Novels about suffragettes

[MrsJackRackham]

While I patiently wait for Dr Fern Riddell's Death in Ten Minutes to come out in paperback can anyone please recommend a novel about the Suffragettes? I've already read Fallen Angles by Tracy Chevalier. Thanks.

[NotAnotherFeckingMuftiDay]

RF Delderfield wrote a trilogy which was my first introduction to suffragettes when I borrowed it from the school library.

I'm afraid I can't remember what each book was called and which one had the suffragette content as it was a very very long time ago .

[AndNoneForGretchenWieners]

A Murderous Innocence by Alison Scott Skelton. It's about a girl who comes of age during the early 1900s and gets involved with the suffragettes.

[AndNoneForGretchenWieners]

And Octavia by Beryl Kingston

[ALittleBitofVitriol]

NotAnotherFeckingMuftiDay

Could it be the Horseman Riding By trilogy? I've been googling lol.

[NotAnotherFeckingMuftiDay]

ALittleBitofVitriol

Thank you - that's it

[DrDiva]

Sex Wars by Marge Piercey. One of my favourite books.

[DancelikeEmmaGoldman]

Gillian Linscott wrote a series of excellent detective novels featuring Nell Bray, who is a suffragette.

[WanderingWavelet]

For ones written at the time:

Ray Strachey, The Cause
Elizabeth Robins, The Convert
Elizabeth Robins, Votes for Women! (a play)
Gertrude Colmore, Suffragette Sally (particularly good on the working class women of the movement - it's often used as a stick to beat women with that "the suffragettes were only upper class" - not true)
Constance Maud, No Surrender

There's a book of plays from the period, edited by Dale Spender, called How the Vote Was Won which includes some great little pieces of political theatre written for the suffrage cause (supported by Inez Bensusan who ran the Plays Department of the Actresses' Franchise League). One lovely play A Chat With Mrs Chicky is an hilarious parody of the aristocratic anti-suffrage female campaigner.


Ahhh, I used to teach all this stuff, back when I ran an MA in Women's Studies. Not many of those left, and goodness how much we need them now!

[Southfields]

WanderingWavelet

The Cause is not a novel. I have it here. It's a factual history book, and I love it.

[HawkeyeInConfusion]

I assume you're after a book for adults. But if you want one for tweens, there is My Best Friend The Suffragette by Sally Morgan.

[WanderingWavelet]

The other thing to look at is the many many novels from the 1880s onwards, generally known as "New Woman" novels - really interesting precursors to the suffragettes specifically, and with a lot of overlap.

Or you might look at one of Virginia Woolf's early novels Night and Day - a fine one I think, but not "famous" as an experimental Modernist novel. It gives a cross-section of life in London at the turn of the century, with characters who work for women's suffrage. A beautiful & engaging read.

[MinaPaws]

The Unborn Dreams of Clara Riley - Kathy Page

[moimichme]

Thanks for all these suggestions (and OP for starting the thread!). Very interesting options here!

[QuarksandLeptons]

Thanks OP, great thread and suggestions

[hackmum]

Do read "Old Baggage" by Lissa Evans. - it only came out a week or two ago. It's set in 1928, just before the vote is extended to all women over 21, and the heroine, Mattie, is a spirited, determined and intelligent woman in her 50s looking back on her time as a suffragette. That summary doesn't do justice to it, but it manages to be warm and funny and sad as well as making you furious about how these brilliant, brave women were treated.