Cover design by Kim Roberts |
The Spinster
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| The much-awaited re-release of this classic feminist text. With a revised and updated introduction. |
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Sheila Jeffreys examines the activities of feminist campaigners around such issues as child abuse and prostitution and how these campaigns shaped social purity in the 1880s and 1890s. She demonstrates how the thriving and militant feminism of late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was undermined, and asserts that the decline of this feminism was due largely to the promotion of a sexual ideology which was hostile to women’s independence. The circumstances about which she writes are frighteningly familiar in the present political climate.
‘Splendidly documented, provocative, never dull.’ —Phyllis Grosskurth, Times Literary Supplement
‘Sheila Jeffreys is an excellent historian.’ —Anita Brookner, Sunday Times
‘I found The Spinster and Her Enemies provocative, compelling, and utterly readable... if any academic book deserves the appellation ‘page turner’, this is it. Much of it has to do with Jeffreys’ method and style: she remains one of our most thorough and incisive researchers, and her prose is accessible to all. Beyond that, I locate the book’s appeal in its topic. Sex presses our buttons, trips chords we might ignore.’ —Melissa Tedrow, Hurrcane Alice
Other titles by Sheila Jeffreys:
feminism pb 240pp 198 x 128mm
Territories: World
All rights: Spinifex 
