Gender

From the Many to the Few

Kate Cooper reassesses Brent Shaw’s 1994 article on women in the early Church, which reveals a key historical principle.

Love and Marriage in Seventeenth-Century England

Church and State stood foursquare behind the superiority of man in seventeenth century England. It was only when a lady became a widow, writes Maurice Ashley, that a glorious opportunity for authority and freedom suddenly flooded in upon her.

Women in Imperial Rome

In Rome, after the fall of the Republic, women played a conspicuous, independent and sometimes ill-omened part. But it was on their follies and extravagances, rather than on their virtues, that masculine writers usually preferred to dwell, writes J.P.V.D. Balsdon.

Women in Republican Rome

After centuries of masculine predominance, as the Republic neared its end, a host of notable women crossed the stage of Roman history—the devoted Porcia, the beautiful Julia, the Amazonian Fulvia, described here by J.P.V.D. Balsdon as “a Lady Macbeth of the Roman world”.

A Woman's Place...

Sarah Gristwood considers some earlier female MPs who might have given Mrs Thatcher a run for her money.

Interior World of the White Queen

Syrie Maugham was a businesswoman and beauty whose interior designs became a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic. However her relationships with a series of prominent men left her personal life in tatters. Frances Larson tells her story.

Mighty Lewd Books

As the erotic novel appears to be experiencing a renaissance Julie Peakman reflects on 18th-century appetites for pornography.