quo has inspired future generations of Spencers and will change the way you view Tudor women.

________________________________________________________

Alice Spencer was born in 1560, at that interesting cusp of English gentry with "new money" looking to marry into the aristocracy- so many of whom had titles, but no money. This sounds like it could be the start of many a historical romance, but this book is nonfiction. Carefully researched from wills, lawsuits, and the most scandalous trial to hit the House of Lords in generations, Vanessa Wilkie pieces together the life of Alice Spencer, youngest daughter of a knight, who goes on to be the Dowager Countess of Derby. She becomes the successful matriarch to a large family of children, grandchildren, stepchildren, and in-laws who work together to raise the extended family's fortunes as a whole.

Vanessa Wilkie does an excellent job giving the reader fascinating details about what it was like to live in Tudor/Stuart England, including legal information for marriages that shows that there were times women could have more power or control than we might imagine.  In fact, Alice's entire life is an excellent case study in how it was possible for a woman to work through her husband, her friends or family, or in other behind-the-scenes ways to hold significant influence both with her family and in a larger political circle. 

There were times I felt Wilkie repeated herself a bit too often or re-emphasized too much the basic differences between today's society and family/personal goals and those of Alice's times. Perhaps this was to try and encourage the reader not to judge Alice and her contemporaries by our standards- which she then does during the Castlehaven trial and its aftermath. This is a tricky balancing act: seeing Alice as a mother and a Tudor matriarch mean that her actions and reactions to her daughter's trauma and the trial that follows meant something very different in her day than they would in ours, and Wilkie doesn't seem entirely sure what to do with it. She reports on the trial itself brilliantly, but it is obvious that she is uncomfortable with Alice's recorded actions and has to frequently remind the readers (and possibly herself) about the public social behavior that Alice needed to show in order to protect the rest of her extended family. Personally, I think that bringing her daughter back to live near her and seemingly protecting her for the rest of her life, shows a glimpse of what was still a close mother-daughter bond, but since there are no letters or diaries for either woman we can't know for certain. 

Overall, however, this was a fascinating book, showing how people could rise through the ranks, patronize art and literature, influence others- including monarchs- both directly and indirectly, and how dangerous the wrong alliance could be. Well-written, well-researched, history lovers will definitely need to read this book! 

Anyone who enjoyed The Duchess Countess by Catherine Ostler or Devices and Desires by Kate Hubbard will definitively enjoy Vanessa Wilkie's A Woman of Influence.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review