Julia Child was an American chef, author, and television personality. She brought French cooking to everyday Americans, with her groundbreaking cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Child was born Julia Carolyn McWilliams in 1912 in Pasadena, California. She was the daughter of John McWilliams, Jr, a Princeton graduate and early investor in California real …
bell hooks is an American author, feminist, and social activist whose work deals with issues of race, gender, class, and sexual oppression. hooks was born Gloria Jean Watkins in 1952, in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, a small, segregated town in rural Kentucky. Her experience in growing up within this community shaped her feminism and her father represented …
Anne Frank was a German-born diarist and writer. Her wartime diary entitled The Diary of a Young Girl is one of the most widely read books in the world. It provides an insight into the lives of Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Frank was born in 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany to Otto Frank and Edith …
Nawal El Saadawi is an Egyptian feminist writer, activist, physician and psychiatrist. El Saadawi was born in 1931 in the small village of Kafr Tahla. Her family were a mix of traditional and progressive. At the age of six El Saadawi was pinned down by four women in her home in Egypt and was subjected …
Hannah More was an English educator, writer and social reformer. She was known for her writings on abolition and for encouraging women to join the anti-slavery movement. More was born in 1745 in Fishponds, Bristol. She was the fourth of five daughters of Jacob More, a schoolmaster from Harleston, Norfolk and Mary Grace More. More’s …
Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist, women’s rights activist and writer. Mead was born in 1901 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Edward Sherwood Mead, a professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Emily Mead, a feminist political activist and sociologist who studied Italian immigrants. Mead’s family moved frequently and …
Claudia Jones was a feminist, black nationalist, political activist, community leader, communist and journalist. She is the founder of Britain’s first black weekly newspaper “The West Indian Gazette” and has been described as the mother of the Notting Hill Carnival. Jones was born Claudia Vera Cumberbatch in Belmont, Port of Spain, Trinidad in 1915. At …
Mary Beard OBE, FBA, FSA is an English Classical scholar. Beard became interested in the ancient world at the age of 5 after a trip to the British Museum in London. She attended Shrewsbury High School where she excelled, particularly in Latin and Greek. During the summer holidays she participated in local archaeological excavations. In …
Andrea Dworkin was an American feminist, author and outspoken critic of sexual politics, particularly the victimising effects she felt pornography had on women. Dworkin’s father, an educator and socialist was a big influence on her and her interest in human rights and human dignity. Her mother believed in legal birth control and legal abortion long …
Simone de Beauvoir was a French existentialist philosopher and writer. She laid the foundation for the modern feminist movement. De Beauvoir was born into a family that had lost most of their fortune shortly after World War 1. She attended a prestigious convent school and was religious to the point that she intended to become …