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Why is so little known about the matriarch of Ireland's most famous beverage? Guinness will always be one of Ireland’s most famous exports, besides Paul Mescal and Riverdance. However, not many people outside its motherland know a lot about its history and the man behind the “the black stuff”. Arthur Guinness’s eponymous brewing business has been churning out Ireland’s favourite drink since 1755, and it has been housed in the same brewery in Dublin since 1759, which continues to produce the stout. While today, the storehouse is home to a world famous tourist attraction, Guinness’ Brewhouse 4 is the largest stout brewery in the world. Given that St. Patrick’s Day reminds us of all things Irish, now seems the right time to look at the country’s most famous business and try to find out more about one of its most elusive figures, Arthur Guinness’ wife, Olivia Guinness.   When I visited the Guinness storehouse in December of 2022, one line in a short informational video about the family explained Olivia Guinness had 21 pregnancies. She was not mentioned again besides her staggering number of births, and while her life may not have had a direct impact on the brewing of stout, this meagre attempt to present her is inherently gendered. I’m sure it’s no surprise to you that that has stayed with me, and it’s something I think about every time I see the iconic glass. When I visited again a year later, I was upset to see that the video had been replaced with a demonstration of a new product Guinness Nitrosurge, and I considered that maybe this was something worth exploring. Was it a coincidence that the company’s new machinery had replaced information on such an important part of the Guinness family? Most likely, yes, though I couldn’t help but feel bitter that the only mention of the woman so heavily involved in the continuation of the Guinness name had been erased from the tour. Why was it not implemented into another part? I spent the rest of the tour waiting for that video to reappear, but only when I started researching her further, did I understand perhaps why this had happened. An invention from 2021 had more recorded history than a woman born in 1742. She doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. Olivia Whitmore was the daughter of grocer William Whitmore and Mary Grattan. Not much is known about Olivia’s paternal line, but there is much to be said about her mother. Despite Olivia being left fatherless, her maternal family owned land in Kildare which at the time granted Olivia a high social standing and funds that easily provided for her. This meant by the time Olivia Whitmore became Olivia Guinness, she had a sizable dowry that gave her new husband, and budding brewer, Arthur opportunity to rise in society's ranks. The bulk of the historical record for Olivia Guinness starts here, documenting her place in the marriage, and subsequently, the marriage's place in the business. She was just nineteen on her wedding day - Arthur was thirty-six. Their relationship presents itself as transactional in the eyes of history; Olivia’s respectable dowry of £1,000, equal to about £200,000 in today’s currency, combined with connections to her gentry family provided Arthur a decent start to married life, and the rare chance for a brewer to gain the social respectability he needed in the rural towns of Ireland. For Olivia’s widowed mother, marrying her daughter off to this ambitious man was an opportunity to reduce the instability caused by William Whitmore’s death and provide a somewhat secure future for her beloved daughter.   Beyond her wedding is where history has admitted it knows next to nothing about her - even her family has agreed that knowledge about the matriarch of the Guinness line is limited. Historian and direct Guinness descendant Patrick Guinness brought forward these limitations in his 2008 title Arthur’s Round: The Life and Times of Brewing Legend Arthur Guinness . This was the first biography of his descendent and remains the leading work on the family’s history, and yet there are only 15 very brief references to Olivia’s life in the index. The only information the archive assistants at Guinness Archives at the Guinness Storehouse could offer me was sourced from this work. So, here, we come back to what we do know and what drew me to this enigma of a woman in the first place. Olivia Guinness had 21 pregnancies over two decades with 10  children surviving into adulthood. The lack of detail about her births and her time as a mother means historians have often had to make somewhat weak assumptions about it. One such example is that Patrick Guinness surmises that Hosea, the eldest Guinness son, had a difficult birth, alluded to by his name meaning “Jehovah is saved”. I can’t say I’m easily convinced by this, mainly because it reads as though he just needed to say something, however nonsensical, about his distant grandmother. What does it say about the value placed on historical women that the one fact that remains about Olivia relates to how many times she fell pregnant?   Olivia Guinness remains a powerhouse of 18th century femininity and what it meant to be a woman. The longevity of the Guinness line ultimately comes back to her and her extensive bloodline. Olivia Guinness bore the six men that would continue the name, while supporting her husband and his business ventures for 42 years. There is something to be said about the fact nothing is said - she did her marital and biblical duty by providing the family Arthur needed, and the reason no one thought to pass on stories of her life, is that providing others life was the greatest achievement of them all. She did her duties so well that nothing else mattered. The births over the span of 20 years demonstrate that she and Arthur were sexually active - either through love for one another, or religious devotion. Given the norms governing 18th century femininity in Ireland and beyond, Olivia’s body would have been her greatest asset in demonstrating her position of power - churning out 21 pregnancies in just over 21 years was impressive even in a land where contraception was only legalised in 1979. With a maternal mortality rate as high as 1 in 5, Olivia’s survival, given the sheer number of births she experienced, is awe-inspiring. Olivia had her last child in 1787, when she was 45 and her husband was 63, which must have been a great relief for her. Despite the 10 children that survived in adulthood, there is no evidence of the suffering she undoubtedly experienced with the 11 children she sadly lost.   Equally little is known about how the couple met. Many historians speculate the couple met through introductions by family friends, or Arthur’s family’s proximity to William Whitmore’s grocery shop on Essex Street. This absence of knowledge also feeds into the questioning of why this relationship was of so little importance to wider family histories. Were details of the couple’s relationship  deemed mere women’s gossip of romancing, or perhaps there was no romancing at all to tell of? From what we do know, and evidence suggesting the transactional nature of the union, the latter does seem more likely. Did Arthur merely see Olivia as a way of moving up the social ladder, and the carrier of his legacy? It seems as though we will never know, as Arthur never spoke of it, and Olivia appears to have no public voice - not even a diary or letters can be traced back to her.   So, back to the question that started this all back in that little cinema in the historic brewery. Why is it so hard to find anything about this biological wonder of a woman? If her own family knows so little, what hope is there for the rest of us? With all my research, I think I have had to admit defeat on finding even a snippet of what made the woman who she was - she is destined to be the subject of tourists gasps for the rest of eternity where they learn about her spectacular mothering, alongside learning the temperature of wheat roasting. However, I think there is something to be tapped into here: the women behind some of the world’s oldest and most famous businesses are often made invisible without much of a fight. Were the achievements of Olivia’s husband so great that the trials and tribulations of her life were dismissed in favour of what she could provide for him? While her husband and his droves of sons remain at the forefront of Irish memory and glorification, Olivia and her daughters most certainly had a part to play in the magic behind the machine. Bibliography: Patrick Guinness, Arthur’s Round: The Life and Times of Brewing Legend Arthur Guinness, London, 2008. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Guinness: Irish Company, 18th March 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Guinness [date accessed 14/01/2024] Katie Birtles, A Brief History of Ireland’s National Drink, Guinness, 6th April 2022, https://www.trafalgar.com/real-word/a-brief-history-of-irelands-national-drink-guinness/ [date accessed: 12/01/24]

It is very clear that true crime documentaries grasp the attention of nearly everyone around the world. Call it a natural instinct to gather all information to protect yourselves/family or call it morbid curiosity. Some cases stick with you for much longer and the Princes in the Tower  mystery is no exception. It has been accepted for hundreds of years that the princes (Edward V and Richard, Duke of York) were murdered by their uncle and former king, Richard III. There were also perceived pretenders of both Edward and Richard during their time. But now, it seems, they may not have been pretending after all?  From the word go, the documentary felt like this was going to be another attempt to make Richard III look like a saint. To be clear, he still doesn’t look like a saint but to be even clearer, no royalty in history has been a saint. At the heart of the research and documentary is Phillipa Langley was the beating heart of the research and nothing has changed about her passion and dedication to the history of Richard III and the end of the Wars of the Roses. Quite frankly, it is inspirational. What did confuse me was the need for a judge to be involved. Specifically, Rob Rinder (as in THE Judge Rinder). Rob does have first-class honours in Politics and Modern History which is relevant to the premise of the documentary. From my understanding, he was there to add an official and professional voice and this was to play out more like a murder trial or a “cold case”, in Phillipa’s words.  Over 300 people have joined Phillipa’s ‘The Missing Princes Project’ in which many people have been involved in the concoction of criminal investigation and historical research. Maybe it is fair to dub them internet sleuths, to an extent. But the research, clearly, goes deeper.  Rob and Phillipa travel across the continent to bask in findings from hundreds of years ago. The first was a 1487 receipt from King Maximilian I of the Holy Roman Empire for an order of pikes to help the Yorkist invasion of England. The ‘Madame de Dowager’ or Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy (the Princes’ aunt and Richard's sister) had sent the men along with these pikes in battle. This evidence corresponds to the first invasion in May 1487  by a supposed impostor of Edward V- Lambert Simnel. Dr Janina Ramirez believes this document is quite compelling and I am inclined to agree. As she says, documents like witness statements, letters, diaries, and accounts of events can be forged or faked but receipts are straightforward and precise. Receipts are not usually something that anyone would bother to fake. It was clear that Margaret had paid money for the pikes and the men. It raises the question of why these princes' aunt would pay so much money to support this random boy if she did not believe that he was not her nephew. Information had been discovered about a coronation that had taken place in Dublin, attended by John de la Pole, in which the supposed Edward V was crowned. Or at least, this is what Matt Lewis (the chairman of the Richard III Society) believes is the correct account. Another historian, Nathen Amen contradicts this and believes this was the coronation of the princes’ cousin, Edward Earl of Warwick. From further research, this was more of a political statement as not one sovereign had been crowned before (or since) in Ireland and was a “remarkable show of defiance by the Anglo-Irish”, according to the historian/archaeologist Christiaan Corlett for Coles Lane Heritage. There is seemingly no doubt that a political event, like a coronation, took place, but to say that it involved Edward is a very large stretch. There is no physical evidence in the documentary to suggest this is the case, either. It is hard to rely on Lewis as a source due to the bias there is towards Richard III and evidence like this would exonerate Richard in the murder of his nephews as it would prove they were still alive. This was probably their weakest argument in the documentary.  Margaret of Burgundy had a retirement palace in Belgium which she had altered through renovations in 1496. Account books from this period showed that there was a new room added and labelled “Richard’s Room” on an arch. Rob Rinder asks “Which Richard?” to which Phillipa exclaims “The younger Prince in the tower”. There is no proof of the younger Richard being this particular prince that is shown or discussed in the episode and this leaves it open to interpretation; could the room have been named after Margaret’s brother, King Richard III, instead?  A discovery made by Nathalie Nijman-Bliekendaal of the Dutch Research Group of a document written by Richard, the younger prince, seemed to really grasp the attention of Phillipa Langley and Rob Rinder. This whole document is approximately ten years of this boy’s life squeezed into four pages. It is in Middle Dutch and, according to Nijman-Bliekendaal, has possibly been translated from French or Latin. The account discusses the involvement of Thomas and Henry Percy in the movement of the princes to and in the Tower. According to the experts, it is true that Henry and Thomas Percy were there and that they were in Richard III’s inner circle. However, using this as an argument to say that this statement was certainly written by one of the princes is a little bit of a leap. It would have been widely known that the Percy brothers were part of Richard III’s inner circle to anyone alive at the time, anyone involved in politics, and a position of power during his reign. The discussion of the document’s original dialect also made it more questionable. Perkin Warbeck was originally from Belgium, a country known for speaking Flemish and French, so for the document to have been written in Middle Dutch but translated from French provides evidence that this was written by Warbeck as an impostor rather than one of the real princes. Understandably, this could be similar to a witness report of what he had experienced from imprisonment to freedom. However, there are too many possible explanations concerning the document that its credibility is limited. Rob Rinder also displays the document to Dr Janina Ramirez who believes the document needs further investigation and that it is very convenient considering the circumstances surrounding it. With it being four pages that supposedly discuss ten years of this person’s life takes away from its legitimacy further as this is almost too condensed.  Other documents are discussed in the documentary such as one held in Dresden, Germany. Professor Henricke Lahemann presents a document from 1493 of a pledge of support to ‘Prince Richard’ to regain the throne of England but to also repay Albert of Saxony’s 30,000 florins within three months of becoming King. The document has seals attached which are royal in origin and contain the ‘R’ standing for ‘Rex’. The document is also signed. The only evidence the document gives to this document legitimately being signed by the real Prince Richard is “it says at the beginning of the document that the signature is on”. It was also written and signed by someone with a confident hand and someone who speaks and writes English. The document clearly holds more weight than that of the previous one found by Nijman-Bliekendaal. Ramirez also views the document and exclaims the seals are “of the time”. Again, there is no further evidence to suggest this was written by the real Prince Richard and there is no handwriting known by Richard that can be compared to this document to add to its credibility.  The last document to be highlighted in this review is the account of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I and Prince Richard's meeting, written by Maximilian’s French scribe in 1492. Maximilian decided to give his support to Richard’s campaign as Richard had shown signs in the form of marks on his body which people who knew him knew he had. These marks were on his eye, his lip, and his thigh. The Austrian state archive holds this document which is rational as Maximilian was born in Austria and remained there until his death. This was probably the most compelling of the evidence presented. It can also be pulled apart, only slightly. Did they have their ways of faking these marks or could people have just said these marks existed when they did not, just to have a compelling story?  It is hard to accept any of the evidence at face value. What is not in doubt is that the documents originate from the correct period (the 15 th  century) and this is confirmed by experts in the field. However, they come from a period with so much colluding and deceit that there are several different possible reasons for their existence. The research conducted by Phillipa Langley and Rob Rinder is thorough and vast, spreading across the European continent. It involved many experts and a large collective of individuals invested in the project. But I can’t help but feel the bias of a lot of experts in the documentary, not to mention the bias that Langley herself has, considering her part in the Richard III society. The documentary and research could have benefited from being presented and run by an impartial expert to give more credibility. Despite this, it was interesting and did raise a lot more questions on the supposed  murder of the Princes in the Tower.  You can catch The Princes in the Tower: The New Evidence on Channel 4 and Philippa Langley’s Book, The Princes in the Tower: Solving History's Greatest Cold Case, is available wherever you get your books/ebooks/audiobooks.

