Women's History: my publications

Do contact me if you are unable to access any of these articles or chapters and I will do my best to supply a copy.

Hygieia's Handmaids: Women, Health and Healing A catalogue of an exhibition at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 19th September-16th December 1988 now available online

'Uniting Science and Sensibility: Marie Stopes and the narratives of marriage in the 1920s' in Rediscovering Forgotten Radicals: British Women Writers 1889-1939 edited by Angela Ingram and Daphne Patai, University of North Carolina Press, 1993

'Questions of Control and Choice: Women and Reproduction in Britain since 1900' in Birth and Breeding: the politics of reproduction in modern Britain. Catalogue of an exhibition at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, Oct 1993-Feb 1994: now available online

'Chloe, Olivia, Isabel, Letitia, Harriette, Honor and many more: women in medicine and biomedical science in Britain, 1914-1939', in This Working-Day World: Women's Lives and Culture(s) in Britain 1914-1945 edited by Sybil Oldfield, Taylor and Francis, London, 1994

'"No virtue in evasion": feminism and sex reform in Britain, 1880-1920', in Civilisation, Sexuality and Social Life in Historical Context, edited by Judith Forrai, The Institute of the History of Medicine and Social Medicine, Budapest, 1996

'Nurses in the archives: archival sources for nursing history' in A. M. Rafferty, J. Robinson and R. Elkan (eds.) Nursing History and the Politics of Welfare, Routledge, London, 1996

'Marie Stopes and her correspondents: personalising population decline in an era of demographic change', in Marie Stopes, Eugenics and the English Birth Control Movement: proceedings of a conference organised by the Galton Institute, London, 1996, edited by Robert A. Peel, The Galton Institute, London, 1997

'Marie Stopes and her correspondents: public and private faces' Ethical Record: The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society, Vol 102 no 3, Mar 1997

'"I have never met the normal woman": Stella Browne and the politics of womanhood', Women's History Review, Vol 6 no 2, 1997

'Eighty Years of the Medical Women's Federation: the MWF archive in the Contemporary Medical Archives Centre, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine' Medical Woman: Bulletin of the Medical Women's Federation, Vol 16 no 2, Summer 1997 (online version incomplete)

'Suffrage, Sex and Science', in The Women's Suffrage Movement, New Feminist Perspectives, edited by Maroula Joannou and June Purvis, Manchester University Press, 1998

'Women, Feminism and Eugenics', in Essays in the History of Eugenics: proceedings of a conference organised by the Galton Institute, London, 1997, edited by Robert A. Peel, The Galton Institute, London, 1998

'Feminist reconfigurations of heterosexuality in the 1920s', in Sexology and Culture: Labelling Bodies and Desires, edited by Lucy Bland and Laura Doan, Polity Press, 1998

Introduction to sections 'Heterosexuality, Marriage and Sex Manuals', 'Birth Control and Abortion' and 'Miscellaneous sexual behaviours' in Sexology Uncensored: A Source Book, edited by Lucy Bland and Laura Doan, Polity Press, 1998

'The Uterus in History' (themed review), Gender and History, 11:1, 1999

'"What a lot there is still to do': Stella Browne (1880-1955) carrying the struggle ever onward', in A Suffrage Reader: Charting directions in British suffrage history, 1850-1950, edited by Claire Eustance, Joan Ryan, and Laura Ugolini, Leicester University Press/Cassell, 2000

Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain since 1880, Macmillan, 2000. Further details

(Ed.) Marie Stopes: Birth Control and Other Writings 5 volumes, Bristol, Thoemmes Press, 2000: further info

'"Not a domestic utensil, but a woman and a citizen": Stella Browne on women, health and society' in Regenerating England: science, medicine and culture in inter-war Britain, edited by Chris Lawrence and Anna-K Mayer, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000: Clio Medica 60

Entry for 'Women in science: medicine' in Reader's Guide to the History of Science, edited by Arne Hessenbruch, Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000

'The Next Generation; Stella Browne, the new woman as freewoman', in Angelique Richardson and Chris Willis, The New Woman in Fiction and Fact, London, Palgrave/Macmillan: 2001, further info

'Sexuality', Women in Twentieth Century Britain, edited by Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska,Pearson Educational, 2001

'"A suitable job for a woman"?: women doctors and birth control before 1950' in Women and Modern Medicine, edited by Larry Conrad and Anne Hardy, Rodopi: Clio Medica 61

'"The Reserved Occupation"? Prostitution in the Second World War', Women's History Magazine, no 41, June 2002

'Eyes tightly shut, lying rigidly still and thinking of England? British women and sex from Marie Stopes to Hite', in Sexual Pedagogies: Teaching Sex in America, Britain, and Australia, 1879-2000, edited by Michelle Martin and Claudia Nelson, Palgrave (2003)

