Dreamers of a New Day to Rebel Crossings: 40% off our Sheila Rowbotham bookshelf
- The first Women's Liberation Movement march in London, March 6th, 1971
Sheila Rowbotham is "one of Britain's most important, if unshowy, feminist thinkers, and a key figure of the second-wave" — Melissa Benn, Guardian.
She was among the organisers of the landmark, first National Women's Liberation Conference, in 1970, which led to the announcement of the four still hugely relevant demands of the movement: equal pay; equal education and opportunity; 24-hour nurseries; free contraception and abortion on demand. Rowbotham says she imagined this as the start of "an entirely new kind of politics — no leaders, no ego trips, no more sectarian disputes. We were going to be concerned with working-class women's lives — not just the privileged — and it was going to be about bread and roses." The reality was "in some ways much more than we imagined, and, in some ways, very much less."
To mark the publication of Rebel Crossings: New Women, Free Lovers, and Radicals in Britain and the United States — the latest work from this pioneering feminist writer and activist — we have 40% off all the books on our Sheila Rowbotham bookshelf this week. Includes free shipping (worldwide) and bundled ebooks (where available).
Ends Sunday 30th October at midnight (UTC). Click here to activate your discount.
Rebel Crossings: New Women, Free Lovers, and Radicals in Britain and the United States by Sheila Rowbotham
Rebel Crossings relates the interweaving lives of four women and two men as they journey from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, from Britain to America, and from Old World conventions toward New World utopias. Radicalised by the rise of socialism, Helena Born, Miriam Daniell, Gertrude Dix, Robert Nicol and William Bailie cross the Atlantic dreaming of liberty and equality.
All six are part of a wider historical search for self-fulfillment and an alternative to a cruelly competitive capitalism.
Rebel Crossings offers fascinating perspectives on the historical interaction of feminism, socialism, and anarchism and on the incipient consciousness of a new sense of self, so vital for women seeking emancipation. These six lives bring fresh slants on political and cultural movements and upon influential individuals like Walt Whitman, Eleanor Marx, William Morris, Edward Carpenter, Patrick Geddes and Benjamin Tucker. It is a work of significant originality by one of our leading feminist historians and speaks to the dilemmas of our own time.
Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century by Sheila Rowbotham
“Exhilarating ... admirably lucid ... Reading about the wild hopes of these early 20th-century pioneers, you cannot fail to be moved by the sheer exuberance of their imaginations.”
– Kathryn Hughes, Guardian
“Fascinating ... As the 21st century falters forward with faith wars and economic collapse, women need to be at the forefront of reimagining our world. This book is a timely reminder that we have been here before.”
– Jeanette Winterson, Times
From the 1880s to the 1920s, a profound social awakening among women extended the possibilities of change far beyond the struggle for the vote.
Drawing on a wealth of research, Sheila Rowbotham has written a groundbreaking history that shows how women created much of the fabric of modern life. These innovative dreamers raised questions that remain at the forefront of our twenty-first-century lives.
Woman’s Consciousness, Man’s World by Sheila Rowbotham
A groundbreaking contribution to debates on women’s oppression and consciousness, and the connections between socialism and feminism, this foundational text shows how the roles women adopt within the capitalist economy have shaped ideas about family and sexuality.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Sheila Rowbotham and Mary Wollstonecraft
Composed in 1790, Mary Wollstonecraft’s seminal feminist tract A Vindication of the Rights of Woman broke new ground in its demand for women’s education. A Vindication remains one of history’s most important and elegant broadsides against sexual oppression. In her introduction, renowned socialist feminist Sheila Rowbotham casts Wollstonecraft’s life and work in a new light.
- The National Women's Liberation Movement march in London, 1971. Photograph: Clive Dixon/Rex Features
Women, Resistance and Revolution: A History of Women and Revolution in the Modern World by Sheila Rowbotham
This classic book provides a historical overview of feminist strands among the modern revolutionary movements of Russia, China and the Third World. Sheila Rowbotham shows how women rose against the dual challenges of an unjust state system and social-sexual prejudice. Women, Resistance and Revolution is an invaluable historical study, as well as a trove of anecdote and example fit to inspire today’s generation of feminist thinkers and activists.
Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love by Sheila Rowbotham
The gay socialist writer Edward Carpenter had an extraordinary impact on the cultural and political landscape of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A mystic advocate of, among other causes, free love, recycling, nudism, women's suffrage and prison reform, his work anticipated the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Sheila Rowbotham's highly acclaimed biography situates Carpenter's life and thought in relation to the social, aesthetic and intellectual movements of his day, and explores his friendships with figures such as Walt Whitman, E.M. Forster, Isadora Duncan and Emma Goldman. Edward Carpenter is a compelling portrait of a man described by contemporaries as a 'weather-vane' for his times.
- All these books are 40% off until October 30th, midnight UTC. Includes free shipping (worldwide) and bundled ebooks (where available). Click here to activate your discount.