Glossary McCarthyism: An intense campaign against alleged communists in the US carried out in the mid-twentieth century under Senator Joseph McCarthy. Many of the accused were blacklisted or lost their jobs, although most did not belong to the Communist Party. “I’ve always known I was gifted, which is not the easiest thing in the world for a person to know, because you’re not responsible for your gift, only for what you do with it.” Spoken by Hazel Scott herself, these words encapsulate her greatness as a figure who navigated the realms of entertainment and activism to challenge racial inequality in the United States, but who you have most likely never heard of before.    Born on 11th June 1920 in Port of Spain, Trinidad, Hazel Dorothy Scott was the only child of Thomas Scott and Alma Long Scott. Just four years later, the Scott family moved to the United States, where Hazel would become one of the highest paid Black entertainers, a steadfast advocate for Civil Rights, and the first person of African descent in the USA to host their own television show.   Encouraged by her mother, a classically trained pianist, Hazel’s musical talent blossomed early in her life. At the age of eight, half that of the usual student age requirement, her piano audition for the Julliard School of Music convinced a professor that she was a “genius”. She was awarded a scholarship for private tuition under Professor Oscar Wagner. This was the first of many barriers she would break over her successful career. In 1933, she entered the male dominated jazz scene in New York City, joining her mother’s all-woman band. Two years later, aged only fifteen, she performed her first independent performance at the Roseland Dance Hall, and by age sixteen she had become known for her regular performances on radio shows. Having gained a reputation as a classical and jazz pianist in the city, Scott’s big break came in 1939, when blues singer Ida Cox was unable to appear for her performance at Café Society in Downtown New York. Founded by Barney Josephson, the club had opened its doors a year prior and had quickly become a hotspot for jazz music and progressive ideas. The venue provided a platform for Black artists to perform for racially mixed audiences, challenging the prevailing segregation norms of the time. Discussions on political issues were also held in the venue, and it quickly became a unique and influential institution in New York’s cultural landscape. Left without a performer, and on the recommendation of Jack Gilford who hosted shows at the club and had heard Hazel play at a bar in Harlem, Josephson invited her to audition. Hazel secured the job, and a temporary slot at the club until Ida’s return became a seven and a half year stint, with a 1942 Daily News article dubbing her ‘High Priestess of Hot Piano’ and heralding her ‘an institution’ at the club compared to the venue’s other revolving artists. Over the years at Café Society, her earnings rose from $65 per week to $4000 per week, and by 1945 her annual salary equates to over $1 million today.   Having risen to stardom in New York’s jazz scene, Scott’s fame and experience at Café Society led her to adopt a hard line with regard to venues she would play. She had it stipulated in her contract that she would not play before segregated audiences. Her stance on the issue was uncompromising and led her to walk out of several venues, with one such instance leading to her being escorted out of Austin, Texas, by Texas Rangers for her safety after her refusal to play to an audience separated by ‘Black’ and ‘white’ zones caused a violent uproar. After the incident, she told Time Magazine: “Why would anyone come near me, a Negro, and refuse to sit beside someone just like me?”.  By the mid 1940s, Hazel had made her Broadway debut in Sing Out the News and had started to take on roles in movies, appearing the majority of the time as herself. On the Hollywood scene, Hazel was outspoken about the treatment of Black women within the industry. At the time, it was typical for Black women to be cast predominantly in roles as maids, prostitutes, and slaves. For herself, Hazel had it stipulated in her contract that she would not play such roles. But she also advocated for the other Black women on the sets that she worked on. In her first film appearance, Shout About (1943), Scott played herself and her contract stipulated that she “[wouldn’t] wear a handkerchief or dirty clothes in a film.” On the set of The Heat’s On (1943), Scott refused to work until the eight African American actresses on the film whose costumes included dirty aprons “for a worn effect”, were replaced with clean ones. For her protests, especially as a result of her three-day-long strike on The Heat’s On, she was blacklisted by executives and her Hollywood career was cut short.   Scott’s fight against racial discrimination also extended into a legal case. In 1949, backed by prominent Civil Rights organisation, The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), she won a racial discrimination federal lawsuit. The case was the first federal lawsuit against racial discrimination in the Inland Northwest and was brought against husband and wife restaurant owners in Pasco for $50,000. Hazel and companion Eunice Wolfe  had been refused service based on their race, with Hazel’s complaint specifying that she was denied service “without any reason whatsoever except she was a Negro.”. The case garnered much media attention at the time. The Evening News reported: ‘Hazel Scott Accuses Coast Restaurant’ and complained that Hazel and her husband, Harlem Congressman, pastor, and civil rights leader, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., were both acting as plaintiffs, despite the fact that he was not present at the restaurant. Scott won the case and gave the money she was awarded to the NAACP.  Just over a year later, in April 1950, the first fifteen minute episode of The Hazel Scott Show aired on the DuMont Network - the first television show in the U.S. to feature a Black woman as its host. Episodes featured several piano performances by Scott, and, from its first broadcast, the show was immensely popular, leading the network to quickly triple the number of weekly national broadcasts. At only thirty years old, Hazel Scott had become a trailblazer in the entertainment industry and a symbol of resistance to racial injustice. However, only one month after her show aired, in the shadow of McCarthyism, Hazel Scott, like many of her contemporaries e.g., Langston Hughes, was declared a communist sympathiser by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). This followed a claim in Red Channels (a pamphlet compiled by former FBI agents which listed names of individuals in the entertainment industry who were suspected of having communist affiliations or sympathies) that she was affiliated with, participated in, or sponsored numerous communist organisations. The accusations damaged her reputation within the entertainment industry, which was left in ruins when she testified before the HUAC on 22 September 1950. Hazel denied all allegations and criticised the onslaught of false accusations against performers. Exactly one week later, The Hazel Scott Show was permanently cancelled.    In the years that followed, Hazel and her husband separated, divorcing in 1960. In 1957, she moved to Paris with her son, Adam Clayton Powell III. She was able to revive her music career in Europe, although her career never again reached pre-McCarthy heights. Undeterred by being blacklisted in the U.S., Scott continued her advocacy of Civil Rights. In 1963, she marched alongside James Baldwin and many others to the U.S. Embassy in Paris to support Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington. Scott returned to the U.S. in the late 1960s and died of pancreatic cancer in 1981, aged only sixty-one.  Hazel Scott stood out in mid-twentieth century America for her ability to strike the keys of entertainment and activism in perfect harmony. She felt the responsibility of her gift and with it, she relentlessly challenged racial injustice and inequality. Hazel Scott, among many things, was a pianist, protestor, and pioneer deserving of a place in popular memory alongside widely celebrated figures such as Harry Belafonte and Ella Fitzgerald.   Further Reading   Chilton, K., Hazel Scott: The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist from Café Society to Hollywood to HUAC (The University of Michigan Press, 2008)   Mack, D., ‘Hazel Scott: A Career Curtailed’,  The Journal of African American History, 91.2 (2006), 153-170   Mack, D., ‘Hazel Scott (1920-1981)’, BlackPast.org , (2007) < https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/scott-hazel-1920-1981/#:~:text=In%201949%2C%20Scott%20won%20a,an%20African%20American%20female%20host > [Last Accessed: 26/01/2024]   McGee, K. A., Some Like it Hot: Jazz Women in Film and Television, 1928-1959 (Wesleyan University Press, 2009)   Regester, C. B., African American Actresses: The Struggle for Visibility, 1900-1960 (Indiana University Press, 2010)   Tucker, N., ‘Hazel Scott: The Gorgeous Face of Jazz at the Mid-Century’, Library of Congress Blogs, (2021) < https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2021/10/hazel-scott-the-gorgeous-face-of-jazz-at-the-mid-century/ > [Last Accessed: 26/01/2024]

"Well! What could be more unjust! Our life, our liberty, our fortune are no longer ours; leaving childhood, turned over to a despot whom often the heart finds repulsive, the most beautiful days of our life slip away in moans and tears, while our fortune becomes prey to fraud and debauchery. . .” The historiography surrounding the French Revolution often neglects the role of women, primarily due to the male-centric narratives prevalent in contemporary accounts. Etta Palm d'Aelders, a figure less commonly acknowledged, was born in the Netherlands in 1743 and emerged as a noteworthy female agent for the French Secret Service during this transformative period. Having relocated to Paris in the late 1760s, d'Aelders, through well-connected relationships, garnered access to complex social circles. Notably, she was recruited as a spy by Jean Frédéric Phélypeaux, Count of Maurepas, and her espionage activities extended to serving the interests of both her home country and Prussia, reflecting the complexities of her allegiances. Her involvement with the Société Patriotique et Démocratique des Amis de la Constitution, colloquially known as the Club of the Cordeliers, marked a significant phase in d'Aelders' life during the French Revolution. Within this political club advocating democratic principles and the abolition of monarchy, she utilised her platform to champion the cause of women's rights, a radical stance considering the prevailing societal norms. Notably, in March 1791, d'Aelders established the Société Patriotique et de Bienfaisance des Amies de la Vérité, a female counterpart to Cercle social. This organisation aimed to address societal disparities by providing support to impoverished families, establishing educational workshops for young girls, and offering shelter and services for underprivileged women throughout France. Unfortunately, the society's impact did not align with d'Aelders' aspirations. D'Aelders' significance peaked at the French National Convention in 1790 when she delivered a discourse titled 'Discourse on the Injustice Of the Laws in Favor of Men, at the Expense of Women.' In this address, she articulated the challenges faced by women and advocated for their inclusion in political processes. Acknowledging the nuances of her political allegiance, d'Aelders admitted to a prolonged journey towards supporting the French Revolution. She was politically conflicted due to her dual roles in serving the French government and harbouring sympathies for the revolutionaries, her complexity underscores the intricate landscape of the time. Ultimately, d'Aelders faced repercussions for her espionage activities, enduring imprisonment for four years before her release in 1798. Tragically, her death less than a year after her release, with an unmarked grave serving as her final resting place. While Etta Palm d'Aelders may not enjoy the same historical recognition as her male counterparts, her contributions to the feminist movement and steadfast commitment to challenging societal norms should not be dismissed. In an era characterised by upheaval, her advocacy served as a catalyst for progress, leaving behind a legacy that continues to inspire those dedicated to fostering a more inclusive and equitable society. Although the fruition of her aspirations for women's rights took time, her advocacy remains a pivotal moment in the ongoing trajectory towards gender equality in France.

