This book brings together twelve chapters from feminist historians from around the world to offer new perspectives on aspects of the campaign for women’s suffrage in Britain.

Although the focus is on Britain, this volume signals how the women’s suffrage campaign in Britain embraced both national and global aspects. The historical developments and structures that affected women’s lives and suffrage struggles were not limited to national contexts. Early chapters focus on particular individuals both well and lesser known, including Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Emmeline Pankhurst, as well as Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, Lady Isabel Margesson and Isabella Ford. Later chapters highlight the interrelationship between the British movement and suffrage campaigns across the globe with reference to Austria, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and the USA. The chapters deal with issues around strategies, social class, employment, religion, nationalism, empire and race and explore complex issues about women’s roles in campaigning for their democratic right to the parliamentary vote.

Offering the reader a broad view of the British women’s suffrage movement, this is the ideal volume for students of women’s and political history in both its national and international contexts.

June Purvis is Professor (Emerita) of Women’s and Gender History at the University of Portsmouth, UK. She has published extensively on the suffragette movement in Edwardian Britain, including Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography (2002) and Christabel Pankhurst: A Biography (2018). She is the founding and managing editor of the journal Women’s History Review, and also the editor for the Women’s and Gender History book series with Routledge, and is currently Treasurer of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History.

June Hannam is Professor (Emerita) of History at the University of West of England Bristol, UK. She has published extensively on women and socialism/the labour movement, and women’s suffrage. Her many publications include Isabella Ford (1989), International Encyclopedia of Women’s Suffrage, co-edited with Mitzi Aucherlonie and Katherine Holden (2000), Socialist Women: Britain, 1880s to 1920s¸ co-written with Karen Hunt (2002) as well as numerous chapters in edited books.