Category: Women’s History
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It Was Really Her Plantation: White Early American Southern Women’s Positions of Authority on Plantations 1607-1776

Today we have a really interesting guest post lined up for you. I’m happy to introduce Catherine Williams, a graduate student in Early Modern Studies, who will be telling us all about White women in the Early Modern American South. These women held unique positions of power and authority through their scarcity and through the…
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Book Review: “Lionessheart” by Catherine Hanley

Today, I’m really excited to be writing a book review of the upcoming Lionessheart by historian Catherine Hanley. The topic of the book is the exact type of history I love to read (and write!) and so I couldn’t wait to dive in and share my thoughts with you all. NB, I was sent a…
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Historical Objects: Duchess Dhuoda and the Liber Manualis

Surviving historical artefacts are so interesting to write about because there are so many strands of history they can illuminate for us. It could be teaching us about artwork and design popular in another time period, it can show us the skill of craftsmen from centuries or millennia ago, and in the case of the…
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Royal People: Trưng Trắc and the Sisters’ Rebellion

When tracing the lives of women who lived millennia ago, extracting the real history from the subsequent myth and legend can be difficult. This is certainly the case with Trưng Trắc and her sister, Trưng Nhị, two Vietnamese noblewomen who lived in the first century AD. The sisters led a heroic revolt against the Chinese,…
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Women in the Middle Ages

I am really excited to finally reveal the details of my next book! Coming October 2024 (November 2024 for my US followers) is my third history book, Women in the Middle Ages: Illuminating the World of Peasants, Nuns, and Queens. I cannot wait for this beautiful book to be out in the world! Something of…
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Historical Figures: Margaret More Roper, Tudor Scholar and Writer

I’m very excited to introduce a wonderful guest post by author Aimee Fleming. Aimee is a Mum, dog-mum, and historian from North Yorkshire. Passionate about history from an early age and finding a fascination with the Tudors through school and university, she now writes about the stories of people, some well-known and others not-so-much, who…
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Royal People: Princess Nest, Wales’ Romanticised Heroine?

People love a good story. And when real life seems to mirror tales of old, then we can get caught up in it all and conflate them into our own romanticised version. One woman who this certainly applies to is Princess Nest ferch Rhys who, since the 19th century, has been known as “Helen of…
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A Brief Moment of History: Was Queen Elizabeth I Secretly a Man?

There are many historical conspiracy theories that abound (often involving aliens…) but one of my favourite is the peculiar theory that Tudor Queen Elizabeth I was, in fact, a man. Let us explore! The theory was first written down back in the nineteenth century by Dracula author, Bram Stoker. Bram had visited the village of…
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Elizabeth II: Before She Was Queen

On Thursday 8th September 2022, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth died. She was Britain’s longest-lived and longest-reigning monarch, and the longest serving female head of state in the world. As a Brit and a historian with an interest and knowledge of royal history, it felt only fitting to write something about…
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Historical Figures: Madam C J Walker, Titan of Industry

Years ago I was writing one of my daily social media posts on the theme of “on this day” and I saw that the day I was writing (23rd December) was the birthday of a woman named Madam C J Walker. Intrigued, I looked into her to see whether to write a post about her…