If The Iliad  was written down in the late eighth or early seventh century BCE, then why was it that the first translation into English by a woman only appeared in 2015, by classicist Caroline Alexander? The ostensible absence of women is dispiriting to say the least, but women have in fact been working in translation for much longer than we think. Beginning with Anne Le Fèvre Dacier, a late 17th and early 18th century French classicist, up to Emily Wilson’s acclaimed The Odyssey  in 2018 and The Iliad  in 2023, there is a visible thread connecting these women as translators of much lauded texts.  Whereas the debate around female translators was much more potent at the time of Dacier, when published women writers were rare and often only elite women ‘of letters’, modern day feminist offerings of The Odyssey  and The Iliad  breathe new life into the source material and aim for a broader readership. The place of women translators was up for interrogation in the 18th century, whereas now attention is given to making the classics more relevant to contemporary readers, in Wilson's case by showing how The Odyssey  provides a richly intersectional view of life during the Trojan War (12th or 13th century BCE).  The Iliad  and The Odyssey and Women To begin with, The Iliad  and The Odyssey  are stalwarts of the Western literary canon. The great tales of war and ancient civilisation are reflected in the epic scale of The Iliad , spanning the origins and course of the Trojan War, and The Odyssey , the twenty-year journey home from the war following a central hero, Odysseus. They are both epic poems, written in dactylic hexameter, in Greek, and believed to be written by ‘Homer’, who may have been one or several writers (this debate is known as the Homeric question). Narratively, questions around humanity are central to the conflicts of the poems, and the fervent belief in fate, gods, and mythical creatures ensures the legacy of the poems as fantastical and centred around journeys and family relationships. These epic poems primarily concern men, their acts of violence and the societies they sought to defend, but the female characters in these poems are not one-dimensional. Helen of Troy, Penelope, Circe and Nausicaa for example are all women with certain status, demonised or loved, who occupy a complex role as they are not simply wives or daughters.   Importantly, the work of modern female classicists like Mary Beard, Edith Hall and Nathalie Haynes has aimed to revise a culturally dominant view of Ancient Greece as a solely masculine world, bringing new life to the words of these epics. Therefore, the issue of women and Homer’s poems goes beyond the relatively secondary role they occupy in both epics, since translations by women are part of the broad reassessment of classical studies. And it emerges that an earlier strand in our story of translating Homer takes us back to the 1670s. Anne Le Fèvre Dacier: The first female translator of Homer Anne Le Fèvre Dacier, born c. 1651 in Northern France, is our first heroine, who appeared on the translation scene uninvited and ambitious. Her published defences of her Neoclassical style and choices as a writer reflect the uneasy place she held as an educated and privileged person who was nevertheless going against the norm by entering the male-dominated domain of translation. Taught Greek and Latin by her father, a professor of classics, her education was unusual for this time (Lauren Hepburn). She was invited to contribute to the special editions of Greek and Roman texts prepared for the Dauphin, The Delphin Classics,  in the 1670s (Hepburn). Access to the highest ranks of French society gave Dacier certain freedoms and privileges as an academic, as she was highly educated in a time where classical education was withheld from most women. The publication of The Iliad  in 1699 made Dacier the first woman to translate Homer’s poem into French, followed by The Odyssey  (1708). Alexander Pope, a much better-known writer today, was her contemporary, and Dacier found much to criticise in his translation of The Iliad . He had a respected place in the literary sphere, and so Dacier’s decision to critique him indicated her gutsy aim. Taylor outlines her unique position, as a purveyor of the Ancient school of Classicism, therefore retaining Homer’s style. According to French and Comparative Literature Professor Helena Taylor, ‘Her status as savante, often a contested identity, was accepted’, so the choice of Dacier to publicly critique her male contemporaries underlines her self motivation to carve out a place in the ‘querelle d’Hom è r, an academic debate that was largely comprised of male writers (22). She was keen to quarrel and engage in lively debate which was traditionally masculine, but many critics have rather narrowly viewed her as misguided ‘in her old age’ and unfeminine (24).  Thus she entered into the public debate over women’s status, known as the ‘querelles des femmes’, by publishing Une Défense d’Homère  ( A Defence of Homer ) (1715) and Réflexions sur la Préface de Pope  ( Reflections on the Preface of Pope , 1719).  Erika Harlitz-Kern notes that, ‘In her line-by-line commentary to The Odyssey , Dacier mocks her male colleagues for using bombastic language in their translations in contrast to Homer's straightforward and humble poetry’. Her objective as a translator was to remain faithful to Homer’s style and language, and Dacier outlined how the beauty of his poem lay ‘dans la clarté & dans la noblesse; elle est claire par les mots propres, & noble par les mots empruntés’ (in its clarity and nobility; it is clear through its own words, and noble through the words that are borrowed) (Dacier 7).  In her prefaces Dacier defended the classical style of Homer and argued its superiority to Pope’s modern version; Her own position as a vessel for translation was to adopt a humble position. She wrote that ‘je me sens obligée de le defendre encore contre les reproches d’un homme plus eclairé’(I feel obliged to once more defend my translation against the criticisms of a brighter man) (35). She had to feign humility by claiming her male peers are ‘brighter’, and Marie-Pascale Pieretti underlined that she had to appear self-deprecating due to the contested place of women in the translation sphere: ‘Claiming to restore the integrity of Homer for her contemporaries, Anne Dacier, for example, presents her audacious project to translate the Iliad as writing for her own amusement’ (475-6). Even though Dacier was a ‘savante’, her expertise was still up for debate due to the quarrels surrounding women writers. Pope was reduced to humility in his response to Dacier, saying that ‘ my whole desire is but to pre- serve the humble character of a faithful Translator, and a quiet subject’ (Weinbrot 22). His rhetoric can only portray Dacier in fiery opposition to himself, a law-abiding and humble servant, as Dacier’s outspokenness would frustratingly be held against her as a female translator. Despite staunch criticism, she firmly established herself as a knowledgeable classicist, and brought Homer’s epics to a wider and primarily female readership. She certainly had supporters, and Mary Astell’s ‘A Serious Proposal to the Ladies’ in 1694 praised her intelligence, calling upon her readership to ‘Remember, I pray you… the more modern Dacier!’ (Astell). Dacier then was considered a symbol of aspiration for women to be educated, even ‘modern’, an indicator of her role in the constant fight for women’s voices to be heard in education. Pieretti added   that ‘Dacier had also presented these translations as a way to remedy female readers' lack of access to Greek antiquity’ (477). Dacier’s intellect was iconised in the cartoon Wonder Woman , where she was sketched out as a feminist hero and brought to a new generation of readers in 1951. The artists of Wonder Woman dramatised Dacier’s education as a young girl, with her father remarking ‘a girl with the mind of a brilliant man’, and this satirical representation of an extraordinary talent emphasises how she defied stereotypes of ‘feminine’ knowledge (DC Comics). Moving to the present day, translation studies continue the project of widening the field of translated texts; in particular, the #womenintranslation project established in 2013 encourages publication and recognition for women writers and translators from around the world. Elsewhere, Emily Wilson, the British-American translator widely known for her fast-paced, inventive translations of Homer since she rose to popular attention with her new translation of The Odyssey  in 2017, has commented on the gender bias that is pervasive in the world of classical studies: ‘The legacy of male domination is still with us – inside the discipline of classics itself and in how non-specialist general readers gain access’ as ‘the works of dead, white elite men have largely been translated by living, white elite men’ (Wilson). She calls up people to reclaim these texts, as they should be accessible to all. The Iliad  and its translators The story of The Iliad  attracted women translators who sought to demonstrate the accessibility of Greek classics for a wider readership. Women have great influence in the poem, even if their active voices are not laid out in the lines of the poems. The project of female translators has changed over the ages, and the possibilities of The Iliad  lie in the universality of the story. Translators from Dacier to Emily Wilson have adapted the Greek to reflect societal and political concerns of their era. There is a legacy of male translators which female translators have worked against and subverted by decentering the patriarchal story of The Iliad . Despite the homosocial vision of The Iliad , the irony lies in the fact that this great war between the Trojans and the Achaeans originated in the pursuit of a woman. Achilles identifies Helen as the source of the war in The Iliad , wondering why ‘we, for all our hearts’ sorrow, quarrelled together for the sake of a girl in soul-perishing hatred?’ (Homer 19.58-9). The cause of the Trojan war boiled down to ‘the sake of a girl’ is simplistic but illuminating (19.59). American literary critic George Steiner writes about Dacier’s contemporary, Pope, whose 1715-20 translation of The Iliad  was followed by a succession of notable ‘Homers’: the Modernist ‘masters, such as D. H. Lawrence, W. H. Auden and, supremely, Joyce’, as well as Derek Walcott’s Omeros  (372). Steiner only references Mme Dacier in passing and focuses more attention on the importance of George Chapman’s The Illiads  (1598), so this near-absence emphasises the need to commemorate the important work of female translators and writers (367). A gap of several hundred years separates Dacier’s translation in 1699, and the first English translation of The Iliad by a woman, Caroline Alexander in 2015. Emily Wilson’s translation is the newest, having been published in 2023. The epic poem benefits from such retellings as the role of women in The Iliad  is significant.  Besides line by line translation, fiction retellings by female writers expose aspects of The Iliad  which are pertinent to modern society. Amongst the fictional retellings of The Iliad , Alice Oswald’s poetic reimagining, Memorial (2011) , focuses on the fatalities and brutality of warfare, whilst Pat Barker offer a feminist retelling from the perspective of Briseis in The Silence of the Girls  (2018). These female-centric adaptations of The Iliad  nonetheless represent translations of the poem, but demonstrate the creative potential to modernise the story. Caroline Alexander’s translation has been criticised as too traditional, as she uses free verse so that the lines can replicate the language of the Greek. Sometimes viewed as a more old-fashioned manner of translating, Alexander wrote that ‘the offering of a complete translation of The Iliad  should strive to replicate the Greek original in as many ways as the English language allows’ (51). Her traditional approach can make for a less fluid read in modern English, but as we have seen before with Dacier, when handling such an iconic poem, any translation choices are held up for questioning. The debate is much less gender-based than Dacier’s time, but Alexander’s choice was unique and was founded in her principles as a translator.  Moving onto Emily Wilson’s text, it is the newest in the translations of The Iliad . Naoíse Mac Sweeney noted in her review that Wilson’s The Iliad  avoids ‘an unwarranted glorification of violence on the one hand and tedium on the other’ (Mac Sweeney). The tedium which was criticised in Dacier and even Alexander’s work indicates a key difference with Wilson’s translation. She differs from the two other translators’ intention to retain the original meaning and style as she modernises the poem in places, and like Alexander she uses a freer iambic pentameter which does not limit her lines to an archaic meter. Mac Sweeney also remarks that   a ‘key element in Wilson’s style is the register, poised between the high epic and the everyday’, which is far removed from Dacier’s Neoclassical style. Building upon this, the importance of Wilson’s often colloquial style is paramount as her Odyssey  is refreshing, lyrical and evocative of ancient times but importantly modern. Coupled with the quick pace, Wilson’s translation attests to the transformation from Dacier’s aim to retain Homer’s voice to Wilson’s much more modern voice.  However, Wilson is aware of her place in a long line of translators and the project of women working within the classics. For example, Wilson herself identified several important words in her translation, including a term which Helen uses to refer to herself, ‘my dog-face self’, in Book Three (Wilson 3.223). She noted that a famous American translator before her, Richmond Lattimore, chose ‘slut that I am’ which Wilson avoided (Homer trans. Lattimore). As an example of Homeric insult, this phrase has been translated as all manner of derogatory words typically attributed to women, like ‘bitch’ and ‘wanton’, but the actual Greek is not necessarily interpreted as a sexist insult. Wilson’s   choice to avoid the gendered derogatory insult suggests Helen’s sense of irony towards her role in the war rather than a sexist self-reprimand. It is, in any case, an oxymoron, and so can be interpreted with some freedom. This is not to say that Homer’s texts are free from misogynistic thinking, but that a modern translation can reframe the way in which female characters in particular view themselves and can be presented as three-dimensional beings.  The Iliad’s  many translators have grappled with the key issues around retaining the original style, meter and meanings in their language. Oswald herself argues that female translators feel a ‘strange and potentially productive sense of intimate alienation’ through working with classic texts written by men, and Wilson concurs that ‘female translators often stand at a critical distance when approaching authors who are…male ’ (Oswald, in Gibson 58; Wilson). Alexander and Wilson are aware of the need to carve out a space for women to enter the world of classics, and in this way continue Dacier’s aim to widen the readership of Homer. Their removal from the story is much more due to historical bias against female translators than the tale itself, and so their work adds significantly to the modern critical understanding of The Odyssey  and The Iliad. Emily Wilson’s Odyssey and Atwood’s Penelopiad Emily Wilson’s The Odyssey  in 2018 was the first translation into English by a woman, another milestone in the world of classics, which aims to modernise the story whilst retaining its swift pace.  