This collection of essays systematically explores how a sample of political groupings not founded on suffrage reacted and accommodated the issue of suffrage within their official discourses and structures. The volume leads to the heart and core of suffragism while examining the dynamics and versatilities of the Edwardian political fabric.

The suffrage movement remains the largest autonomous political movement of women in British history. The Routledge Companion to British Women’s Suffrage provides a comprehensive survey of state-of-the-art contemporary scholarship on this movement. Arranged across four thematic sections, this volume explores the range of developments in suffrage research since the 1990s, combining a range of scholars’ unique insights to offer a much more complete picture of the British suffrage campaign. Each section provides a thoroughgoing overview of different approaches that have underpinned studies of the British suffrage movement, across disciplines ranging from history and gender studies, to literature, digital humanities, and sociology. Sections also explore the various aspects of the material cultures of the suffrage campaign, the variety of suffrage organisations, and the legacies of the movement. The Routledge Companion to British Women’s Suffrage is an essential handbook for those studying the history, sociology, and politics of the suffrage movement, with a valuable insight into contemporary developments in research.

Suffrage and the Arts re-establishes the central role that artistic women and men-from jewellers, portrait painters, embroiderers, through to retailers of 'artistic' products-played in the suffrage campaign in the British Isles. As political individuals, they were foot soldiers who helped sustain the momentum of the movement and as designers, makers and sellers they spread the message of the campaign to new local, national and international audiences, mediating how suffrage activism was understood by society at large. Published to coincide with the centenary of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, which granted the vote to women over the age of thirty meeting a property qualification, this edited collection offers a range of new perspectives and readings of the outpouring of creative responses to the campaign. Contributors, who include historians, art historians, curators, museum professionals and suffrage experts, call upon the historiographical developments of the last thirty years, alongside new archival discoveries, to showcase the vibrancy of ongoing research in this area. Throughout, chapters investigate the wider socio-cultural backdrop to suffrage and the women's movement, the difficult choices that were made between professional, artistic aspirations and political commitment, and how institutional and informal networks influenced creative expression and participation in feminist politics. From shining light on the use of portraiture to bolster the cultural cachet of the militant Women's Social and Political Union, uncovering the links between Victorian interior design, enterprise and suffrage, through to questioning the supposed conservativism of women's art institutions during the campaign and in the inter-war era, Suffrage and the Arts is a timely and important collection which will contribute to a number of scholarly fields.

By studying a family of working-class suffragettes, Lyndsey Jenkins explores when, why and how the Kenney family got involved in militant suffrage campaigning, what it meant to them, how they benefited, and how it shaped their lives.

In Beastly Possessions, Sarah Amato chronicles the unusual ways in which Victorians of every social class brought animals into their daily lives. Captured, bred, exhibited, collected, and sold, ordinary pets and exotic creatures – as well as their representations – became commodities within Victorian Britain's flourishing consumer culture. As a pet, an animal could be a companion, a living parlour decoration, and proof of a household's social and moral status. In the zoo, it could become a public pet, an object of curiosity, a symbol of empire, or even a consumer mascot. Either kind of animal might be painted, photographed, or stuffed as a taxidermic specimen. Using evidence ranging from pet-keeping manuals and scientific treatises to novels, guidebooks, and ephemera, this fascinating, well-illustrated study opens a window into an underexplored aspect of life in Victorian Britain.

Edith Ayrton Zangwill's 1924 novel The Call is widely regarded as one of the most important suffrage novels of the early 20th century. Including authoritative notes and commentary throughout, this is the first comprehensive scholarly edition of the novel. The Call tells the story of a young chemist, Ursula Winfield, who comes of age in the years before the start of the First World War. Confronted by the gross injustices faced by women and the working class in early 20th-century Britain, she is drawn inexorably and with increasing militancy into the suffragette movement. The story charts the conflict between her political commitments and her personal life as the Great War approaches. Alongside the definitive text of the novel, this edition also includes contextual historical documents – from contemporary reviews of the novel to newspaper coverage of the suffragette movement – and critical chapters by leading scholars exploring the world of the novel.

What characterised women's international co-operation in the interwar period? How did female activists from different countries and continents relate to one another? Marie Sandell here explores the changing experiences of women involved in the major international women's organisations - including the International Council of Women, International Alliance of Women, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and the International Federation of University Women - as well as the changing compositions and aims of the organisations themselves. Moving beyond an Anglo-American focus, Sandell analyses what the term 'international sisterhood' meant in this broader context, which for the first time included women from the beyond the Western world. Focusing on shifting identities, this book investigates how notions of 'sisterhood' were played out, and contested, during the interwar period and will be invaluable reading for scholars of women's history and twentieth-century world history.

This account examines some of the areas of women's political activity in Britain from the Glorious Revolution to the election of the first female Prime Minister in 1979. It shows how women had worked in a variety of arenas and organizations before the suffrage campaign and explores the directions their political activity took afterwards.

As a vigorous interpretation of political and social developments in Britain since the late-Victorian era, State and Society is one of the most respected and widely-read introductions to modern British history. Martin Pugh explores as his central theme the relationship between the British state and its citizens with characteristic skill and insight. In this new fifth edition, Pugh brings his final chapter on Crisis and Coalition right up to the result of the May 2015 general election. The text throughout has also been revised and extended to address themes such as women's history, social class, Scottish nationalism, the working of the monarchy and the British system of government, new perspectives on the history of the Labour Party, secularism and British attitudes towards Europe since the 1970s. Pugh explores these and other themes with perceptive and accessible prose, maintaining an ideal balance of socio-economic and political issues. Also including new images and annotated further reading lists, this new edition of State and Society reaffirms its position as an essential text for students of modern British history.

This is the first book dedicated to examining the marital relationships of Mary and George Watts and Evelyn and William De Morgan as creative partnerships. The study demonstrates how they worked, individually and together, to support greater gender equality and female liberation in the nineteenth century. The author traces their relationship to early and more recent feminism, reclaiming them as influential early feminists and reading their works from twentieth-century theoretical perspectives. By focusing on neglected female figures in creative partnerships, the book challenges longstanding perceptions of them as the subordinate wives of famous Victorian artists and of their marriages as representatives of the traditional gender binary. This is also the first academic critical study of Mary Watts?s recently published diaries, Evelyn De Morgan?s unpublished writings and other previously unexplored archival material by the Wattses and the De Morgans.