2. Mutual Admiration Society by Mo Moulton
Mentioned (by me!) already upthread, this interesting book tells the story of Dorothy L Sayers and her contemporaries (principally Muriel St Clare Byrne, Charis Frankenburg (nee Barnett) and D. Rowe) who together formed the titular society at Somerville College, Oxford in the early 20th century.
The MAS was not, as it might sound, simply a mechanism for ego stroking, but a supportive environment in which the women read and criticised each other's work. The four women named above, of whom DLS is the most famous, remained close on and off throughout their lives, and the book, in accordance with its subtitle, uses their life stories to show how they and others "remade the world for women". They were quite different as individuals so this leads the book off in a number of directions: Charis was a midwife and wrote parenting guides; D. Rowe remained single and was a teacher and amateur dramatist; Muriel St Clare Byrne was a lecturer and author whose life partner was female and at various points, was in a menage-a-trois with a third woman. DLS, of course, wrote detective novels (of which I am quite fond although I find Wimsey irritating) and a lot more besides.
The source material is great and I found all four women extremely interesting and engaging. The writing is a bit pedestrian at times, but I got through pretty swiftly so it can't be that bad! I think the best part of the book is watching the women (particularly DLS) change their views with time, and to see how things we now take for granted were shaped, sometimes painfully, by these exceptional but fundamentally relatable individuals.