Humanities & Social Sciences

Women of the right spirit

Paid organisers of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), 1904–18

by Krista Cowman, Pamela Sharpe, Penny Summerfield, Lynn Abrams, Cordelia Beattie

Description

This book is the first investigation on how official organizers built and sustained the national militant campaign of the Women's Social and Political Union between 1903 and 1918. Whilst the overall policy of the Union was devised by an ever-decreasing circle of women, centred around the mother-daughter team of Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, much of its actual activity, including its more extreme militant actions such as arson, was devised and implemented by these organizers who worked in the provinces and in London. Women of the right spirit reveals organizers to be a diverse bunch of women, whose class backgrounds ranged from the aristocratic to the extremely impoverished. It describes the ways in which they were recruited and deployed, and the work they undertook throughout Britain. The exhausting pace of their itinerant life is revealed as well as the occasions when organizers fell out with their employers or their own branches. Taking the story of the WSPU's workers up to the end of the First World War, it considers what directions they took when votes for women became a reality. The book will appeal to academics, postgraduates and undergraduates with an interest in women's history, as well as a more general readership wishing to understand the extent of support for the votes for women campaign and the mechanisms through which it organized. ;

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Author Biography

Krista Cowman is Professor of History at the University of Lincoln; Penny Summerfield is Professor of Women's History at Manchester University; Lynn Abrams is Professor of Gender History at the University of Glasgow

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Manchester University Press

Manchester University Press

Manchester University Press is a leading UK publisher known for excellent research in the humanities and social sciences.

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Bibliographic Information

  • Publisher Manchester University Press
  • Publication Date December 2011
  • Orginal LanguageEnglish
  • ISBN/Identifier 9780719070037
  • Publication Country or regionUnited Kingdom
  • FormatPaperback
  • Primary Price 28.95 USD
  • Pages264
  • ReadershipProfessional and scholarly
  • Publish StatusPublished
  • Dimensions216 X 138 mm
  • IllustrationIllustrations, black & white
  • SeriesGender in History
  • Reference CodeIPR2309

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