Cirrus@Austlit

'Historians and biographers have been grappling with the question of how to write feminist biography for some time now. In 1994 Barbara Caine noted that ‘biography is at one and the same time antithetical to some of the basic aims and approaches of women’s history—and the avenue that seems most helpful for those seeking to understand the actual historical experiences of women in all their complexity’.1 For some, biography’s traditional focus on ‘exceptional’ people with public lives has sat awkwardly with the democratic ideals of feminist history. But it is an evolving genre that presents an attractive option for those seeking to recover women of the past and interrogate historical feminisms—especially for popular audiences.' (Introduction)