Until recently, the marquise Du Chatelet (1706-1749) was more remembered as the companion of Voltaire than as an intellectual in her own right. While much has been written about his extraordinary output during the years he spent in her company, her own work has often been overshadowed. This volume brings renewed attention to Du Chatelet's intellectual achievements, including her free translation of selections from Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the bees; her dissertation on the nature and propagation of fire for the 1738 prize competition of the Academie des sciences; the 1740 Institutions de physique and ensuing exchange with the perpetual secretary of the Academie, Dortous de Mairan; her two-volume exegesis of the Bible; the translation of and commentary on Isaac Newton's Principia; and her semi-autobiographical Discours sur le bonheur. It is a measure of the breadth of her interests that the contributions to this volume come from experts in a wide range of disciplines: comparative literature, art history, the history of mathematics and science, philosophy, the history of publishing and translation studies. Du Chatelet's partnership with Voltaire is reflected in a number of the essays; they borrowed from each other's writings, from the discussions they had together, and from their shared readings. Essays examine representations of her by her contemporaries and posterity that range from her inclusion in a German portrait gallery of learned men and women, to the scathing portrait in Francoise de Graffigny's correspondence, and nineteenth-century accounts coloured by conflicted views of the ancien regime. Other essays offer close readings of her work, and set her activities and writings in their intellectual and social contexts. Finally, they speculate on the ways in which she presented herself and what that might tell us about the challenges and possibilities facing an exceptional woman of rank and privilege in eighteenth-century society.

In central Brussels stands a statue of a young woman. Built in 1923, it is the first monument to a working-class woman in European history. Her name was Gabrielle Petit. History has forgotten Petit, an ambitious and patriotic Belgian, executed by firing squad in 1916 for her role as an intelligence agent for the British Army. After the First World War she was celebrated as an example of stern endeavour, but a hundred years later her memory has faded. In the first part of this historical biography Sophie De Schaepdrijver uses Petit's life to explore gender, class and heroism in the context of occupied Europe. Petit's experiences reveal the reality of civilian engagement under military occupation and the emergence of modern espionage. The second part of the book focuses on the legacy and cultural memory of Petit and the First World War. By analysing Petit's representation in ceremony, discourse and popular culture De Schaepdrijver expands our understanding of remembrance across the 20th century.

With the agreement at Munich in 1938 he effectively abandoned Czechoslovakia, but immediately accelerated Britain's rearmament programme and the following year declared that Britain would defend Poland. This commitment led, in September 1939, to the start of World War II.

In the wake of the violent labor disputes in Colorado's two-year Coalfield War, a young woman and single mother resolved in 1916 to change the status quo for 'girls,' as well-to-do women in Denver referred to their hired help. Her name was Jane Street, and this compelling biography is the first to chronicle her defiant efforts - and devastating misfortunes - as a leader of the so-called housemaid rebellion. A native of Indiana, Jane Street (1887 - 1966) began her activist endeavors as an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). In riveting detail, author Jane Little Botkin recounts Street's attempts to orchestrate a domestic mutiny against Denver's elitist Capitol Hill women, including wives of the state's national guard officers and Colorado Fuel and Iron operators. It did not take long for the housemaid rebellion to make local and national news. Despite the IWW's initial support of the housemaids' fight for fairness and better pay, Street soon found herself engaged in a gender war, the target of sexism within the very organization she worked so hard to support. The abuses she suffered ranged from sabotage and betrayal to arrests and abandonment. After the United States entered World War I and the first Red Scare arose, Street's battle to balance motherhood and labor organizing began to take its toll. Legal troubles, broken relationships, and poverty threatened her very existence. In previous western labor and women's studies accounts, Jane Street has figured only marginally, credited in passing as the founder of a housemaids' union. To unearth the rich detail of her story, Botkin has combed through case histories, family archives, and - perhaps most significant - Street's own writings, which express her greatest joys, her deepest sorrows, and her unfortunate dealings with systematic injustice. Setting Jane's story within the wider context of early-twentieth-century class struggles and the women's suffrage movement, The Girl Who Dared to Defy paints a fascinating - and ultimately heartbreaking - portrait of one woman's courageous fight for equality.

Two resolute women-the first female 'warco' and the trader
This special Leonaur two-in-one volume contains accounts by two resourceful and independent women who made their way through the often hostile bushlands of Southern Africa in the 19th Century. The youngest daughter of the 7th Duke of Marlborough and aunt to Winston Churchill, the future Prime Minister, Lady Sarah-Spencer Churchill became the first female war correspondent when she was recruited to cover the siege of Mafeking, during the Second Boer War, for the Daily Mail. Baden-Powell and his garrison including (Lady Sarah's husband), under constant attack by superior Boer forces, were awaiting relief from the British Army under Roberts. On Baden-Powell's insistence Lady Sarah had left Mafeking before it was surrounded, but had been captured by the Boers and returned to the town under a prisoner exchange scheme. Although untrained as a journalist, Lady Sarah's 'matter of fact' style proved to be a huge hit with the domestic reading audience for depicting the' carry on under any adversity' bulldog spirit that they felt typified their national character. From an earlier period of the Cape's troubled colonial history, the second work in this book, relating Mrs. Heckford's experiences, are of no less interest. Arriving in the Cape on the eve of the Zulu War in the late 1870s, this remarkable and resolute lady carved a life for herself in close proximity to the potentially dangerous Kaffir tribes and the Boers who were disaffected by British Imperial rule and by the annexation of the Transvaal in particular. The hostilities of the First Anglo-Boer War, notable for the British disaster at Majuba Hill in 1881, broke out in late 1880 and Mrs. Heckford found herself besieged in Pretoria in the midst of the uprising.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

A masterful biography of Lincoln that follows his bitter struggle with poverty, his self-made success in business and law, his early disappointing political career, and his leadership as President during one of America's most tumultuous periods.