'I am one of the cracked people of the world, ' Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon wrote of herself, 'and I like to herd with the cracked ... queer Americans, democrats, socialists, artists, poor devils or angels; and am never happy in an English genteel family life. I try to do it like other people, but I long always to be off on some wild adventure.' Reformer, feminist, free-thinker, later to endow the founding of Girton College, Barbara Bodichon went to the United States on a marriage journey. First published in 1972, her journal of that trip, published in its original form for the first time, contains timely observation and incisive criticism of the American South before the Civil War, and gives a vivid portrait of a lively woman of her times, the friend of George Eliot and other leading figures of her age. This edition includes a fascinating introduction about the English visitor in the United States, from Dickens to Trollope. There is also a biographical study of Barbara Bodichon herself, giving an account of her life and of the causes, notably Women's Rights, to which she devoted her time and energy.

‘I am one of the cracked people of the world,’ Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon wrote of herself, ‘and I like to herd with the cracked ... queer Americans, democrats, socialists, artists, poor devils or angels; and am never happy in an English genteel family life. I try to do it like other people, but I long always to be off on some wild adventure.’ Reformer, feminist, free-thinker, later to endow the founding of Girton College, Barbara Bodichon went to the United States on a marriage journey. First published in 1972, her journal of that trip, published in its original form for the first time, contains timely observation and incisive criticism of the American South before the Civil War, and gives a vivid portrait of a lively woman of her times, the friend of George Eliot and other leading figures of her age. This edition includes a fascinating introduction about the English visitor in the United States, from Dickens to Trollope. There is also a biographical study of Barbara Bodichon herself, giving an account of her life and of the causes, notably Women’s Rights, to which she devoted her time and energy.

First published in 1987. Reprints material from the 1850's and 1860's, a period which marked a turning point in the history of British Feminism. At the centre of this was Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, whose pioneering schemes to improve the status of women made these years some of the richest in debate and reform

‘Jane Robinson is brilliant at putting the women back into history and her biography of Barbara Leigh Bodichon, a Victorian feminist we should all be grateful to, is as entertaining as it is necessary.’ - Daisy Goodwin You have probably not heard of Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon but you certainly should have done. Name any 'modern' human rights movement, and she was a pioneer: feminism, equal opportunities, diversity, inclusion, mental health awareness, Black Lives Matter. While her name has been omitted from too many history books, it was Barbara that opened the doors for more famous names to walk through. And her influence owed as much to who she was as to what she did: people loved her for her robust sense of humour, cheerfulness and indiscriminate acts of kindness. This is a celebration of the life of the founder of Britain's suffrage movement: campaigner for equal opportunity in the workplace, the law, at home and beyond. Co-founder of Girton, the first university college for women, a committed activist for human rights, fervently anti-slavery, she was also one of Victorian England's finest female painters. Jane Robinson's brilliant new book shines a light on a remarkable woman who lived on her own terms and to whom we owe a huge debt.

This widely acclaimed book has been described by History Today as a 'landmark in the study of the women's movement'. It is the only comprehensive reference work to bring together in one volume the wealth of information available on the women's movement. Drawing on national and local archival sources, the book contains over 400 biographical entries and more than 800 entries on societies in England, Scotland and Wales. Easily accessible and rigorously cross-referenced, this invaluable resource covers not only the political developments of the campaign but provides insight into its cultural context, listing novels, plays and films.

From the early years of the African slave trade to America, blacks have lived and laboured in urban environments. Yet the transformation of rural blacks into a predominantly urban people is a relatively recent phenomenon - only during World War One did African Americans move into cities in large numbers, and only during World War Two did more blacks reside in cities than in the countryside. By the early 1970s, blacks had not only made the transition from rural to urban settings, but were almost evenly distributed between the cities of the North and the West on the one hand and the South on the other. In their quest for full citizenship rights, economic democracy, and release from an oppressive rural past, black southerners turned to urban migration and employment in the nation's industrial sector as a new 'Promised Land' or 'Flight from Egypt'. In order to illuminate these transformations in African American urban life, this book brings together urban history; contemporary social, cultural, and policy research; and comparative perspectives on race, ethnicity, and nationality within and across national boundaries.

Southern slaveholders proudly pronounced themselves orthodox Christians, who accepted responsibility for the welfare of the people who worked for them. They proclaimed that their slaves enjoyed a better and more secure life than any laboring class in the world. Now, did it not follow that the lives of laborers of all races across the world would be immeasurably improved by their enslavement? In the Old South but in no other slave society a doctrine emerged among leading clergymen, politicians, and intellectuals - 'Slavery in the Abstract', which declared enslavement the best possible condition for all labor regardless of race. They joined the Socialists, whom they studied, in believing that the free-labor system, wracked by worsening class warfare, was collapsing. A vital question: to what extent did the people of the several social classes of the South accept so extreme a doctrine? That question lies at the heart of this book.