Argues that the women most crucial to the liberation movement in the 1960s were responding to their treatment in the civil rights and New Left movements

One feels closer to Joan in these pages than in any modern biographies.--Saturday Review

Probes the events of the English author's life paying special attention to her Bloomsbury milieu and her personal relationships

Argues that there was a prehistoric shift in human society to patriarchy and at present society is beginning to shift away from patriarchy

"In this deeply original, provocative book, outrage, hilarity, grief, profanity, lyricism and moral daring join in bursting the accustomed bounds even of feminist discourse." —The New York Times Book Review

Originally published in 1863, out-of-print and unavailable for almost a century, Frances Anne Kemble's Journal has long been recognized by historians as unique in the literature of American slavery and invaluable for obtaining a clear view of the "peculiar institution" and of life in the antebellum South. Fanny Kemble was one of the leading lights of the English stage in the nineteenth century. During a tour of America in the 1830s she met and married a wealthy Philadelphian, Pierce Butler, part of whose fortune derived from his family's vast cotton and rice plantation on the Sea Islands of Georgia. After their marriage she spent several months living on the plantation. Profoundly shocked by what she saw, she recorded her observations of plantation life in a series of journal entries written as letters to a friend. But she never sent the letters, and not until the Civil War was on and Fanny was divorced from Pierce Butler and living in England were they published. This Brown Thrasher edition incorporates the valuable introduction written by John A. Scott for the 1961 edition published by Alfred A. Knopf, together with the editor's appendices to that edition. It provides the modern reader with the historical and biographical background to move freely and with ease in Mrs. Kemble's world.

Essays by the distinguished American author, Marge Piercy, examine feminist culture, the nature of literature, and the writing of her poetry and novels

This groundbreaking work examines the role of women in the Western healing traditions. Drawing on the disciplines of history, anthropology, botany, archaeology, and the behavioral sciences, Jeanne Achterberg discusses the ancient cultures in which women worked as independent and honored healers; the persecution of women healers in the witch hunts of the Middle Ages; the development of midwifery and nursing as women's professions in the nineteenth century; and the current role of women and the state of the healing arts, as a time of crisis in the health-care professions coincides with the reemergence of feminine values.

A fascinating and sometimes humorous glimpse into the lives of 150 19th-century American women who refused to whittle themselves down to the Victorian model of proper womanhood. 50-black-and-white photos.