In Book 22, twelve young women working in Odysseus’ palace are suspected of disloyalty and are killed without any real justification or mercy. Wilson’s translation describes how ‘They gasped, feet twitching for a while, but not for long’ (22.473-4). The cruelty of their killing is emphasised, however the conjunction ‘but’ reassures the reader that they do not suffer for long. Wilson spoke about the translation of violence, particular gender-based acts in the poem, and criticised how ‘contemporary translators and commentators often present the massacre of these women as if it were quite ordinary, and entirely justified’. This moment in the tale requires careful reading in modern day society, as contemporary concerns around gender violence demand that the culture of victim blaming is changed. Wilson’s translation can be read in light of the widely recognised translations, as she uses the words to garner new meaning which sympathises with the women rather than suggesting culpability. Looking back at another famous translation, Alexander Pope went further by offering a misogynistic outlook of the enslaved women in The Odyssey . In his 1726 translation, he used defamatory language, calling the slave-girls the ‘nightly prostitutes’ and ‘base revilers of our house and name’ . He overtly demonises the women, portraying them as immoral and explicitly to blame. His version may be a product of his time, but nonetheless presents a merciless approach to the women in the story. Wilson stated that she wanted to ‘bring out the horror of what happened to these women’ and restore dignity to them, which is evident in her brutal yet emotional treatment of the enslaved girls’ unjust killing. She refers to them as girls, not creatures, and frames this scene as a crime, not a punishment, which is specifically inflicted by men in power over women. A focus on the female experience in The Odyssey  also  is something which Wilson aimed to draw out. There are independent female characters like Circe the sorceress (popularised recently by Madeline Miller’s Circe ) and Calypso the goddess of the sea; as well as Athena, goddess of war and wisdom, who has significant power over Odysseus’ journey home. Wilson remarked that ‘ The Odyssey  traces deep male fears about female power’ (Wilson). Typically, the dangerous female character has supernatural qualities, and Wilson’s interest in male anxiety brings a much more intersectional view of The Odyssey  as a text that is aware of gender power dynamics. Atwood’s The Penelopiad (2005)   is a gift of Homeric storytelling, transforming The Odyssey  by retelling it through the perspective of the ill-fated young girls. The novella’s title uses the name of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, to emphasise the female perspective. Atwood’s narrators are a Greek chorus, a typical narrative technique within Ancient Greek plays, and choosing the twelve murdered servant girls as the chorus restores their voices as well as reinforcing the sense of inescapable fate as women trapped in a patriarchal world. Penelope can be defined in many terms, a long suffering wife, a clever but manipulative woman, or an  entrapped wife trying to fend off male suitors. Her decision to weave a web before declaring a new husband symbolises her shrewdness, as she undoes her weaving every night to keep her suitors at bay. Wilson lists Atwood’s The Penelopiad  among the greatest classical reimaginings by women, which subvert and even resist classic translations. The Penelopiad has been performed onstage in several productions and contributes to the ever-growing genre of Ancient Greek retellings which shed light on the female experience. Wilson’s translations are thus part of a contemporary shift in classical studies to expand the world of the epic poems to consider marginalised figures and interrogate gender roles. Much can be learnt from the women who have taken on the challenge of translating The Iliad  and The Odyssey . From Dacier’s pioneering work shedding a light on the limits of female education, to Wilson’s modernising translation and the retellings in contemporary fiction, the female translator’s voice has surmounted obstacles surrounding these classics. The role of a female translator can bring to life the nuances of warfare and de-centre the story from a purely phallocentric world and have much to contribute to the ever-diversifying world of classicism. Dacier's defence of her place in the classics world made her a trailblazer, and as classical studies have become more inclusive, female translators like Alexander and Wilson have followed in her stead. The very existence of a translation by a woman, my study has shown, presents a milestone in translation, indicating the gender disparity in the classics. Female translators have thus been breaking down the barriers to Homer’s texts for hundreds of years. Bibliography Primary Sources Astell, Mary. ‘A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, For the Advancement of Their True and Greatest Interest’ (1694), Early Modern Women on The Fall: An Anthology, ed. Michelle M. Dowd and Festa, Thomas, Arizona State University, 2012, https://asu.pressbooks.pub/early-modern-women-on-the-fall/chapter/a-serious- proposal-to-the-ladies/#footnote-155-1. Atwood, Margaret. The Penelopiad. Canons, 2018 Dacier, Anne Le Fèvre. ‘Preface to L'Iliade d'Homère’ (1711), French Translators, 1600-1800: An Online Anthology of Prefaces and Criticism, no. 17, June 2008. Scholarworks @ UMass Amherst, https://scholarworks.umass.edu/french_translators/17 . Homer, The Iliad, trans. Caroline Alexander. Ecco Press: New York, 2016. Homer, The Iliad, trans. Emily Wilson. WW Norton & Co: New York, 2023. Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Emily Wilson. WW Norton & Co: New York, 2018. Homer. The Iliad Homer. The Odyssey Oswald, Alice. Memorial. Faber & Faber, 2011. The Odyssey by Homer, trans. Alexander Pope (1715-1720). The Odyssey of Homer, trans. Richard Lattimore. HarperCollins, London, 1967. Secondary Sources Alexander, Caroline. ‘On Translating Homer’s Iliad’, Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, vol. 145, no. 2, 2016, pp.50-58. Gibson, Richard Hughes. ‘On Women Englishing Homer’, Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, vol. 26, no. 3, 2019, pp. 35-68. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/arion.26.3.0035 . Harlitz-Kern, Erika. ‘What happens when women translate the Classics’, The Week, Jan 2020. The Week, https://theweek.com/articles/872174/what-happens-when-women- translate-classics. Hepburn, Lauren. ‘Anne Le Fèvre Dacier: Homer’s First Female Translator’, Peter Harrington Gallery, Nov. 2019, https://www.peterharringtongallery.co.uk/blog/anne-le- fevre-dacier-homers-first-female-translator/. Logan, William. ‘Plains of Blood’, New York Times, Dec. 2012. NYT, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/books/review/memorial-alice-oswalds-version-of- the-iliad.html. Mac Sweeney, Naoíse. ‘The new ‘Iliad’ translation is a genuine page-turner’, The Washington Post, Sept. 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/09/21/iliad-translation- emily-wilson-review/. Pieretti, Marie-Pascale. ‘Women Writers and Translation in Eighteenth-Century France’, The French Review, vol. 75, no. 3, Feb. 2002, pp. 474-488. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3132846 . Radzinski, Meytal. Women in Translation movement. WIT, https://www.womenintranslation.org/ . Steiner, George. ‘Homer in English translation’, The Cambridge Companion to Homer, ed. Robert Fowler, Cambridge UP, 2004, pp. 363-375. Cambridge Core, https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-companion-to-homer/homer-in- english-translation/B50623B7EB448B51A4F9AA9F22CE7639. Trélat, Fabienne. ‘Saumur. Anne Dacier, femme savante protégée de Louis XIV’, Le Courrier de l’Ouest, Sept. 2021. Ouest-France, https://www.ouest-france.fr/pays-de-la- loire/saumur-49400/saumur-anne-dacier-femme-savante-protegee-de-louis-xiv- 60a5bbca-17a0-11ec-9f73-6fd91ee9f0dd. Weinbrot, Howard D. “Alexander Pope and Madame Dacier’s Homer: Conjectures Concerning Cardinal Dubois, Sir Luke Schaub, and Samuel Buckley.” Huntington Library Quarterly , vol. 62, no. 1/2, 1999, pp. 1–23. JSTOR , https://doi.org/10.2307/3817806 . Accessed 13 June 2024. Wilson, Emily. ‘A translator’s reckoning with the Women of the Odyssey’, The New Yorker, Dec. 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-translators-reckoning-with-the- women-of-the-odyssey. Wilson, Emily. ‘Emily Wilson on 5 crucial decisions she made in her ‘Iliad’ translation’, The Washington Post, Sept. 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/09/20/emily- wilson-iliad-translation-terms/. Wilson, Emily. ‘Found in translation: how women are making the classics their own’, The Guardian, July 2017. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/07/women-classics-translation-female- scholars-translators.

Within abolitionist and early feminist history, especially Black feminist history, many recognise a single name: Sojourner Truth. An African American abolitionist as well as civil and women’s rights activist of the nineteenth century, her May 1851 speech, now synonymous with the phrase ‘Ar’n’t I a woman?’ and the modernised ‘Ain’t I a woman?’, is one of the most famous and widely recognised abolitionist and women’s rights speeches in American history. Sojourner Truth’s life spanned some of the most tumultuous years of American history, from the end of the Revolutionary War to the beginning of Reconstruction. The formative years of her life occurred within the system of slavery in the US and shaped the direction of her subsequent activism and advocacy. Born into slavery in New York as Isabella Baumfree to parents Elizabeth Baumfree (the daughter of enslaved peoples from Guinea) and James Baumfree (an enslaved man from Ghana), Truth’s childhood was categorised by upheaval and abuse, and she was sold under slavery four times (at the approximate ages of four, 11, 12 and 13 years old). She suffered harsh physical labour, punishment and sexual abuse, and whilst enslaved, she had five children: James (who passed away in childhood), Diana (the result of rape by her enslaver), Peter, Elizabeth, and Sophia, who she had with her husband, an enslaved man named Thomas.   At the turn of the nineteenth century, the State of New York began the process of enacting laws to abolish slavery, although, the act was one for gradual abolition. As a result, children born to an enslaved mother after July 1799 were declared legally free after a period of indentured servitude. Specifically, they were declared free when male children reached the age of 28 and female children reached the age of 25. Those, such as Truth, who were born prior to July 1799, were redefined as indentured servants and could no longer be bought and sold but were required to continue their unpaid labour. Truth’s enslaver, Dutch-American John Dumont, promised her freedom in July 1826 "if she would do well and be faithful" but this promise was later broken and her freedom revoked.   In late 1826, however, Truth took freedom into her own hands. She escaped with her daughter Sophia, leaving her other children behind. The pair found refuge with the Van Wagenen family in New Paltz, New York and the Van Wagenens bought the pair’s freedom from Dumont when he later came looking for them. The family also aided Truth in suing Dumont, who had sold a then five-year-old Peter into slavery in Alabama after the passage of the anti-slavery law, making the sale illegal. In 1828, Truth filed a lawsuit with the New York Supreme Court for his return and became the first Black woman to successfully sue a white man in the United States.   In 1829, Truth relocated to New York City where she took up domestic work for the following 11 years. She worked for multiple evangelical preachers, including Elijah Pierson. As a child, her mother had spoken to her of God and Truth herself had had ‘talks with God’. Despite these early religious engagements, she is believed to have experienced a ‘spiritual awakening’ whilst living with the Van Wagenen family and at the start of June 1843, she changed her name from Isabella Baumfree to Sojourner Truth, later being quoted to have explained the name change:         "The Lord gave me ‘Sojourner’ because I was to travel up an’ down the land, showin’ the people their sins an’ bein’ a sign unto them. Afterwards, I told the Lord I wanted another name ‘cause everybody else had two names, and the Lord gave me ‘Truth’, because I was to declare the truth to people." Her new name signalled her calling as a preacher and abolitionist.   Truth had never learned to read or write and her first language was Dutch, a reflection of her prior enslavement. Despite this, she serves as a figure who, through her activism, broke with conventional understandings of intellectuality during the period. Not only did her race and gender starkly contrast with popular understandings of who could be considered an intellectual, but combined with her inability to read or write, she strongly defied stereotypes.   Following her ‘spiritual awakening’ in 1843, Truth travelled throughout the Northeast, preaching at camp meetings and drawing in large crowds when she spoke and sang. A year later, she joined the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, a utopian abolitionist community in Massachusetts which had been founded two years prior with the aim of forming ‘a better and purer form of society’. The community supported the immediate abolition of slavery, the equality of all genders, races, and religions, citizenship for free Black Americans, as well as pacifism. During her time working and living with the community, Truth met prominent abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. She is believed to have given her first anti-slavery speech the same year that she joined the community.   However, her activism did not only take the form of speeches. Truth utilised song as a means of advocacy. One song performed at an abolitionist convention in the 1840s, called 'I Am Pleading for My People', incorporated the following lyrics: "I am pleading for my people, a poor downtrodden race Who dwell in freedom’s boasted land with no abiding place I am pleading that my people may have their rights restored, For they have long been toiling, and yet had no reward" And "I am pleading for the mothers who gaze in wild despair Upon the hated auction block, and see their children there." Through the song, Truth advocated for those who were enslaved in the United States by highlighting the hypocrisy of the US as ‘the land of the free’. Notably, she introduced a gendered dynamic, perhaps drawing on her own experience as a mother within the system of slavery, to emphasise the particular suffering enslaved mothers experienced.   The speech that has become synonymous with Sojourner Truth’s name, however, was delivered in 1851 at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, and was one which she gave whilst on a lecture tour of central and western New York. Known as the ‘Ar’n’t I a woman?’ or ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’ speech, Sojourner Truth’s speech on women’s rights to the convention has been the subject of controversy in the historical world.   The Sojourner Truth Project reports two principal versions of the speech: one transcribed and published in 1851 by Marius Robinson (who attended the convention) and one written 12 years later by Frances Gage (one of the convention’s organisers). It is Gage’s later version which introduced the now famous ‘and ar’n’t I a woman?’ line, a question which neither Robinson nor any newspaper coverage of the speech in 1851 reported. As well as this inconsistency, Gage’s version has been highlighted by historians for employing distinctly more colloquial language than other records of the speech. Despite these differences, the key points of the speech run parallel in each version: "I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and mowed, and can any man do more than that?" (Robinson’s version) "-And ar’n’t I a woman? Look at me. Look at my arm. I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man can head me." (Gage’s version) The importance of Sojourner Truth’s speech to the convention is therefore rooted in the way it highlighted the unique position and struggles of African American women in the nineteenth century. As well as her abolitionist efforts and campaigning for women’s rights, historians have recently highlighted Truth’s efforts to recruit Black soldiers for the Union Army and obtain food and clothing donations during the Civil War, work which resulted in her meeting with President Lincoln in 1864.   As an intellectual and activist, Sojourner Truth stands out for her early intersectional politics and abolitionist efforts. Her work continues to have contemporary relevance in political affairs; in 2013, when the House passed the Violence Against Women Act after months of debate over its expansion to include protections for Native American women, immigrants, and LGBT+ people, amid the floor debate, Representative Gwen Moore utilised the famous question attributed to Truth, stating: "I would say as Sojourner Truth would say: Ain’t they women? They deserve protections." Several statues have been erected to commemorate the life and activism of Sojourner Truth, including one in Florence, Massachusetts near the former site of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry. Sojourner Truth also features in the Women's Rights Pioneers Monument in Central Park, New York City. Installed in 2020, the sculpture was the first in the park to depict historical women.   Further Reading:   BlackPast, ‘Sojourner Truth (CA. 1797-1883)’, (2007): https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/truth-sojourner-isabella-baumfree-ca-1797-1883/   David, L. and Stetson, E., Glorying in Tribulation: The Life Work of Sojourner Truth (Michigan State University Press, 1994)  The Sojourner Truth Project, ‘Compare the Two Speeches’: https://www.thesojournertruthproject.com/compare-the-speeches/ Truth, S. and Gilbert, O., The Narrative of Sojourner Truth   Zackodnik, T. C., ‘”I Don’t Know How You Will Feel When I Get Through”: Racial Difference, Woman’s Rights, and Sojourner Truth’, Feminist Studies, 30.1 (2004), 49-73

