Helen Keller and her famous teacher, Annie Sullivan, up to the present have consistently appeared near the top of lists of best-known American women. But few Americans know much about the history of how Anne Sullivan, once a pauper in a large Massachusetts poorhouse, came to her role as the miracle worker who taught the deaf and blind Helen Keller. Nor do most contemporaries know how controversial the education of Helen Keller by Annie Sullivan was in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Leading philanthropists, for example, attacked both Sullivan and Keller for more than twenty years.Portraying the contrasting lives of Sullivan and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, the era s prominent transcendentalist, abolitionist, and founder of many national organizations, this book sheds new light on the ethnic and religious tensions that haunted the notoriety of Sullivan and the gender and disability expectations that affected the public reception of both Sullivan and Keller. The book places into historical context the Anglo-Saxon reformers exemplified by Sanborn who, on the one hand, saved Sullivan from the poorhouse, but who ultimately could not accept Sullivan s hero status. While highlighting the story of Sullivan, Keller, and Sanborn, Wagner also seeks to shed light on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era America in which battles over class, ethnicity, gender, and disability were fought by both genteel and by more belligerent means."

First published in 1984, Toynbee Hall, The First Hundred Years is not just a centenary study, but a personal contribution to the continuing history of Toynbee Hall, which is the Universities' settlement in East London, and an institution that has inspired respect and affection. Its pioneering role as a residential community living and working in the heart of one of London's most deprived areas has been maintained. Called a 'social workshop' by its late chairman John Profumo, Toynbee Hall promotes ventures such as Free Legal Advice, the Workers Educational Association, and the Whitechapel Art Gallery. The book looks at the social changes that have taken place over the 100 years since Toynbee Hall was founded in 1884, but also notes curious parallels, with persistent patterns of poverty, deprivation, squalor and racial separation which characterise the area. Questions about the facts and perceptions of poverty, the nature of community, the visual as well as the social environment, and the roles of voluntary, local and national statutory policy still require answers.

Merely to inhabit a desert demands much skill, craft, experience and travel. For the numerous nomadic tribes of Africa and the Middle East, living ancestors of the Egyptians, Jews and Arabs, Egypt is their meeting ground. The author, with twenty-five years of accumulated knowledge, here sets out to present analyses of their cultures and beliefs, along with descriptions of each tribe. First published 1935.

A powerful account of the decline of the Cuban Revolution, told through the lives of five ordinary Cuban citizens. 'Masterful... Dore uses oral history to tell a history of Cuba from the bottom up' Professor Linda Gordon 'A vital addition to Cuba's rich oral tradition' Will Grant, BBC Cuba Correspondent 'Opens wide a window on the last forty years of Cuban history' Professor Gerald Martin 'To have gathered these life stories together with such grace, eloquence and trust is a towering achievement' Professor Ruth Behar Cuba is not the country it used to be. The regime is disintegrating, and unprecedented protest marches are challenging the gerontocratic Communist Party leadership. How Things Fall Apart reveals the decay of this political system through the lives of five ordinary Cuban citizens. Born in the 1970s and 80s, these men and women recount how their lives changed over a tumultuous stretch of thirty-five years: first when Fidel opened the country to tourism following the fall of the Soviet bloc; then when Raul Castro allowed market forces to operate, thinking it would stop the country's economic slide; and finally when President Trump's tightening of the US embargo combined with the Covid-19 pandemic to cause economic collapse. With warmth and humanity, they describe learning to survive in an environment where a tiny minority has grown rich by local standards, the great majority has been left behind, and inequality has destroyed the very things that used to give meaning to Cubans' lives. Born out of the first oral history project authorized by the Cuban government in forty years, Professor Elizabeth Dore gathers these stories to illuminate the slow and agonizing decline of the Cuban Revolution over the past four decades. For over sixty years the government controlled the historical narrative. In this book, Cubans tell their own stories.

Girls learn about "femininity" from childhood onwards, first through their relationships in the family, and later from their teachers and peers. Using sources which vary from diaries to Inspector's reports, this book studies the socialization of middle- and working-class girls in late Victorian and early-Edwardian England. It traces the ways in which schooling at all social levels at this time tended to reinforce lessons in the sexual division of labour and patterns of authority between men and women, which girls had already learned at home. Considering the social anxieties that helped to shape the curriculum offered to working-class girls through the period 1870-1920, the book goes on to focus on the emergence of a social psychology of adolescent girlhood in the early-twentieth century and finally, examines the relationship between feminism and girls' education.

