SCOTLAND HISTORY

The Lives of Scottish Women: Women and Scottish Society, 1800-1970 by William Knox

Publisher's Synopsis
Ten biographies illuminate their subjects' historical periods. This book tells the remarkable stories of ten women whose inspirational lives and struggles exemplify the concerns and problems that other women have faced throughout the last two centuries. Each is the subject of a chapter devoted to her particular story and the times in which she lived. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries witnessed great changes in women's position in Scotland, and yet little is known about the achievements of the Scottish women who were the main agents of these changes. In presenting the life stories of ten women, William Knox provides evidence of the huge contribution made by women to the shaping of modern Scotland. At the same time he shows how the life histories of individuals can reveal previously dark corners of historical understanding and allow a more nuanced picture of Scottish society as a whole. Individually these biographies are full of drama and interest. Collectively they say about much the range of women's economic, social and political experience in the past two hundred years.

Virgins and Viragos: A History of Women in Scotland from 1080 to 1980 by Rosalind K. Marshall

Publisher's Synopsis
Follows the role of women in Scottish society from medieval times to the present and shows how they fought against injustices and prejudice.

Women in Scotland c.1100-c.1750 by Elizabeth Ewan

Synopsis
A comprehensive view of the lives of women in Scotland from 1100 to 1750, based on a wide range of archival sources, including Court of Session records and Middle Scots poetry. Amongst the women featured are nuns, brewers, widows, witches, and wives of ministers of the kirk.

A Unique and Glorious Mission: Women and Presbyterianism in Scotland 1830-1930 by Lesley Orr Macdonald

Synopsis
This text studies the changing relationship between women and Presbyterianism between 1830 and 1930. It focuses on women's struggles to change institutional and ideological structures, discussing their struggle for access to higher education and the women's suffrage campaign.

Twisted Sisters: Women, Crime and Deviance in Scotland Since 1400 by Yvonne Galloway Brown

Publisher's Synopsis
This collection of papers from the Women's History Network conference Twisted Sisters spans the medieval period to modernity. The papers look at women's involvement in crime and deviance, including infanticide, social deviance, witchcraft, and political influence in both private and public spheres of Scottish society. A new perspective is offered on accepted norms of female behavior, challenging the received view of women as necessarily restrained by the conventions of their time. The papers show that womanly emotions, so long held to epitomize femininity, have an energetic flipside in ambition, anger, radicalism, and transgression played out on the domestic and social stage-that women throughout the centuries have been actors in crime and deviance rather than mere passive recipients of punishment.

Contemporary Scottish Women Writers by Alison Lumsden

Publisher's Synopsis
This collection of essays, by both new and established critics, provides stimulating readings of many of the Scottish women writers working in Scots and English today. While in the growing field of Scottish women´s writing it is impossible to be all encompassing, these essays cover a wide range from the most established, Muriel Spark, to newer writers such as Laura Hird. It includes new readings of Janice Galloway and A. L. Kennedy and examines the work of poets such as Carol Ann Duffy and Kate Clanchy, dramatists such as Sharman Macdonald and Sue Glover as well as writers, including Jackie Kay, who cross genre boundaries.

She Was Aye Workin': Memories of Tenement Women in Edinburgh and Glasgow by Elizabeth Carnegie, Helen Clark

Synopsis
Exploring the previously hidden lives of the women who raised families and made ends meet in Scotland's crowded urban tenements, this book draws on memories of the first half of the 20th century that evoke living conditions unimaginable today. It is an eloquent tribute to stamina, management skills, and moral strength in the face of poor housing and relentless poverty. This book contains material not previously published on taboo subjects such as sexual awareness and domestic violence, and it explains the social context that regulated women's behavior.