Introduction  Almost three centuries after her birth, Catherine the Great continues to be memorialised and edified in modern media with anachronistic shows like Elle Fanning’s  The Great . Her life remains an example to modern women in a patriarchal society taking power for themselves away from mediocre white men. At the age of 16, Catherine was shackled to perhaps the most incompetent emperor in Russian history, Peter III,  but she wasn’t going to let that hold her back. Catherine made the Mojo Dojo Casa House of the Russian Empire her Barbie Dreamhouse. However, as a historical figure and not the icon Barbie, Catherine cannot be idolised as a feminist icon simply because she succeeded in what she did as a woman. As a globally known figure, Catherine is rightfully perceived from numerous perspectives and with varying degrees of sympathy, respect and admiration from her homelands and from those she oppressed and marginalised. Catherine’s reign was largely shaped by her Enlightenment ideals that motivated her lofty goals of a more equalised society. These goals of equality were implemented sparsely and, unsurprisingly for an absolute ruler, unequally.  Early life Known as Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, she was neither Catherine nor Russian. Born Sophie Friederike Auguste, Prinzessin von Anhalt-Zerbst, 21st April 1729 in Prussia, now Poland, she was chosen as wife to the future emperor as a teenager, marking the beginning of a terrible and miserable 18-year marriage. Upon her marriage she was forced to take the name Catherine Alekseyevna by Peter’s predecessor and aunt, Empress Elizabeth. Catherine’s mother was determined to raise her daughter to the heights of society, with the pinnacle aim of a royal marriage to fulfill the goals she herself did not achieve in life.  Catherine’s pro-enlightenment ideals displayed throughout her rule were hinted at in her childhood. Educated by French tutors, as befitting a child of noble birth, Catherine learned the language of the ruling 18th century elites as well as etiquette and Lutheran doctrine. She learned Russian upon her arrival into her new homeland and converted to the Russian Orthodox Church. Reportedly a dedicated student, Catherine demonstrated genuine devotion to her adopted country and its values, more so than her husband who openly preferred his native German lands. Her intelligence and attitude made her more popular than her inept husband, gaining her the support of the military for her coup d’état.  Coup d’état  Empress Elizabeth died in 1762 leaving Peter III to ascend to the Russian throne. His reign was to be embarrassingly short lived. In the winter he became Emperor and by summer he had lost his throne and his life. On the 28th June 1762 Catherine seized power with the support of the military and most significant sects of Russian court. The couple’s German roots were virtually all they had in common. Even Peter’s predecessor Elizabeth viewed him as an incompetent fool, and his fleeting reign as Emperor served to prove her right. Peter’s unpopularity was so great, in fact, that Catherine recognised a threat to his life and her own in the likelihood that someone would attempt to assassinate him for his pro-Prussian, anti-Russian military stratagem. Alienating his courtiers, the military and the public, Peter all but condemned himself.  Following his failure to rule, Catherine swiftly took control of the country with little bloodshed, emphasising her husband’s unpopularity and her argued legitimacy as ruler through her character. With the support of courtiers, politicians and military, Catherine felt confident to strike. Catherine was aided in overthrowing Peter by her lover Grigory Orlov, stationed at St Petersburg during the takeover. Although her lovers have been a footnote in the history of her reign, often aiding her in military and political strife, they have not come close to the glory of her time on the Russian throne as one of its most charismatic, intellectually progressive and triumphant rulers.  Legacy  Catherine is known to have numerous lovers throughout her marriage and reign, many of whom played significant roles in the politics and military conduct of her country. This has been used against her image as ruler as the idea of a woman sleeping her way to the top has been applied; this can be easily dismissed as a woman who is already ruler of a country does not have much farther to ascend.  Catherine’s ideals resonated particularly with the sects of Russian court sympathetic to the Enlightenment found in western Europe. As a friend and lifelong supporter of the French enlightenment philosopher, Voltaire, Catherine held much more progressive ideals than Russia was accustomed to. This included the education of girls, opening a number of schools to equalise the rate of education in the vast Slavic lands beginning with the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens, reserved for daughters of the nobility. The schools Catherine established, later for children of all classes and sexes, barring serfs, were notably separate from the church in order to create a society loyal to her governmental system and not the Orthodox church which had historically controlled the education system.  This secularisation of society was motivated by Catherine’s Enlightenment ideals including the right to representation, education and self-determination. These ideals also allowed her to learn more about vaccinations, a scientific sin opposed by the church. Determined to abolish serfdom and reform Russian society, Catherine fell short of many of her lofty goals set out early in her reign. However, she achieved more than her critics ever expected. Catherine became the first person in Russia to undergo the procedure of inoculation against smallpox in 1768. By 1780 some 20,000 Russians had been inoculated. Catherine’s cultural influence on her people - and they were undoubtedly her people - is colossal and undeniable.  What should be remembered in respect to Catherine’s strength and unique style as a ruler, is that these qualities did not erase those she shared with rulers that came before and after her. Imperialism flourished under Catherine and, although a measure of success for many rulers in the past, the understanding of this form of oppression has altered with our understanding of human rights over time. Catherine claimed to be ruling for the benefit of the ‘common good’, another ideal of the Enlightenment advocated by a particular inspiration to this enlightened despot, Rousseau. In many ways she surpassed her contemporaries, motivated by these ideals, but in many arguably more important ways, she was just the same. Five million people remained in serfdom under Catherine, the partition of Poland in the latter 18th century between Austria, Russia and Prussia erased the country from the European map until the Second World War, to the benefit of Catherine as ruler and absolutism was reconfirmed as the powerhouse of Russia.  Bibliography  Clements, Barbara Evans. A History of Women in Russia: From Earliest Times to the Present . Indiana University Press, 2012. Miate, L. "Catherine the Great." World History Encyclopedia , 22 Aug. 2023,   https://www.worldhistory.org/Catherine_the_Great/ . Accessed 19 March 2024. Oldenbourg-Idalie, Z. "Catherine the Great." Encyclopedia Britannica ,   https://www.britannica.com/biography/Catherine-the-Great . Accessed 19 Mar. 2024. Raeff, Marc. Catherine the Great: A Profile . Macmillan, 1972.

Introducing two heavyweights in the museum world: The Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the Grand Egyptian Museum. Housing vast collections of Ancient Egyptian heritage, these museums are two greatly different spaces, but both aim to showcase predynastic and Dynastic ancient Egypt. Having visited both relatively recently, I aim to explain the differences and similarities between the ideas behind the two museums, all while focusing on the amazing spaces, objects, and curatorship within, and our own experiences and highlights. Visiting in January 2024 during the presumed height of the tourist season for Egypt, my two friends joined me experiencing all the highs (and lows) of the museums. The Egyptian Museum in Cairo The pink hued building, built in 1902 by Italian architects, was designed by a Frenchman following an international competition. Previously, the growing Egyptian collection was housed in the Cairo Citadel, to the east outside the city walls. This museum houses the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts. The building’s lengthy history has seen turmoil, especially in the 2011 Arab Springs riots. Artifacts were stolen and destroyed including wooden statues of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, luckily most have been recovered in subsequent years. Located in Tahrir Square in Downtown Cairo, the museum is accessible by foot or tour bus. Walking was difficult as we had to cross between four and six lanes of busy traffic and move through various security checkpoints. Opening hours of 0900-17:00. The prices are localized for Egyptians and foreigners but we paid 230 EGP for a student ticket – the equivalent of around 6 GBP. We entered at 13:30-13:45 and left at closing time. With over a 100 exhibition halls, there is a lot to see. The museum itself is located over two floors with multiple storage rooms and large anterooms, with many a spare corner to stash artifacts. Museum entrance The main attractions are the entrance hall, housing pyramid capstones, granite sarcophagi, and the statue of Queen Tiye (wife of Amenhotep III, mother of Akhenaten and grandmother of Tutankhamun). Another large gallery upstairs is dedicated to Tiye’s parents; mother; Thuya and father; Yuya where we saw their mummified bodies and personal items once entombed in the Valley of the Kings. This was a very well curated exhibition, a highlight of our visit, with the showcase focusing on Thuya and Yuya’s lives and what each material item meant, the ill curatorship did not heavily impact the artifacts. Speaking of, the poor standard of the building showed raw and unfinished walls and posters in the gallery, along with a dirty floor.  The entire building was packed with all manner of artifacts, although most were not labeled. Some were, but illegible due to the weathered paper. In my opinion, over half of artifacts are inaccessible to those who do not understand Arabic . This means a tour or guide is necessary for some parts of the museum. Accessibility is varied – there are maps and lifts but they are run down. Benches are hard to come by if you want a seat and it was crowded in the main galleries. Main Exhibition hall The museum is in slight disrepair, which is extremely sad to see, as architecturally, the building is beautiful and almost glows pink in the sunlight. Sand covers the floor, cracks and potholes are littered around the second story, and windows are yellowed, with the glass ceiling panes threatening to collapse. However, the main draw for this museum is the Tutankhamun exhibition on the second floor. It is astounding to see the famed treasure trove in person! This was the most polished aspect of the museum as it was expertly curated. We thoroughly enjoyed our time in the tiny gallery space even though it was very crowded. We did not expect to see Tutankhamun’s possessions as it was not advertised significantly nor accurately; we were under the impression the collection had been moved to storage and only replica items were on display. Once inside, it was magnificent! Excitingly, some of the oldest objects of ancient Egypt are housed here, including the oldest life sized human statue in the world.  The gift shop is questionable, as there was not much except a few pop-up stalls. We did not buy any souvenirs.  The cafe was poor; it was a single pop-up stand outside serving beverages. However, we had a lot of fun visiting, taking pictures, and saw some of the most famous ancient Egyptian artifacts including the Narmer tablet, Stele of Akhenaten, and Tutankhamun’s golden mask.  Most of the collection was being packed up at the time of our visit, and stored for the relocation to the Grand Egyptian Museum. In spite of its evident flaws, if you are a first-timer in Cairo then this is a must-do attraction. The Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza  The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) began as a competition won by Heneghan Peng Architects of Ireland in 2003. It is a feat of modern design and clearly aims to impress visitors with a huge open atrium and gardens, however the museum had major funding and building setbacks. Parts are still under construction so only the atrium and main hall, plus a handful of shops, are open to the public. Although most of the artifacts from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo have been moved into storage at the GEM, none of the exhibition halls are currently open to the public. Once completed, it will be the world’s largest dedicated archaeological museum at 872,000sqft of exhibition space. Located 1.2 miles from the Giza pyramid complex, the museum is accessible by vehicle only. We had to take a taxi, due to it’s location in the center of a motorway junction. The museum is unconventional in shape and size, akin to a spaceship or train station. I especially love the entrance/exit as you walk under a golden pyramid.   The triangular tiles, glass walls, and ceilings, and the way the light illuminates the statue of Ramesses II in the atrium, create a truly spectacular space. A great feat of engineering; light, bright, clean. When we walked in we were blown away by the openness and style of the modern museum, having never experienced a museum like it before. The ceiling can be likened to that of the British museum in terms of how much natural light the atrium gets during the day. My photos did not do the GEM justice. Opening hours of 09:00-18:00. At the time of writing  (February 2024), tickets are expensive – with no student ticket for internationals. We paid full price to only visit the atrium and immersive Tutankhamun exhibit. This is part of a trial run for visitors (as the main museum galleries are yet to open – presumed opening in Spring 2024, but more likely 2025). So tickets prices will change. Expect to pay up to or over 30 GBP to visit all areas of the museum once open. However, for what you will get once open, the GEM is worth the ticket price. We entered around 14:30 and left after closing time. 131 foot ceilings of glass and concrete, rising to 165ft on the outside, this is, by far, the biggest museum entrance hall I have visited! In comparison, the British Museum’s domed, glass entrance hall is 85 feet from floor to ceiling.  The first main attraction is the statue of Ramesses II, visible from every angle in the main atrium due to it being 36ft. The statue was moved from Ramesses Square in Cairo in 2006, and erected in the atrium in 2018 after a period in storage. There are huge gardens surrounding the museum and, although these were not open when we visited, we could watch the construction taking place. The gardens contain a high level of curatorship to help the flow of visitors. At the top of the main staircase, after you pass through a second set of ticket barriers and over a water feature, you get a perfect view of all three Pyramids of Giza. Lining the staircase are exhibits detailing the life of Egyptian Pharaohs and Gods, in chronological order of the Egyptian Dynasties. We found the steps hard to see as they are the same colour of exhibit bases, and would be tough to navigate for those with impaired vision.  At the time of writing, the entire collection of Tutankhamun is due to be moved for the Spring 2024 opening. However, There is an impressive immersive experience explaining the life of Tutankhamun, which is a must-do activity! Very colourful and sensory, good for families with children. We enjoyed the whole experience.  There are some cafes and restaurants which are expensive but offer decent food options. The building, which also functions as a shopping centre, features several gift shops, where we all purchased quality souvenirs. Overall, it was a wonderful experience seeing the building of new exhibition spaces. A unique day out, but accessing the museum and exiting back to a hotel is tough if you do not know a taxi company. Differences :  Clearly these two museums have significant differences.  