'A mesmerizingly fascinating tale, one astonishing adventure after another. I could not stop reading this beautifully written book.' Michael Finkel, author of The Stranger in the Woods 'A unique history of a culturally and scientifically important netherworld most people barely know exists.' Booklist 'An unusual and intriguing travel book ... A vivid illumination of the dark and an effective evocation of its profound mystery.'Kirkus (starred review) When Will Hunt was sixteen years old, he discovered an abandoned tunnel that ran beneath his house in Providence, Rhode Island. His first tunnel trips inspired a lifelong fascination with exploring underground worlds, from the derelict subway stations and sewers of New York City to sacred caves, catacombs, tombs, bunkers and ancient underground cities in more than twenty countries around the world. Underground is both a personal exploration of Hunt's obsession and a panoramic study of how we are all connected to the underground, how caves and other dark hollows have frightened and enchanted us through the ages. In a narrative spanning continents and epochs, Hunt follows a cast of subterraneaphiles who have dedicated themselves to investigating underground worlds. He tracks the origins of life with a team of NASA microbiologists a mile beneath the Black Hills, camps out for three days with urban explorers in the catacombs and sewers of Paris, descends with an Aboriginal family into a 35,000-year-old mine in the Australian outback, and glimpses a sacred sculpture moulded by Paleolithic artists in the depths of a cave in the Pyrenees. Each adventure is woven with findings in mythology and anthropology, natural history and neuroscience, literature and philosophy - this is a graceful meditation on the allure of darkness, the power of mystery, and our eternal desire to connect with what we cannot see.

Analysis of varied primary sources, such as as a letter from Anne to her half-brother and an apothecary bill that contains some fertility medicines, allows for a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of how Anne operated her life as well as the wider setting of the court. Much previous scholarship has focused on Anne's relatiosnhips with famous poets, such as Geoffrey Chaucer, but analysis of government documents reveals more about how Anne used her own wealth and status to enact power. This gives greater insight into the power of queenship and female autonomy. Rather than viewing Anne primarily as a wife of Richard II, this volume situates her within the context of medieval queenship which will be useful for all who seek a greater understanding of female power in medieval England.

The book is divided into ecclesiastical, legal, letters, chronicles, biography, conduct books, literary and medical writings to enable students to find sources relevant for their courses by theme. The sources range from well-known texts such as the letters of Abelard and Heloise, Beowulf and the Canterbury Tales to less familiar sources such as Hincmar of Rheims, Gratian, Peter Damian and Gregory IX, Ibn Hazm's The Ring of the Dove and Boccaccio's De mulieribus Claris. Providing students with a range of examples to use in their seminars and essays. This second edition has been revised throughout to include the literature published since the first edition and expanded to include additional material from European, Jewish and Muslim sources as well as additional material on same-sex relations such as the same-sex marriage rituals. Providing students with the latest debates and sources appropriate for how the field has progressed to inspire them in taking the field forward themselves.

From extensive research, including a remarkable interview with the unrepentant chief of Hitler's Women's Bureau, this book traces the roles played by women - as followers, victims and resisters - in the rise of Nazism. Originally publishing in 1987, it is an important contribution to the understanding of women's status, culpability, resistance and victimisation at all levels of German society, and a record of astonishing ironies and paradoxical morality, of compromise and courage, of submission and survival.

In Victorian England, the perception of girlhood arose not in isolation, but as one manifestation of the prevailing conception of femininity. Examining the assumptions that underlay the education and upbringing of middle-class girls, this book is also a study of the learning of gender roles in theory and reality. It was originally published in 1982. The first two sections examine the image of women in the Victorian family, and the advice offered in printed sources on the rearing of daughters during the Victorian period. To illustrate the effect and evolution of feminine ideals over the Victorian period, the book's final section presents the actual experiences of several middle-class Victorian women who represent three generations and range, socioeconomically, from lower-middle class through upper-middle class.

Originally published in 1977, this book brings together what is known about liberal feminist and socialist movements for the emancipation of women all over the world in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It deals not only with Britain and the United States but also with Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary and the Scandinavian countries. The chapters trace the origins, development, and eventual collapse of these movements in relation to the changing social formations and political structures of Europe, America and Australasia in the era of bourgeois liberalism. The first part of the book discusses the origins of feminist movements and advances a model or 'ideal type' description of their development. The second part then takes a number of case studies of individual feminist movements to illustrate the main varieties of organised feminism and the differences from country to country. The third part looks at socialist women's movements and includes a study of the Socialist Women's International. A final part touches on the reason for the eclipse of women's emancipation movements in the half-century following the end of the First World War, before a general conclusion pulls together some of the arguments advanced in earlier chapters and attempts a comparison between these feminist movements of 1840-1920 and the Women's Liberation Movement.

