Suffrage and the Arts

Reviews / Votes

This insightful edited collection extends and enhances our understanding of the relationships between artistic endeavour, commercial enterprise and political activism ... An invaluable contribution to understandings of visual and material culture and art and business history, as well as to suffrage and women's studies. * History Today * I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which has been beautifully produced. In a series of engaging chapters the authors contribute significantly to our knowledge about the suffrage movement covering aspects of the campaign that have been often overlooked. It also gives a voice to the many women artists who are often lost in political histories or histories on women's art. * Women's History Review * [The book's] careful curation presents an insightful study of the multiform ways in which art and politics intersected in the suffrage campaign, both harmoniously and problematically, giving a holistic and rounded impression of the intricate landscape that suffrage artists had to navigate. Furthermore, after celebrating the centenary of the Representation of the People Act last year, it once again places art and artists at the centre of a reinvigorated scholarship on British women and politics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. * Twentieth Century British History * A fascinating collection of engaging and informative essays that extend our knowledge about the centrality of the arts to the women's suffrage movement. * June Purvis, Emerita Professor of Women's and Gender History at the University of Portsmouth, UK * This collection transforms our understanding of artistic contributions to the women's suffrage campaign by detailing the experiences of artists, consumers, campaigners and propagandists. A genuinely pioneering work, it illuminates how women balanced their professional lives as artists with their feminist activism, as well as bringing to life the variety of visual culture designed and made during this period across Britain and Ireland. This innovative and timely collection should find a wide and appreciative audience. * Senia Paseta, Professor of Modern History at St Hugh's College, University of Oxford, UK *