Significant Sisters

The Grassroots of Active Feminism, 1839-1939

Select a format:

Retailers:

Amazon Blackwells Bookshop.org Foyles Hive Waterstones WHSmith

Summary

Eight women who changed the world

Caroline Norton * Elizabeth Blackwell * Florence Nightingale * Emily Davies * Josephine Butler * Elizabeth Cady Stanton * Margaret Sanger * Emma Goldman

Significant Sisters traces the lives of eight women, each of whom pioneered vital changes in the spheres of law, education, the professions, morals or politics: the first woman doctor, the pioneer of birth control, a radical journalist, and suffragists. Each forged her own particular brand of feminism, yet all fought bravely to make real, lasting difference to women's lives, and make us redefine our own notions of feminism today.

Reviews

Margaret Forster is alive to the debt we owe to such champions, who made our world so much more hospitable to women
Marina Warner, Sunday Times

About the author

Margaret Forster

Born in Carlisle, Margaret Forster was the author of many successful and acclaimed novels, including Have the Men Had Enough?, Lady's Maid, Diary of an Ordinary Woman, Is There Anything You Want? , Keeping the World Away, Over and The Unknown Bridesmaid. She also wrote bestselling memoirs – Hidden Lives, Precious Lives and, most recently, My Life in Houses – and biographies. She was married to writer and journalist Hunter Davies and lived in London and the Lake District. She died in February 2016, just before her last novel, How to Measure a Cow, was published.

Learn More