Cirrus@Austlit

'Clare Wright seems a born story‐teller. This is a big book that has already won high praise. Much has been written on the breakthroughs with women's suffrage in Australasia and the attempts to export this success to the “home country”, but never as engagingly as here. Wright tells the story through interwoven biographies of the key actors; she excels at setting scenes, keeping the complex plot under control and pushing the story forward. Although the book is well referenced, Wright does not slow down the action by locating her work in relation to existing historiography, at least until the final chapter where she engages with the construction of national narratives. Instead, she begins with her discovery of Dora Meeson's “Trust the Women” banner hanging in Parliament House in Canberra and her determination to unravel “its matted threads”.' (Introduction)