This groundbreaking volume examines women's political involvement from a variety of innovative angles. In addition to exploring literary sources and women's contribution to electoral processes, pressure group politics are examined in depth (including Jewish civil rights and the campaigns against the Corn Laws and Indian widow-burning). The attention to neglected aspects of women's political activity, such as religion, domesticity, European nationalism, empire and life-style enable this book to challenge not only the historiography of Georgian and Victorian women, but also the nature of political history itself.

This book redefines the origins of the nineteenth-century women's rights campaigns in Britain, demonstrating that a vibrant, but previously neglected feminist network existed during the 1830s and 1840s. Gleadle demonstrates that these reformers, whom she terms the 'radical unitarians', must be understood within the context of the contemporary Unitarian culture. She shows how their desire to transform society and elevate women's position led them to embark upon many groundbreaking campaigns. This pioneering work fed directly into the women's rights movement of the subsequent decades.

In the last two decades, historians have increasingly sought to understand how environments, 'built' and otherwise, architectural surroundings, landscapes, and conceptual 'places' and 'spaces' have affected the nature and scope of political power, cultural production and social experience . The essays in this collection expand upon this already rich field of inquiry by combining an analytical approach sensitive to questions of gender with an exploration of ideas of political space. The volume demonstrates how the gendered and political meanings of space-be that space domestic or public, rural or urban, real or imagined, or a combination of all these and more-are fashioned through the movement of historical actors through space and time. Whether in delineating the gendered and politicized space of the pulpit; the sickroom; the Irish farmyard; the London suffrage atelier; the domestic space created by the wireless; the lesbian 'scene' of rural Canada; the eighteenth-century ladies' 'closet'; or the public space within the 'public history' of historic houses, the volume demonstrates how the meanings of these spaces are not fixed, but are challenged and reformulated. This book was originally published as a special issue of Women's History Review.

In the last two decades, historians have increasingly sought to understand how environments, 'built' and otherwise, architectural surroundings, landscapes, and conceptual 'places' and 'spaces' have affected the nature and scope of political power, cultural production and social experience . The essays in this collection expand upon this already rich field of inquiry by combining an analytical approach sensitive to questions of gender with an exploration of ideas of political space. The volume demonstrates how the gendered and political meanings of space-be that space domestic or public, rural or urban, real or imagined, or a combination of all these and more-are fashioned through the movement of historical actors through space and time. Whether in delineating the gendered and politicized space of the pulpit; the sickroom; the Irish farmyard; the London suffrage atelier; the domestic space created by the wireless; the lesbian 'scene' of rural Canada; the eighteenth-century ladies' 'closet'; or the public space within the 'public history' of historic houses, the volume demonstrates how the meanings of these spaces are not fixed, but are challenged and reformulated. This book was originally published as a special issue of Women's History Review.

This book redefines the origins of the women's rights campaigns in Britain. Contrary to the existing historiography, which argues that the Victorian feminist movement began in the 1850s, this book, by bringing to light a wealth of unused sources, demonstrates that a vibrant community existed during the 1830's and 1840's. Previously neglected, this remarkable group of writers and reformers established both the ideologies and personnel network which provided the foundations of the women's rights campaigns of the coming decades. This early feminist movement grew out of the radical views on women promoted by the Unitarian minister William Johnson Fox and his associates in the 1830s. Gleadle demonstrates that Fox and his circle may be seen as "radical unitarians"--divorced from the main Unitarian body and distinguished by distinctive ideological creeds. This study explores the radical unitarians' pioneering campaigns to elevate women's position and highlights their visionary commitment to a wider, humanitarian dream of establishing a more equal, more caring society.

This volume provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of women's involvement in British political culture in the first half of the nineteenth century. It is based upon extensive archival research, but also engages with recent feminist theories in the social sciences, such as psychology and sociology. The volume is innovative too for its attention to rural experiences of politics, as well as urban. Dr Gleadle not only throws new light on women's political activities but also does much to challenge many traditional assumptions about contemporary politics per se. This includes, for example, fresh insights into the great Reform Act of 1832, attention to the many continuities in political practice and ideas, and a focus upon the primary significance of parish politics within the day-to-day activities of the middling and gentry classes.

This groundbreaking volume examines women's political involvement from a variety of innovative angles. In addition to exploring literary sources and women's contribution to electoral processes, pressure group politics are examined in depth (including Jewish civil rights and the campaigns against the Corn Laws and Indian widow-burning). The attention to neglected aspects of women's political activity, such as religion, domesticity, European nationalism, empire and life-style enable this book to challenge not only the historiography of Georgian and Victorian women, but also the nature of political history itself.