This book traces the impact of German educationists, such as Froebel and Herbart, on practice in Britain while stressing the important and lasting influence of German scientists, technologists, philosophers, sociologists and historians on our educational system. This record of interplay between the two countries shows not only the influence of German innovations but also the effect on British education of the many German emigres in the last two hundred years.

Drawing on hitherto-unused sources this book represents a shift in the historiography of British education. At the centre of the investigation is Joseph Payne. He was one of the group of pioneers who founded the College of Preceptors in 1846 and in 1873 he was appointed to the first professorship of education in Britain, established by the College of Preceptors. By that date Payne had acquired a considerable reputation. He was a classroom practitioner of rare skill, the founder of two of the most successful Victorian private schools, the author of best-selling text-books, a scholar of note despite his lack of formal education, and a leading member of the College of Preceptors and such bodies as the Scholastic Registration Association, the Girls Public Day School Trust, the Women 's Education Union and the Social Science Association.

As much a social history as a volume charting the history of education this book examines the major forces influencing education in England during the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as class differences, economic success and poverty, the legacy of the industrial revolution and factors such as migration.

First published in 1979, The Transformation of England discusses the creation in late eighteenth century England of the industrial system and thereby the present world. Professor Mathias poses questions about the nature of industrialization, social change and historical explanation, issues that are his principal scholarly concern. This series of essays is divided into two groups. The first group of essays focuses upon general themes such as the 'uniqueness' in Europe of the industrial revolution, capital formation, taxation, the growth of skills, science and technical change, leisure and wages, and diagnoses of poverty. In the second section, Professor Mathias focuses on the social structure in the eighteenth century, considering the industrialization of brewing, coinage, agriculture and the drink industries, advances in public health and the armed forces, British and American public finance in the War of Independence, Dr Johnson and the business world.

Originally published in 1990, this book met the rising interest in the subject of women in pre-industrial England, bringing together a group of scholars with diverse and wide-ranging interests; experts in social and medical history, demography, women's studies, and the history of the family, whose work would not normally appear in one volume. Key aspects of motherhood in pre-industrial society are discussed, including women's concepts of maternity, the experience of pregnancy, childbirth, and wet nursing, the fostering and disciplining of children, and child abandonment and neglect. This unique book provides a comprehensive introductory overview of its subject, with emphasis on women's experiences and motives.

Commentators writing soon after the outbreak of the First World War about the classic problems of women's employment (low pay, lack of career structure, exclusion from "men's jobs") frequently went on to say that the war had "changed all this", and that women's position would never be the same again. This book looks at how and why women were employed, and in what ways society's attitudes towards women workers did or did not change during the war. Contrary to the mythology of the war, which portrayed women as popular workers, rewarded with the vote for their splendid work, the author shows that most employers were extremely reluctant to take on women workers, and remained cynical about their performance. The book considers attitudes towards women's work as held throughout society. It examines the prejudices of government, trade unions and employers, and considers society's views about the kinds of work women should be doing, and their "wider role" as the "mothers of the race". First published in 1981, this is an important book for anyone interested in women's history, or the social history of the twentieth century. Companion volumes, Women Workers in the Second World War by Penny Summerfield, and Out of the Cage: Women's Experiences in Two World Wars by Gail Braybon and Penny Summerfield, are also published by Routledge.

In 1791, the French femme de lettres Olympe de Gouges wrote that 'as women have the right to take their places on the scaffold, they must also have the right to take their seats in government'. This book explores the issues of female emancipation through the history of female execution, from the burning of Joan of Arc in 1431 to the events of the French revolution. Concentrating on individual victims, the author addresses the sexual attitudes and prejudices encountered by women condemned to death. She examines the horrific treatment of those denounced as witches and reveals the gruesome reality of death by hanging, burning or the guillotine. In an attempt to uncover the historical truth behind such figures as Joan of Arc, Anne Boleyn, Manon Roland and Charlotte Corday, she goes beyond biography to consider their deaths in symbolic terms. She also considers writers such as Genet, Yourcenar and Brecht and their treatment of the tragic, sacrificial and erotic aspects of female execution.

