Thanks for Typing
Remembering Forgotten Women in History
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:11th Feb '21
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
A collection of essays exploring forgotten women behind famous male writers, scholars, politicians and activists, and their uncredited contributions from antiquity to the late 20th century.
This collection uncovers the wives, daughters, mothers, companions and female assistants who laboured in the shadows of famous men. Revealing the reality of uncredited female contributions throughout history, this book highlights the work of neglected and forgotten women associated with celebrated male writers, scholars, activists and politicians. As the #ThanksforTyping movement has shown, anonymous women working to support the work of their male relations and colleagues has been, and often still is, a universal phenomenon. These essays show just how long intelligent and determined women have been sidelined, ignored or forgotten throughout history. From a well-connected Roman matrician to the mother of the poet Philip Larkin, these women have their voices returned to them in twenty engaging chapters. Spanning ancient times to the modern day, they return agency to women who occupied crucial roles behind the scenes, but were always restricted to the supporting role they were obliged to play. The universal importance of these women take on new meaning in our modern era where women’s voices are becoming ever-louder and increasingly recognised - including through such a movement as #ThanksforTyping.
‘There are very few books that can claim to address genuinely universal phenomena, and Thanks for Typing is one of this small class. Its canvas stretches from the classical world, via the medieval and early modern, to our own, and from Japan and Korea and North Africa, via the Russian Empire and Western Europe, to the United States – because in all these times and places the visible work of men was made possible by the invisible labour of women. Thanks for Typing makes such engagement possible for a range of readerships, and on a truly impressive scale.’ * Dr Anna Vaninskaya, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Edinburgh, UK *
Juliana Dresvina’s proposed collection of essays is imaginative, novel, wide-ranging and timely. It brings together scholars from very diverse fields of history, art history and literature, who share an interest in the too-long neglected stories of wives, daughters, companions and female assistants of celebrated male figures. The subjects range from a learned and saintly 5th-century Byzantine empress to the devoted daughter of a murdered 20th-century German Communist leader. These were women of courage, determination and brilliance, who were compelled to subordinate their own talents to a husband, partner, father or employer. Taken together, these fascinating studies exemplify the long-term paradox of energetic and charismatic women, who might have occupied crucial roles behind the scenes yet were always regarded as secondary figures because they were overshadowed by more powerful men. * Paul Monod, Hepburn Professor of History Chair, Department of History Middlebury College, USA *
ISBN: 9781350150058
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 506g
328 pages