I prefer the traditional aspects of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, but appreciate the modernity and ideas behind the Grand Egyptian Museum. The GEM is very neat, clean, and modern, where every aspect is organized and clear. Toilets being fully accessible. Whereas, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo is dusty, even dark in some places, with not much space to move throughout in the height of the tourist season. The building has run out of space to house artifacts, even though most have already been moved to the GEM. The halls are crowded and artifacts are placed in mismatched time periods in randomly allocated spaces, corners, and in badly signposted store rooms, of which we accidentally entered. Toilets are not signposted clearly and look like semi-permanent portaloos. The aim with the Egyptian Museum in Cairo was to create a space for the Department of Antiquities to document, store, and display the artifacts of Egypt. Howard Carter used the museum as a storage facility when removing items discovered in Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. - fulfilling the museum's aims. The aim of the GEM is to continue this, but modernize, adapt, and move away from the turmoil of the previous museum’s history. It wants an international appeal, which might be too ambitious for the Egyptian Government to pull off. The financial cost currently outweighs the benefits and profit, however, the GEM is predicted to generate 55 million GBP a year so will in theory pay itself back, but it is a risky venture. The impressive space of the GEM fully allowed our group the luxury of avoiding a few large tour groups which dominated the atrium of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. However, tours skipped the more hidden corners. There were a few benches and seats in the exhibition spaces, but if you want a longer sit down, visit the cafes. We spent a solid 3 + hours inside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, thanks to the plentiful exhibition spaces and thousands of artefacts to see. We also spent 3 + hours in the Grand Egyptian Museum simply due to its size, spending an hour walking the cafes, gift shops, and other attractions the museum has to offer was rewarding for the effort we put into getting there from Downtown Cairo. Once fully open, you would have to visit over multiple days because of its size. Are they both worth it? Yes. They offer similar experiences of the same ancient empire, yet with hugely differing ideas of curatorship and the impact of tourism, making both experiences incredibly exciting.  Similarities: Both museums are card payments only, a surprise to us considering Egypt heavily relies on cash. Taxis were checked by security guards for authenticity, and to protect tourists from scams.  My friends and I loved the GEM, the staircase being a firm favourite. Equally, we loved the Egyptian Museum in Cairo because of its lengthy heritage and revered place in international tourism. Visiting was at the top of our agenda, making the trip on the first day we were in Egypt.  Both museums have vast collections and exhibition halls. Both have a great ticket price for what you experience inside. And both present a space for education and conservation. However, the GEM takes the win with a secure and modern space for better conservation, with a highly polished atmosphere and a will to excite its visitors with bigger collections. We enjoyed the duality of both these museums.  Miscellaneous visiting notes: When the GEM fully opens (now planned for 2025), the Egyptian Museum in Cairo will become, essentially, obsolete – but still absolutely worth the visit depending on what collections they display, if any. Although the old museum will become a dedicated learning and educational center with an attachment for Universities and schools. We recommend buying a souvenir from the GEM rather than the Grand Egyptian because of the quality and variety in the shops.  The GEM was empty. We were the only Western tourists visiting that day. My friend almost stood in the GEM water feature by the statue of Ramesses II. I am unsure of the health and safety regulations surrounding this feature as there are no barriers, so small children may fall in, bags might be dropped, or pushchair or wheelchairs could potentially slip off the edge.  The security checkpoints are quick to get through, just a bag search. However, you cannot bring binoculars into the GEM, which we found strange.  Take note of the tour guides offering services and be wary of scam deals and overpricing in both museums. Wear sensible footwear for the miles of walking you will undoubtedly cover.  I thoroughly enjoyed my many hours in each museum, I really felt enveloped inside ancient Egypt and all it has to offer as a tourist and ancient history enthusiast. Accreditations: The HERstory Project The Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the Grand Egyptian Museum Emily Knight Morgan Edwards Museum Spotlight

For many of us in Britain, an Anglo-centric education has positioned Britain and the USA at the forefront of the women’s suffrage movement. However, the pioneering success story instead lies across the globe in New Zealand, a quarter of a century before Britain granted women the vote. In 1893, the Governor of New Zealand signed the decree that would make the nation the first self-governing country to grant women the vote. The demand for the vote had been brewing since the turn of the 19th century. With the rising prominence of university, medicine and new professions, young middle and upper class women began to challenge the more traditional roles thrust upon them and develop a political awareness. When in 1852, the New Zealand Constitution Act provided parliamentary franchise to European, Māori and mixed-race men who met the property ownership criteria, a focus of this political awareness started to take shape.  With more opportunities coming their way the women began to yearn for political equality, and with this, a determination to use it for the benefit of moral reformation. Moral reformation was a common thread throughout many of the global suffrage movements in the 19th and 20th centuries, with temperance being a central focus. One of the major groups involved in the right to vote in New Zealand was the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).  Whilst still around today, it has now evolved from encouraging abstinence to mobilising the organisation of women across New Zealand. Involvement in the WCTU introduced many women to the idea of suffrage, and a belief that social and political mobilisation was possible if this was granted. The WCTU spearheaded the suffrage movement in New Zealand, but also collaborated with other non-abstinence organisations to attempt to widen the appeal of the vote from 1892.  There were many iconic figures involved in the New Zealand suffrage movement but perhaps the most prominent of these is Kate Sheppard. Sheppard was a member of the WCTU, English-born and Scottish raised, who moved to New Zealand in the 1860s. She was crucial in early feminist movements such as dress reform for women and promotion of physical activity at a time when ‘lady-like’ behaviour was expected. In her time as leader of the suffrage campaign, she wrote pamphlets, organised meetings, and collected petitions. Her actions offered an opportunity to project a voice for change in wider society. The WCTU’s seven-year-long campaign culminated in 13 different petitions presented to parliament in 1893; combined they listed 31,872 signatures, making this the largest petition ever collected in Australasia. Opinion on women’s suffrage was divided over the course of this prominent year. Much of the political opposition had connections to the alcohol trade and worried about the impact voters would have on profits, should their concerns about the effect of alcohol on women and families be made commonplace. Personal agendas within the Government further slowed down the journey to the vote; Prime Minister John Ballance allowed his own theoretical support of the movement to be overshadowed by the risks that came with it. If he gave women the vote, it gave them the option to turn on him, and vote for his opponents. Between the indecisiveness of major political figures, and the strength of the liquor trade’s connections within government, legislation that would have otherwise granted electoral rights to women was sabotaged in 1891 and 1892. When Ballance died in 1893, suffragists fought even harder against the threat of the opposition with his successor, Richard Seddon. Despite attempted interference from Seddon and his counsellors, the bill was passed through the legislative council on September 8th 1893. More discourse followed but against all odds, Governor Lord Glasgow signed the bill on September 19th, passing it into law. From this point forward, all women who were 'British subjects' and aged 21 and over, including Māori, were now eligible to vote. Congratulations from across the globe demonstrated the effect of New Zealand’s success on the rest of the world. Providing a new hope in the fight for women’s political equality, Sheppard and her army of suffragists were at the forefront of the first self-governing country to grant women the right to vote. While their journey to political equality was over, the significance of this was, and still is, huge. New Zealand’s suffragists provided a boost to global morale not only to Britain and the USA, but also offered a vast range of new opportunities for the women of their own country. Unfortunately, despite New Zealand being ahead of the game for electoral equality, other political milestones took a slower turn, such the first female MP not being elected until 1933. This compared to Britain’s first female MP, elected in 1918. 2023 marked 130 years since the signing of the bill and it is just as celebrated now as it was back then. This year, the white camellia represents the movement, and has been used across the celebration. The artist Vanessa Smith designed a flower, adorned with 130 petals to mark the 130 years since the milestone. The camellia remains a tribute to all women who have contributed to the progress of women’s rights, both past and present in the country. The life and success of the women’s suffrage movement in New Zealand still shines bright over a century later.  Bibliography Raewyn Dalziel, ' New Zealand Women's Christian Temperance Union', New Zealand History, (1993), < https://nzhistory.govt.nz/women-together/new-zealand-womens-christian-temperance-union  > 'Women and the Vote', New Zealand History, < https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/womens-suffrage  > 'Women’s Suffrage in Aotearoa New Zealand', Ministry for Women, < https://women.govt.nz/about-us/history-womens-suffrage-aotearoa-new-zealand#:~:text=On%2019%20September%201893%2C%20Governor,to%20vote%20in%20parliamentary%20elections >

Glossary ERR (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg) - A looting group created by Alfred Rosenberg, initially their goal was to collect archives, books, and other Jewish cultural goods to examine and develop anti-Jewish studies. In 1940 they became a plundering group for all types of valuables from their "enemies" when the seizure of cultural holdings - ranging from art pieces to antique furniture - was authorised by the Führer. Reichsmarschall - Second in command to Hitler, a position created for Herman Göring who was commander of the Luftwaffe and an avid art collector. He made sure to take thousands of the looted pieces for his private art collection - going as far as stealing from Hitler. MFA&A - The Monuments, Fine Art and Archives Division of the Allied Forces created in the United States. Members of other Allied countries, mainly from the United Kingdom and France made up the division with both men and women having important ranks in it. Born in the commune of Saint-Étienne-de-Saint-Geoirs in France, Rose Valland (1898-1980) is - in my humble opinion - one of the most important women in art history, despite not being an artist herself. Volunteering as an art historian and assistant curator at the Jeu de Paume, Valland's job consisted of cataloguing artworks housed at the museum. The first record of her work at the Jeu de Paume was in 1933 of the painting ' Paysage ' by Else Berg, acquired by the French government. Berg was a Dutch woman with both German and Jewish heritage - an intriguing coincidence considering the work that Mademoiselle Valland would carry out in the years to come. Paris, previously a beacon for cultural development, became a central location for the Nazi government. There the ERR catalogued much of the art plunder before shipping it to hidden locations around the Third Reich. Modern databases tell historians that 20% of all art in Europe was stolen by the Nazi regime. While most remain missing, from the 10% that were recovered by the Allied army, much was only found because of the list put together by Rose Valland. She was the only French worker kept at Jeu de Paume after the Nazi occupation of France. Undermined for being a woman, she was able to work from the inside in favour of the French resistance and continue her previous work with a new motivation: cataloguing to save European culture. Life before the War Little is known about her personal life before the period during which she volunteered and later worked at the museum. However, something known to those that study her story is the fact she was queer. To twentieth century standards, Valland was an "out and proud" lesbian. After the war she shared an apartment in Paris with her partner, author Joyce Heer, and they were buried together in the Valland family crypt. Paris in the 1920s and 1930s was a centre for the lesbian community, but during the war they were forced to hide. Sadly, little of the Parisian lesbian subculture survived the Occupation. Valland was extremely well educated in the arts, having studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and Lyon as well as studying art history at the École du Louvre and at the Sorbonne Université. Regardless of her large number of academic achievements, she began her career at the Jeu de Paume as a volunteer - only receiving her first paid position during the Occupation. The atmosphere of the heritage world after the Great War and the fears of the war to come were well noticed by the art historian - something she wrote about in her book ' Le Front de L'Art: Défense de Collection Française' (1961) . Valland wrote about the pre-war preparations that took place both at the Jeu de Paume and the Louvre under orders of the Director of French National Museums, Jacques Jaujard, who already faced the perils that the previous war had posed to the cultural world. She describes how the staff of Parisian museums began to 'box up' the valuable paintings and statues so they could be sent to safe locations and, the more noble ones - such as the Mona Lisa - were hidden around the country. In 1938, Jaujard trusted Valland with the responsibility of overseeing the collections and running the Jeu de Paume whilst the curator was ill. She remained in the position as, not long after, in 1940, Nazi forces occupied Paris. The Occupation Throughout her book ' Le Front de L'Art: Défense des Collections Françaises' (1961), Valland describes that soon after the Nazis took over Paris they began to remove French workers from governmental and civil work positions - this included museum officials. However, she was able to stay employed throughout the entire war period - regardless of their many attempts to fire her. Nonetheless, they undermined her for being a woman, believing she would be compliant and obedient. They were unaware that not only did she quickly understand their cataloguing system and began one of her own, but also that she understood German, listening in on all of the officers' conversations about plans and information on the Reich. During the four years of occupation, Valland kept a careful log of the large collection of art pieces that passed through the Jeu de Paume. The pieces were divided between the private collections of the Führer, the Reischmarschall's and the pieces chosen for the Linz Museum Project. She recorded the artist, the provenance, and the title of the pieces - the ones that were kept and the ones considered degenerate by Nazi officials, which were destroyed. Valland filled books with this information, which would become some of the most important files for the Allied forces. Valland also achieved what many believed impossible: she uncovered six of the locations the ERR sent their plunder for 'safe-keeping'. These were five castles - Neuschwanstein, Köge, Nickolsburg, Chiemsee and the Seiseinegg - and the Kloster Buxheim Monastery. They also used of salt mines located around the Third Reich. The only art that was not kept in any of these places was Göring's personal collection, which made the pieces he selected harder to locate. Her thorough research into the Nazi's own illegal art market, was one of the main reasons as to why the MFA&A were able to locate and repatriate around 60,000 pieces of stolen art - with 20,000 alone being found at Neuschwanstein Castle. Beaux-Art Captain Valland As the war neared its end, the Allied forces created the MFA&A - later receiving their famous nickname: the Monuments Men. A division formed by art historians, museum officials, architects and artists of all calibre composed by both men and women. A division that understood the threat faced by art and culture and were determined to save, restore, and repatriate the lost art. Rose Valland became invaluable to this division, as she held both the up-to-date information and deep knowledge of art. Like most professional organisations of the time, the MFA&A was mainly composed of men, but they had women in high ranks and working in important roles in the army. While they did not go to the front and fight to recover the plundered art, they were responsible with completing provenance research, organisation of restitution documents and helped analyse and locate Nazi hiding spots so platoons could go out and look for the loot. Rose Valland was one of these important women. Though she was not part of the MFA&A, she enlisted and became part of the French First Army in 1945 to continuously work for