Overview

In a feat of extraordinary archival research Sheila Rowbotham uncovers six little-known women and men whose lives were both dramatic and startlingly radical. Rowbotham tells a story that moves from Bristol, Belfast and Edinburgh to Massachusetts and the wildernesses of California, showing how rebellious ideas were formed and travelled across the Atlantic. Rebel Crossings offers fascinating perspectives on the historical interaction of feminism, socialism, anarchism and on the incipient consciousness of a new sense of self, so vital for women seeking emancipation. Their influences ranged from Unitarianism, High Church Anglicanism, and esoteric spirituality through to Walt Whitman, William Morris, Edward Carpenter, Eleanor Marx, Peter Kropotkin, Benjamin Tucker, and Max Stirner. In differing ways they sought to combine the creation of a co-operative society with personal freedom, enhanced perception and loving friendships, experimenting with free love, rational dress, health diets and deep breathing. A work of significant originality in terms of historical scholarship, this book also speaks to the dilemmas of our own times.

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9781784785888

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Reviews

Rowbotham is one of Britain's most important, if unshowy, feminist thinkers - Guardian Exhilarating - admirably lucid - Reading about the wild hopes of these early 20th-century pioneers, you cannot fail to be moved by the sheer exuberance of their imaginations. - Kathryn Hughes, Guardian (in praise of Dreamers of a New Day) Ambitious and eloquent - Rowbotham has a marvellous gift for explication and an eye for the illuminating quotation. - Elaine Showalter, Daily Telegraph (in praise of Dreamers of a New Day) Opens the whole period of early socialism in Britain. And it reads beautifully - Jeanette Winterson, The Times (in praise of Dreamers of a New Day) Indispensible ... A lively, readable, and balanced account of the gender wars of one messy century - Naomi Wolf, The Times (in praise of Dreamers of a New Day) I can't wait to read this... Juicy historical gossip for nerds. - Lucy Kogler, LitHub

Rowbotham is one of Britain's most important, if unshowy, feminist thinkers - Guardian I can't wait to read this... Juicy historical gossip for nerds. - Lucy Kogler, LitHub

An immersive book with a gripping narrative drive and it will make you wonder why stories like this are usually ignored by historians. - Fern Riddall, Mail on Sunday Miriam and Robert are two of a cast of six fin-de-siecle figures that Sheila Rowbotham has unearthed, all courageous in defying convention and fighting to bring a new world into being. Rowbotham is the right person to tell this story. She has spent her career writing about historical attempts at liberation and has herself become a doyenne of the feminist movement...The stories she has uncovered are timely because the principles they prize are under threat. - Lara Feigel, Sunday Telegraph Rowbotham is one of Britain's most important, if unshowy, feminist thinkers - Guardian Exhilarating - admirably lucid - Reading about the wild hopes of these early 20th-century pioneers, you cannot fail to be moved by the sheer exuberance of their imaginations. - Kathryn Hughes, Guardian (in praise of Dreamers of a New Day) Ambitious and eloquent - Rowbotham has a marvellous gift for explication and an eye for the illuminating quotation. - Elaine Showalter, Daily Telegraph (in praise of Dreamers of a New Day) Opens the whole period of early socialism in Britain. And it reads beautifully - Jeanette Winterson, The Times (in praise of Dreamers of a New Day) Indispensible ... A lively, readable, and balanced account of the gender wars of one messy century - Naomi Wolf, The Times (in praise of Dreamers of a New Day) I can't wait to read this... Juicy historical gossip for nerds. - Lucy Kogler, LitHub Rebel Crossings contains remarkable tales of courage - Times Higher Education

Author Information

SHEILA ROWBOTHAM, who helped start the women's liberation movement in Britain, is known internationally as an historian of feminism and radical social movements. She is the author of the ground-breaking books Women, Resistance and Revolution; Woman's Consciousness, Man's World; and Hidden from History. Her later works include Promise of a Dream: Remembering the Sixties; Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century; and the biography Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love, shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize and winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Biography. Her poetry and two plays have been published and she has written for newspapers and journals in Britain, the US, Italy, Brazil, Turkey, Sweden and Sri Lanka. An Honorary Fellow of Manchester University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, she lives in Bristol.

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