Dame Ethel Smyth was a celebrated composer, author, musician and suffragette. She was the first female composer to be awarded a damehood. Smyth showed a talent for music at a young age, but had to fight to be able to study it as her father did not support her interests. At 19, Smyth was allowed to …
Today’s Illustrated Women in History was submitted by Amy Kovac @kovvac and will be included in the next Illustrated Women in History zine! Charlotte Brontë 1816-1855 “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.” – Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë Charlotte Brontë has become one of …
This weeks Illustrated Women in History was submitted by Rose Robbins. Highsmith was born in 1921, and both her parents were artists and her mother told her once that she’d tried to abort her by drinking turpentine. Highsmith cultivated a love of books from a young age, and in 1950 her first novel Strangers on …
This weeks Illustrated Women in History was submitted by Clare Butler for the Illustrated Women in History exhibition 2017 at Swindon Central Library. Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) was a woman once described as an armoured tank drawing enemy fire. She was a celebrated composer, author, musician, enthusiastic golfer, and, in her own words, a ‘militant …
This weeks Illustrated Women in History was submitted by Sade John @sadiesavestheday for the Illustrated Women in History exhibition in April 2017 at Swindon Central Library. Banana Yoshimoto is the pen name of Japanese writer Mahoko Yoshimoto. She has achieved worldwide popularity for her unusual stories and characters. Yoshimoto began writing while at the College …
Tove Jansson was a Swedish-speaking Finnish novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author best known as the creator of the Moomins. She received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1966 for her writing. Jansson was born in 1914 in Helsinki, Grand Duchy of Finland which was then an autonomous part of the Russian Empire. Her …
Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist, feminist and poet best known for her novel Little Women. Alcott was born in 1812 in Germantown, Pennsylvania. She grew up in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts, and from a young age she would write stories which she and her sisters would act out for friends. Her father briefly …
Aletta H. Jacobs was the first woman to officially attend a Dutch University and the first female physician in the Netherlands. She was also a women’s suffrage activist and inventor. Jacobs was born in 1854 in Sappemeer, Netherlands to Abraham Jacobs, a physician and Anna de Jongh. From an early age, Jacobs would accompany her …
Eugénie Niboyet was a French author, journalist and early feminist. She is best known for founding La Voix des Femmes (The Women’s Voice), the first feminist daily newspaper in France. Niboyet was born in 1797 in Montpellier, France and raised in a Protestant household. During the Bourbon Restoration following the fall of Napoleon in 1814, …
Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa was a self described Chicana/Tejana/lesbian/dyke/feminist/writer/poet/cultural theorist. She is best known for her book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza about growing up on the U.S./Mexican border. Anzaldúa was born in 1942 in Rio Grande Valley, Texas. At a young age, she developed an extremely rare hormonal imbalance, and was menstruating from the age …