it takes neither dynamite / nor earth quake /
the business of circus / is its own upheaval

Circus as drama and risk, as exuberance and irrepressible spirit, is the central metaphor Patricia Sykes uses to open a world where public and private share the same tightrope. The poems speak of women searching for footholds along the spectrums of politics, power, history, culture and...

Through their letters home and their diaries, the first European women who came to Australia were literally writing a new world. A lively and provocative history of two hundred years of Australian settlement as seen through the records of women writers. With characteristic verve and style Dale Spender challenges received wisdom. She presents over 200 women writers and an image of a country...

A SPINIFEX FEMINIST CLASSIC

Our house was a single-fronted cottage in the slum area of Carlton. There were no distinctive features to differentiate it from most of the small cottages ... Zelda D'Aprano, a working-class woman at the forefront of the Women's Liberation Movement in Australia, shows in her autobiography the same raw spirit she evidenced when chaining herself to the Commonwealth...