the safeguarding and return of art - granting her a Captain rank in the French army. She worked closely with the Allied division and became close with several members - describing in her book the friendship with Lieutenant James Rorimer, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as one with complete trust between them. He was the one to whom she entrusted her list. For her efforts in assisting in recovering tens of thousands works of art, as well as her work during the war years, she received a series of medals and became the most decorated woman in the French Army. In the Monuments Men and Women website (which only changed its title to include 'Women' in 2022), she is listed to have received: the Legion of Honor, the Medal of the Résistance, the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, became Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters appointed by the French government and, in 1948, she was awarded the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom. Even though she received several military medals throughout the years, she was only recognised as a professional and granted the official work title of art curator in 1953. Overlooked but not forgotten While Rose Valland might not (yet) be part of World War II discussions in academia, she certainly has not been entirely left out of the narrative. Films, biographies and books about her continue to be published. At the Jeu de Paume, a plaque was placed to honour her work and in Lyon an exhibition was put together presenting her story. All of this shows that her importance has not been entirely forgotten. Captain Valland might be remembered by few but with these acts she is able to come to life a little more through every new representation. In cinema she has been represented in two films, The Train (1964) and The Monuments Men (2014) but, in both feature films, her actions were diminished. The most recent film, which used Valland for character inspiration, even put the character back in the closet through an attempt of creating a romantic narrative with the Rorimer inspired character. Hollywood's change in her identity to construct - what they believe to be - an "interesting" narrative shows how little research was done on Valland and her importance and participation in the war efforts. An exhibition named Le Dame du Jeu de Paume was curated in 2009 and displayed through to 2010 at the CHRD (Centre d'Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation) in Lyon, portraying the history of the art curator and her importance to France. A few books worth mentioning that have been published are her own, Le Front de L'Art (1961) that had a new edition printed in 2014 - with two articles and photos being added to the print -, Le Carnet des Rose Valland (2011) by Emmanuelle Pollack, which unites all of her manuscripts in one publication, and the most recent Rose Valland, l'espionne à l'oeuvre (2023) by Jennifer Lesieur, a biography about Valland's life and impact in art history. Even though the majority of the publications about her originate in France, many of the French themselves are not familiar with one of their national heroes. I was recently in a bookshop in Paris hunting down Valland's book and other pieces written about her and upon asking one of the shopkeepers whether they had it in stock, they wrote her name down incorrectly when checking. Her book about the war period stopped being published a few years after it was first released and - even though Valland expressed a desire to do so - it was never translated into English, something that diminished the outreach of her important work. The Saviour of Culture When the history and culture of Europe was at risk of being lost forever, Rose Valland made sure that this heritage would not disappear. A task that seemed impossible to complete, her efforts to continuously keep art safe and where it belonged is one of the biggest legacies left by Valland. She participated largely in the work for restitution of looted artworks for the French and Jewish families all over Europe. Captain Valland must be remembered and presented to the public. Without her, it is likely that tens of thousands of artworks would have been forever lost because of looting during the war. Further reading Campbell, Elizabeth. 2021. ‘Monuments Women and Men: Rethinking Popular Narratives via British Major Anne Olivier Popham’, International Journal of Cultural Property , 28.3: 409–24 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0940739121000308 Centre d'Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation. 2010. ‘La Dame Du Jeu de Paume’, CHRD | Musée d’Histoire | Lyon Dans La Guerre, 1939-1945 https://www.chrd.lyon.fr/chrd/edito-musee/la-dame-du-jeu-de-paume Christie's. 2023. ‘Celebrating the Contributions of Women in Art Restitution, on the 25th Anniversary of the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art’, Christie’s https://www.christies.com/features/celebrating-the-contributions-of-women-in-art-restitution-12668-1.aspx ERR Project. 2015. ‘Cultural Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR): Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume’, Errproject.org https://www.errproject.org/jeudepaume/about/err.php Flanner, Janet. 1947. ‘The Beautiful Spoils - Collector with Luftwaffe’, The New Yorker (Condé Nast) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1947/03/08/the-beautiful-spoils-3 ‘Valland, Capt. Rose | Monuments Men and Women | Monuments Men Foundation’. [n.d.]. Monuments Men and Women Foundation https://www.monumentsmenandwomenfnd.org/valland-capt-rose Valland, Rose. 2016. Le Front de l’Art : Défense Des Collections Françaises : 1939-1945 (Paris: Réunion Des Musées Nationaux)

Born towards the tail-end of America’s infamous ‘Wild West’ era, Annie Oakley (1860 - 1929) emerged as a pioneering figure in a time when sharpshooting was highly revered, yet dominated overwhelmingly by men. The Wild West, a period marked by exploration, conflict and frontier life, witnessed the rise of sharpshooting as both a skill needed for survival, and a form of entertainment. Throughout the rugged and often lawless landscape, sharpshooters were celebrated for their precision and bravery - skills deemed exclusive to men.   Oakley, however, defied these conventions with remarkable success. Renowned for her extraordinary marksmanship, and captivating stage performances, Oakley rapidly became one of the most famous sharpshooters of her time - earning her the title of “Little Sure Shot”. Her performances were always a blend of skill and showmanship, amazing audiences by hitting targets with incredible accuracy whilst performing complex and entertaining tricks: one of her most famous acts involve shooting targets whilst holding the gun upside down. Despite the dominance of men in the field, Oakley’s achievements were nothing short of groundbreaking. She not only performed in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show - which is considered to be the most famous Wild Western show of all time - but she also challenged the gender norms of her time by excelling in a field where women were rarely seen.   This article will explore Oakley’s remarkable journey, illustrating how she rose to prominence and cemented her place as one of America’s greatest sharpshooters. By tracing her career from her early days, through to her ground-breaking performances in global tours, this article will uncover the factors which contributed to Oakley’s legacy. Early Life Born on the 13th August 1860 in Ohio as Phoebe Ann Mosey, Oakley had a very troubled start in life. At just six years old, she lost her father (Jacob Mosey) to pneumonia. As was the norm at the time, Mosey had been the family’s breadwinner, working as a farmer in Willowdell, where he earned just enough to support his seven children, his wife, and place a deposit on some farmland. However, following Mosey’s death, Oakley’s mother (Susan Mosey) was left with no support - financial or otherwise. Mrs Mosey was forced to move to a smaller home, and when the eldest Mosey child (Mary-Jane) died also of tuberculosis, Mrs Mosey was forced to sell the remainder of her assets (including the family’s pink milkcow) to cover medical expenses and funeral costs. Throughout 1866 - 67, Mrs Mosey attempted to ease the family’s financial burden by working as a nurse at Ohio’s Darke County Infirmary - a facility which primarily housed the elderly, orphaned, and those with mental illnesses. Here, Mrs Mosey earned $1.25 per week (just under $50 in today’s money) but the financial strain remained overwhelming. Left with no other option, Mrs Mosey made the difficult decision to send Oakley to the infirmary, where she moved at just eight years old.    For Oakley, life inside the Darke County Infirmary was bleak. The infirmary functioned as a workhouse, which meant that the non-disabled inmates were forced to work long hours for little pay. Despite the owner of the infirmary, Mrs. Edington, promising Mrs. Mosey that Oakley “would have no work, [...] except to watch a three-week-old baby boy” [1] , Oakley recounted that she “was held prisoner” [2]  - being forced to wake up at four in the morning to tend to farm animals, pick fruit, harvest vegetables and hunt deer. In addition, Oakley also endured physical abuse from Mrs. Edington. In her autobiography, Oakley recalled that Mrs. Edington “struck me across the face, pinched my arms and threw me out of the doors into the deep snow and locked the door.” [3]       After six gruelling years, in 1874, Oakley managed to escape the infirmary. She returned home to live with her family, but the same economic issues still lingered - the family had very little money, leaving them frequently without food for long stretches of time.  In an attempt to rectify this, Oakley used the skills she had learned throughout her time at the infirmary - and would use her father’s rifle to hunt small animals, which she would sell to a local grocery store for small amounts of money.   Within a year, Oakley’s gunmanship improved so greatly that she was not only able to feed her family, but was also able to pay off the family’s $200 mortgage.  Even Oakley felt surprised by her abilities, remarking  “I don’t know I acquired the skill. I suppose I was born with it.” [4]     Entrance into the Spotlight By 1875, Oakley’s talents had caught the attention of a hotel owner named Jack Frost, who lived about 80 miles away in Cincinnati. Frost first became aware of Oakley’s skills after purchasing some of the game she had hunted, and was so impressed by the quality that he personally invited her to compete in a shooting contest against well-known, highly regarded marksman and performer - Frank Butler.      During the early 1870s, Butler was one half of The Graham & Butler Show, a show which depicted, and often heavily romanticised, the adventures of Wild Western cowboys. Wild Western shows like The Graham & Butler Show were not uncommon in 1870s America-  to name just a few, Texas Jack’s Wild West, 101 Ranch Wild West Show and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show all attempted to depict life as a cowboy living through the American Frontier. Such shows regularly drew in enormous crowds (the lifetime tenure of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show , for instance, saw the sale of more than 2.5 million tickets) due to their low cost (with tickets being as low as 25 cents) and their country-wide tours across America. However, it is worth noting that, with the exception of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in 1885, none of the Wild Western shows featured performances from women - reinforcing Oakley’s groundbreaking achievements.     What distinguished The Graham & Butler Show from all the others, however, was the nation-wide opportunity to partake in a shooting contest with Frank Butler. Though The Graham & Butler Show was a high-selling, and much enjoyed show, these advertisements had been in production for over five years without any audience response. Or at least, that was the case until November 1975, when Butler and Oakley went head-to-head in a competition.   The competition was no easy feat- there were twenty five shooting targets which the winner would have to hit consecutively. Ultimately, to the surprise of most, Oakley won the challenge - achieving the maximum score of twenty-five hits with twenty-five bullets, compared to Butler’s twenty-four hits with twenty-five bullets. According to Butler himself, he was a “a beaten man the moment [Oakley] appeared” [5] , explaining that he was “taken off guard” [6]  by the fact that Oakley was a woman - a fifteen year old, five-foot woman at that. As previously acknowledged, Wild Western shows did not feature women, or even dwell on the fact that women could be sharpshooters, making Oakley’s appearance even more shocking for Butler. In fact, as John Soluri points out, Oakley’s performance would have been “disturbing” [7]  for nineteenth century audiences, due to the blend of “female labour and femininity exhibited in Oakley” [8]  during a period where women were still confined to the private, family sphere.  Remarkably, Butler did not feel threatened in his masculinity by Oakley’s talents. In fact, he rewarded her with $100, and tickets to The Graham & Butler Show for her and her family. Rapidly, Butler and Oakley developed a romantic relationship, and despite a 10 year age difference (26 and 16, respectively) the couple married in August 1876, less than a year after initially meeting.    During the early stages of their marriage, Butler continued to perform with The Graham & Butler Show , and Oakley was left to be a housewife, further reinforcing the difficulties that accompanied female performers during this era: the entertainment world, much like many other sectors in the 19th century, was still deeply entrenched in patriarchal norms. Women were often relegated to supportive or background roles (if at all), and the idea of a woman stepping into a male-dominated field, particularly one as rugged and traditionally masculine as sharpshooting, was unthinkable.   But, in the spring of 1882 Oakley’s life completely changed - just a short while prior to a performance, Butler’s show-partner, Graham, had fallen ill, rendering him unable to perform. Butler, left with no other choice, invited Oakley to come on stage to take Graham’s space - albeit merely as a prop-holder, and not as a sharpshooter. Unexpectedly, Butler’s aim throughout the performance was so poor that an audience member heckled “let the girl shoot!”, leading Butler to offer Oakley the chance to demonstrate her skills. Naturally, Oakley shot every target successfully, sparking an enthusiastic response from the crowd, and marking the beginning of The Butler and Oakley Show. Over the next two years, the duo performed together, and the word of Oakley’s extraordinary talents spread rapidly.   In 1884, she worked with a new group, the Sells Brothers Circus, as the “Champion Rifle Shot”, but left after just one season. It is interesting to see here how Oakley’s identity has been stripped away - no mention of her name, or the fact that she was a woman - which was a huge contrast compared to their other acts (including “Cannonball George” and the “Ringling Brothers”) once again highlighting the difficulties which accompanied being a woman in the field of sharpshooting.   By 1885, just one year later, Oakley joined the most popular group Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. This show depicted the Wild West as a primitive, uncivilised area, and was considered a “rodeo-drama”. It involved a number of acts, including depictions of bison hunts, and train robberies. Shooting was the main feature of the show, but animals were also used as a form of entertainment. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show Although Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show had only been running for two years prior to Oakley joining, her impact was both immediate and significant. Oakley quickly became a standout performer, spending most of her time in the lineup as the second act - a strategic placement that allowed the audience to acclimate to the sound of gunfire. Oakley was well-regarded by the audience, and had a reputation of being a charming and caring performer. Dexter Fellows, who served as the Press Agent for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show described Oakley as somebody whose “personality made itself felt as soon as she entered the arena.” [9] Oakley would take pride in putting the audience at ease - she would aim to not only entertain audiences, but to also challenge societal perceptions regarding women and guns. By embodying both grace and precision throughout her performances, Oakley would demonstrate to the audience, but particularly the women and girls, how guns could be both a tool for entertainment, but also an item crucial for self-defence. However, Fellows also observed the initial shock that greeted Oakley’s performances - recounting how “her first few shots brought forth screams of fright.” [10]  This was a reaction which did not stem from the volume gunshots, but rather from the shock of seeing a woman defying such deeply ingrained gender stereotypes.   