(29 November 2014 – from Laura)

A study of women of the English Revolution, mainly, for obvious reasons, those who wrote and published, or were written about, that, although published in 1998, seems to have a ring of the earlier works of ‘herstory’ that came out in the late 80s and early 90s, both in the subject matter, reclaiming the lives and words of women from the margins, and in the language it’s written in, which is harder to quantify by definitely half way between polemical and academic writing, with a twist of pro-women language and a consciously partisan way of writing.

It uses women’s own words where possible, and links sets of women together – early Quaker women (this was fascinating, as I didn’t have a grasp of the role of women in forming the Quaker movement), women who preached, women who prophesised, the active and trouble-making wives of men who were imprisoned, etc. Davies brings their stories into the foreground and pulls the threads together, celebrating them in a readable work that does an important job. ( )