'"In great haste": the personal and the political in the letters of F. W. Stella Browne (1880-1955), feminist socialist sex radical', in Gender and Politics in the Age of Letter-Writing: 1750-2000, edited by Caroline Bland and Maire Cross, Ashgate, 2004

'Hauling down the Double Standard: feminism, social purity, and sexual science in late nineteenth century Britain', Gender and History, Vol 16 no 1, April 2004

'Women pioneers of nutrition and paediatric gastroenterology in the UK', in John Walker Smith and W. Allan Walker (eds), A Concise History of Paediatric Gastroenterology (Chipping Norton: Bladon Medical Publishing, 2004)

'"A deep debt of gratitude for your heroic frankness": Marie Stopes, marriage advice, and readers' reactions', in La Mediazione Matrimoniale: Il terzo (in)comodo in Europa fra Otto e Novecento , edited by Bruno Wanrooij, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura de Rome, 2004

Entries for F. W. Stella Browne, Margaret Shurmer Sibthorp, Marie Stopes, Charlotte Carmichael Stopes, Alice Vickery, Helen Wilson, and Helena Wright, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004

Outspoken Women: Women writing about sex, 1870-1969, Routledge, 2005

Entries on Abortion, Birth Control, Censorship, Eugenics and Sexology, and on Pamela Frankau, E Arnot Robertson, G B Stern, Marie Stopes and Violet Hunt in Faye Hammill, Ashlie Sponenberg, Esme Miskimmin, Encyclopedia of British Women's Writing 1900-1950, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006

'A masculine mythology suppressing and distorting all the facts': British women contesting the concept of the male-as-norm, 1870-1930' in Histories of the Normal and the Abnormal: Social and cultural histories of norms and normativity, edited by Waltraud Ernst, Routledge, 2006

Naomi Mitchison: A Profile of her life and work, Aqueduct Press Conversation Pieces, 2007

'Prostitution' in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Love, Courtship, and Sexuality Through History Vol 5, The Nineteenth Century, edited by Susan Mumm, Greenwood Press, 2007

'Stella Browne and the German Radical Sex Reform Tradition', in Sisters of Subversion: Histories of Women, Tales of Gender: A Festschriftt edited by Willem de Blecourt, AMB Amsterdam, 2008

'Essay review: Does madness have a gender?', History of Psychiatry, Dec 2009, Vol. 20, No. 1

'Beyond Madame Curie? The Invisibility of Women's Narratives in Science' in L Timmel Duchamp (ed), Narrative Power: Encounters, Celebrations, Struggles, Aqueduct Press, 2010

with Lucy Bland, 'Eugenics in Britain: The view from the metropole', in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics, 2010, Alison Bashford and Philippa Levine (eds)

'No Sex, Please, We're Socialists': The Labour Party prefers to close its eyes and think of the electorate', Socialist History, 36, 2010

The Life and Times of Stella Browne: feminist and free spirit, IB Tauris, 2011

'Finding Female Healthcare Workers in the Archives', Women's History Magazine, no 65, Spring 2011

'An ambiguous idol: HG Wells inspiring and infuriating women', The Wellsian, special 'Ann Veronica' issue, Vol 34, 2011

Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain since 1880, 2nd revised and expanded edition, Palgrave Macmillan, Gender and History series.

'Articulating abortion in interwar Britain', Women's History Magazine, Issue 70, Autumn 2012

The Subject is Obscene: No Lady Would Dream of Alluding to it": Marie Stopes' courtroom dramas', Women's History Review, special issue on 'Performing the Self: Women's Lives in Historical Perspective', 2013

Articles on 'Sexology and Feminism' and 'Venereal Diseases, history' in The International Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality, First Edition. Edited by Patricia Whelehan and Anne Bolin, Wiley, 2015

'"Sentimental Follies" or "Instruments of Tremendous Uplift"? reconsidering women's same-sex relationships in interwar Britain', Women's History Review, Special Issue: Love, Desire and Melancholy: inspired by Constance Maynard, 2016

Abortion and Birth Control, on the Victorian Web: Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Age of Victoria

'Send in the Clones?: Naomi Mitchison and the Politics of Reproduction and Motherhood' in James Purdon (ed), Naomi Mitchison: A Writer in Time (Edinburgh University Press, 2023)

'R v Bourne (1938)' in Rosemary Auchmuty, Erika Rackley, Mari Takayanagi (eds), Women’s Legal Landmarks in the Interwar Years: Not for Want of Trying (Hart, 2024)

Forthcoming

Women's history walk

Women in medicine

Useful links

My writings

Literary abortion

Reviews

Recent recommended reading