Oakely’s  tricks, which included shooting backwards whilst looking into a mirror, shooting corks off bottle tops, and shooting coins and glass balls whilst they were in mid air proved to be the show’s much needed revival. It also proved, for the first time in Oakley’s career, that not only was she capable of being a solo performer, but she was also capable of being the first big female star in the ( very ) male-dominated field of Wild Western shows. In a similar vein, Glenda Riley, author of The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley , even suggested that Oakley’s stereotypically “feminine” attire also helped to propel her fame. Riley maintains that Oakley’s distinct Victorian-era dress “made Annie acceptable and appealing to everyone in her audience, young or old, male or female, old-fashioned or modern.” By blurring the line between what was deemed “feminine” or “masculine” in the late nineteenth century, Oakley helped to assure women that they could still be both independent and employed, yet also partake in traditional values. Unlike her male counterparts, who would opt for full buckskin outfits, or trousers,  Oakley chose to wear high-necked dresses - always made by herself. Whilst the dresses were typically short, she would always ensure her legs were covered with handmade button-up socks. Further, during her time at Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, she deepened her connection to the audiences, often “entertaining them with punch, tea, and cakes”. [11]  Oakley’s niece, Fern Swartwout also noted that Oakley would “take delight” in sharing with audiences “how she packed her trunks”. [12]  Being so attentive to an audience was certainly not common, but further highlights Oakley’s dedication to her cause. Perhaps surprisingly, throughout her time as an act for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, Oakley’s husband remained supportive of her endeavours- as historian Virginia Scharff explains: “Frank Butler understood that [Oakley] had a kind of star quality that he didn’t want to overshadow, and he didn’t have a problem with that. He adored her.” [13]  This has also been supported by Oakley, who recalls how, at one of her Buffalo Bill shows, she asked her husband to be a prop-holder, holding the photograph of “Ducky” - a man who had asked for Oakley’s hand in marriage. Ultimately, Butler did just that whilst Oakley “sent a .22 calibre bullet through the photo.” [14]  Though this wasn’t Butler’s only time on stage throughout Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, he certainly wasn’t a frequent star. He did, however, stay present in Oakley’s career - he became her manager where he would handle the show’s finances, write articles and press releases about her work. However, it is important to note that this was not reflected in the 1946 musical Annie Get Your Gun . The musical, intended as a biopic of Oakley’s life, portrayed Butler as self-absorbed and jealous - a portrayal that may have been used intentionally to reflect the stereotypical attitudes of men (especially husbands) during the nineteenth century.     Oakley continued to amaze audiences with her tricks, including splitting cards on their edges, shooting whilst leaning backwards, or hitting targets whilst her gun was upside down. Such tricks stunned audiences and royals alike - during 1877 Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show had embarked on a tour of England as part of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee celebrations, and Queen Victoria was so impressed with Oakley’s talents that she coined Oakley “a very clever little girl.” [15]  Though this quote may read as being condescending, Oakley was a widely celebrated figure, and she was actually the highest paid entertainer of her time - something which encouraged her advocacy for equal pay in her later life. Oakley’s celebrity encounters continued to grow - in 1890 whilst on a tour in Berlin, Oakley invited the German Emperor, Freidrich Wilhelm II, to be part of her signature trick: shooting a cigarette out of somebody’s mouth. It is crucial to note that Oakley was reaching levels of fame and recognition seldom seen within Wild Western shows.       Throughout her sixteen year tenure as a performer for the Wild West Show, Oakley toured countries all over Europe, and simultaneously proved to men and women alike that women were capable of using firearms. Oakley’s performances proved especially popular with women and girls, and she utilised this popularity to prove that shooting was neither detrimental, nor too intense, to one’s womanhood. Likewise, she encouraged women to learn how to use pistols, and instructed that they could be kept discreetly within purses as protection. Notably, in 1898, with the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, Oakley wrote to American president,  William McKinley, offering to train a regiment of women to fight, believing that women could contribute just as much to military efforts as men. But, this proposal was ultimately rejected, reflecting the societal norms and prevalent gender biases of the time.     By 1901, following a train accident which permanently injured Oakley’s back, Oakley had decided to retire from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. As a result, in an attempt to live a more quiet life, Oakley began an acting career. In 1902, she starred in The  Western Girl, a play written specifically for Oakley. Here, she played the character Nancy Berry who would use pistols, rifles, and ropes to outsmart gangs of outlaws. Sadly, unlike her previous ventures, The Western Girl did not achieve significant commercial success. The play ran for a few months, and did not become a long-running hit, in part because the play’s storyline did not match the high-energy performances given by Oakley previously. In 1911, Oakley resumed her Wild Western performances by joining The Young Buffalo Show. Although critics found The Young Buffalo Show entertaining, its tenure was short and it ended in 1914. The entertainment business was seriously struggling at this time, with even Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show succumbing to financial troubles, and officially disbanding in 1913.       Late Life and Legacy At the dawn of World War One, although Oakley was reaching her 60s, she still continued to sharpshoot, and began to  advocate more stringently for women’s rights. She continued to push for equal pay, and attempted to educate women on the importance of self-defence. On top of this, she adamantly proved that she still had her sharp skills by beating new records, including successfully shooting 100 consecutive targets at the age of 62.   In 1917, she repeated her attempt to train a regiment to use guns. She wrote to the American Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, and offered to both fully fund and train a regiment of female volunteers to fight, as well as teach and train existing soldiers to accurately shoot. But, again, her offer was declined.  The repeated decline of Oakley’s offers highlights the limitation of her influence despite her fame. Oakley’s expertise was clearly still not enough to overcome the entrenched gender bias, and this further illustrates the broader struggles for women in the twentieth century in overcoming institutionalised sexism.     Oakley continued touring until 1925, when she fell ill with pernicious anaemia - an autoimmune condition. Not long after World War I, in 1926, Oakley passed away, and her husband, Butler, also died just eighteen days later.   Although Oakley may not be a household name, her iconic abilities cannot be forgotten: she remains a poignant inspiration for women in the world of sharpshooting, which is still primarily dominated by men, and as an advocate for women’s equality and safety. Throughout her life, it is believed that she helped more than 15,000 women to use guns for self-defence, and has been recognised for such ability by both the National Cowgirl Museum and the Hall of Fame in Texas, as well as the National Women’s Hall of Fame, in 1993. Likewise, Oakley’s life has inspired a number of stories, including the 1937 film ‘Annie Oakley’, and the 1946 Broadway musical ‘Annie Get Your Gun’, which was later - in 1950 - turned into a film.   Though the image of ‘cowgirl’ and ‘sharpshooter’ has, in many ways, evolved since Oakley’s time, Oakley remains the original embodiment of what it meant to live in these roles throughout the American Frontier. Not only this, but Oakley remained an inspiration to women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - setting a great example of being both the breadwinner, whilst still presenting as a traditional woman.     [1]  ‘Frequently Asked Questions about Annie Oakley’, Annie Oakley Center, (2024) < https://www.annieoakleycenterfoundation.com/faq.html > [27-08-24]. [2]  Ibid. [3]  Ibid. [4]  Martin, Emily, ‘The True Story of Annie Oakley’, National Geographic, (2022), < https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/the-true-story-of-annie-oakley-legendary-sharpshooter > [28/08/2024]. [5]  ‘Biography: Frank Butler’, PBS, (2019) < https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/oakley-butler/ > [06/08/2024]. [6]  Ibid. [7] Soluri, John, ‘Reviewed Work: Farming across Borders: A Transnational History of the North American West. Connecting the Greater West Series Sterling Evans’, Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 4, P. 491, JSTOR < https://www.jstor.org/stable/26783083 > [28/08/2024]  [8]  Ibid [9]  Reece, Amy, ‘Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, and the Myth of the West’, Digital Repository, (2011) < https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1065&context=hist_etds >, P. 57 [29/08/2024] [10] Ibid. [11]  Ibid, P.56 [12]  Ibid. [13]   Annie Oakley, directed by Riva Freifeld, (WGBH Educational Foundation, 2006), online film recording, Amazon < https://www.amazon.com/American-Experience-Annie-Oakley-PBS/product-reviews/B00UGQ9AO > [29/08/2024]. [14]  Buffalo Bill Centre for the Wild West, Annie Oakley in her Own Words, online video recording, YouTube,18th May 2012, < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25HMhne2nj4 > [30/08/2024] [15]  Johnston, Winifred, ‘Passing of the Wild West: A Chapter in the History of American Entertainment’, Southwest Review, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 35-40. JSTOR < https://www.jstor.org/stable/43462218 > [30/08/2024]. Further Reading   ‘Biography: Frank Butler’, PBS, (2019) < https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/oakley-butler/ > [06/08/2024].   ‘Annie Oakley: Biography’, Sky History, (2024) < https://www.history.co.uk/biographies/annie-oakley > [07/08/2024].   Hunt, Kirstin, ‘How Annie Oakley Defined the Cinema Cowgirl’, Daily JStor, (2020) < https://daily.jstor.org/how-annie-oakley-defined-the-cinema-cowgirl/ > [07/08/2024].   McGrath, Ann, ‘Being Annie Oakley: Modern Girls, New World Woman’, Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, Vol. 28, No.1, pp. 203 - 231. JSTOR, < https://www.jstor.org/stable/40071957 > [08/08/24].   Riley, Glenda, ‘Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley’, First Edition, University of Oklahoma Press, Oklahoma: 2002.

This article was originally published in issue #1 of The HERstory Project Journal and has been shared online with permission of the author. What does my MA dissertation and Katy Hessel’s 2022 The Story of Art Without Men have in common? A dedication to Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi and the words she wrote in a letter in 1649, “I’ll show you what a woman can do.”  Now, to be clear, that’s where the similarities end, Hessel is an accomplished art historian whose corrective work gives a fairly thorough overview of women’s place in the art world. My MA dissertation was far more amateur (and subjectively great) and focuses heavily on my interpretation that Gentileschi’s work is unfairly defined within the context of her sexual trauma. They had very different scopes. Hessel’s work for women’s art history continues to impress and intimidate, her instagram and corresponding podcast, ‘The Great Women Artists’, do more for women’s art history than, well, pretty much anything else out there, and I’m both an avid follower and listener. So it’s quite surprising that it’s taken me so long to get myself to Tate Britain to experience Hessel’s latest project, Museums without Men. Museums without Men is a multi museum and gallery project to showcase the women, or lack thereof in collections across the globe, and this is my review. I had three questions I wanted to be able to answer going into the gallery: 1. Does the audio tour reclaim women’s voices and artwork? 2. Is it engaging not only for a historian but for the public? 3. Have I learnt something? The answer to these was actually somewhat complicated, for starters, I was surprised that the ‘guide’ as it was marketed was actually seven short talks on the Tate’s audio player webpage which referred to specific artwork without telling the listener actually where they were, or how to find them. Perhaps this is a criticism of the Tate’s audio guide system, but it was difficult to understand where and when I was meant to listen to Hessel’s talks. As someone who champions accessibility in the arts and historical education, this was frustrating. It was also somewhat annoying to see that seemingly at no point around the gallery was the Audio Guide marketed. At a simple level, how can it be engaging to anybody when it is poorly constructed and advertised?  I did listen to each talk, whilst looking, in the end, at works from seventeenth century Europe. To give them and Hessel their due, each talk was engaging and informative. I would say that the talks themselves do successfully achieve all three of my questions: they reclaim (some) women’s voices and artwork; I would argue that they are engaging for both a historian and a member of the public; and I did learn something (many things!).  However, the Tate also currently has an exhibition called ‘Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920’. I visited this whilst I was there too, albeit with the primary focus of seeing Artemisia Gentileschi’s La Pittura . I was struck by just how much the displays in this exhibition undermined the efforts of the Museums Without Men project. ‘Now You See Us’ is a comprehensive overview of women’s work over a huge time period; even coming in with a pretty good knowledge of women’s art history I was blown away by what I learnt.  Now, I don’t think that this is a criticism of the Museums without Men guide. The audio guide is intended to exist in the space of a permanent exhibition, something this temporary exhibition is not, so there are different struggles and parameters by which to judge the guide and the exhibition. Perhaps, it is best to ask why these works are in a temporary exhibition and not on the walls in the permanent galleries? Were many of these works introduced then Hessel’s guide might look a bit different, and rather more comprehensive. Perhaps the lack of content is really a criticism of the Tate’s permanent exhibition, which is itself, perhaps the point of Hessel’s work.  In the days after visiting the Tate and writing this review, I decided to do some extra research, and I was struck that the second thing that came up after searching ‘Museums without Men’ was an article titled ‘The Story of Art without Men: and without brains?’ This article was written by art historian Mark Stocker, and at first glance I was simply fatigued by the apparent dismissal of women’s work. Then I read the article, and Stocker has picked up on something that I couldn’t quite articulate above. That the guide does not only feel incomplete because it only covers seven pieces of art work, but it also feels incomplete because without situating these women’s lives and work within the broader context that inevitably includes the men they knew, loved and hated, we cannot understand the full picture of the art itself. Now I want to clarify that this is, in my opinion, an overstatement, we do not insist on contextualising every male artist in the context of the women they know, so why does Stocker think that this guide is irrelevant because it may not discuss the women artists in relation to their male contemporaries? (He specifies in the article that he has not listened to the guide and judges his review on Hessel’s podcast series.) Stocker’s article is a good read, and he does make some interesting points regarding the validity and value of feminist art history, something I myself have written about and criticised over both my dissertations. Yet his final paragraph undermines his argument, and consequently his criticism, by describing the current popular focus with female artists as a ‘preoccupation’ which ‘ignores’ men. Considering how much art history has ignored women in favour of men, do these female artists not deserve a little bit of positive discrimination? I think so, and that’s why you should go and check out Hessel’s Museums without Men, and whilst you’re there, ‘Now you see us’ too.