This perceptive book studies the Victorian woman in the home and in the family. One of the central purposes is to rescue Victorian woman from the realm of myth where her life was spent in frivolous trifles and instead to show how she had a major part to play in the practical management of the home. The author makes judicious use of domestic manuals and other material written specifically for middle-class women. With statistical data to quantify the image as well, this book presents a better understanding of what it was like to be a middle-class woman in nineteenth-century England. Looking at the middle-class woman's problems as mistress of the house, her problems with domestics, her problems as mother and her problems as woman we can begin not merely to characterise the middle-class woman but to define her as an element of British social history and as a silent but significant agent of change. The book was first published in 1975.

There is still much uncertainty about the role of nineteenth-century British women in social and political protest. As politics was a man's world virtually all official accounts and statistics of popular protest deal only with the men involved. It is well known that women participated in food riots and mobilised support for Chartism, and as the dramatic changes in the economy during this period greatly increased the demand for women's labour, this stimulated their widespread involvement in political and social agitation, particularly the parliamentary reform movement of 1819. First published in 1982, this book provides a descriptive account of the part played by women - mainly working class women - in a variety of social and political activities that can broadly be categorised as protest. It establishes the basic outlines and offers an interpretation of the course of events.

Volume 2: Objects, People and Texts explores the movement of individuals and peoples and the circulation of material objects and books and texts. Through a series of short chapters, mobility is employed as an elastic, inclusive and multifaceted concept across various disciplines to shed light on a geographically and chronologically broad range of issues and case studies. In doing so, the concept of mobility is positioned as a powerful catalyst for historical change and as a fruitful approach to research in the humanities and social sciences. Like its sister volume, this volume is edited and written by members of the Centre for Advanced Studies in Mobility and the Humanities (MoHu) at the Department of Historical and Geographical Sciences and The Ancient World (DiSSGeA) of the University of Padua, Italy. The structure of the book mirrors the Theories and Methods, and Ideas thematic research clusters of the Centre. Afterwords from leading scholars from other institutions synthesise and reflect upon the findings of each section. This volume, together with Volume 1: Theories, Methods and Ideas, makes a compelling case for the use of mobility studies as a research framework in the humanities and social sciences. As such, it will be of interest to students and researchers in various disciplines.

When it was first published in 1984, this book filled an acknowledged gap in the social history of the period and made available hitherto inaccessible sources. The work draws on newspapers and journals, memoirs, diaries, courtesy books, county surveys and records, but also on the literature of the period, its novels, poetry and plays. It examines the role assigned to women in eighteenth-century society and the education thought fitting to perform it. It looks at attitudes to courtship and marriage, chastity and sexual passion. It explores the role of women as wives and mothers, as spinsters and widows, and focuses on the living and working experience of women whether in the home, agriculture, industry or domestic service. It contrasts the expectations of the rich and the poor, the leisured lady and the underpaid female agricultural labourer, the unmarried mother and the prostitute.

Rooted in the printed sources of the period, this book reconstructs the attitudes of a pioneer generation of young women to the conflicts brought about by their new experience of employment outside their homes, and to changes in work and family relationships. In the 1890s and after the still prevalent Victorian conception of respectable womanhood excluded wage-earning women. Yet working-class women themselves did not acquiesce in this judgement, and Eisenstein's exploration of Victorian ideas about women and work - using the contemporary middle-class literature of advice and prescription to this new workforce - makes a historical study which is a classic of its kind. The book was originally published in 1983.

Irish Civilization provides the perfect background and introduction to both the history of Ireland until 1921 and the development of Ireland and Northern Ireland since 1921. This book illustrates how these societies have developed in common but also those elements where there have been, and continue to be, substantial differences. It includes a focus on certain central structural aspects, such as: the physical geography, the people, political and governmental structures, cultural contexts, economic and social institutions, and education and the media. Irish Civilization is a vital introduction to the complex history of Ireland and concludes with a discussion of the present state of the relationship between them. It is an essential resource for students of Irish Studies and general readers alike.

Originally published in 1987, Out of the Cage brings vividly to life the experiences of working women from all social groups in the two World Wars. Telling a fascinating story, the authors emphasise what the women themselves have had to say, in diaries, memoirs, letters and recorded interviews about the call up, their personal reactions to war, their feelings about pay and the company at work, the effects of war on their health, their relations with men and their home lives; they speak too about how demobilisation affected them, and how they spent the years between two World Wars.