Overall a great overview and introduction into women's rights in London in 1819 and the following 100 years.

This was an interesting overview of women’s history and social class/working class history in England for the last years. Things I had read before got another level of context and Cooper does a very good job researching the working and living conditions of mill workers in England throughout the 1800s. I have to admit that I didn’t find the writing very compelling and it would have been an easy book to put down and not pick up again. I felt like a lot of the book covered more surface area than detail where women and the vote were concerned. The writing was often repetitive and while Peterloo was covered well, many other issues were barely glanced at. Still, not a bad introduction to the subject, snd to the connections between work.ing conditions, labor movements, snd the expanding vote for men and women over thr last century.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Having read a lot about US women’s suffrage recently, I was intrigued to read about the fight in Britain, especially as it factors into the backdrop of many of my favorite historical novels. I knew a bit about Peterloo prior, but I didn’t know how it figured in the women’s movement, and I was intrigued to learn how things changed between 1819 and 1919 as people fought for change.

A Century of Female Revolution gives an insight into the effects of Peterloo and the long campaign for women's right to vote in Britain. The focus on class was particularly interesting and Cooper covered a wide variety of topics besides universal suffrage, including education, living conditions, trade unions and social reform. She also focused in on the lives of particular activists, like Josephine Butler. The link from Peterloo and 19th century campaigning to modern day Britain was fascinating, although I felt like at times links to Peterloo were stretched and referred back to when it didn't have to be. Overall, it was a great overview of female revolution in all areas of life, from Peterloo in 1819 to the securing of universal suffrage.

August 1819 saw the Peterloo Massacre occur when a large crowd of mainly working class men, women, and children gathered in an open space in Manchester, UK. The attendees were there to hear speakers talk about the issues of low wages and high food prices, exacerbated by the Corn Laws, which meant that many of the working class and poor faced near starvation. Those in charge of Manchester though had different ideas and they sent in the Yeomanry who set about the protestors with extreme violence. Some attendees were killed and many were injured, and women were disproportionally targeted.

This book looks at Peterloo and the fallout from it which helped pave the way for the setting up of trade unions, better working conditions, fairer pay, and adult suffrage. Initially, these tended to mainly benefit men only, and women often had to set up their own unions and pressure groups. (Not to say that there weren't men who believed that women should be treated as individuals and not the property of their father or husband - there were some like John Stuart Mill). I thought this was a really interesting read. It is written in a very accessible writing style, and I feel that I learned a lot.

The author really dug into the prevailing class distinctions and how these combined with women not being viewed as people in the same way that men were viewed as people to make things doubly hard for women. For working class women this meant that not only did they work 12 hour shifts in factories or domestic service, they then returned home and started a second equally hard shift looking after the home and family. It seems absolutely ludicrous now to think that anyone could argue that women were not people and yet it was a common way of thinking - some aspects of which unfortunately permeates down to today.

In the same way, the view of the ruling class who thought of the working class and the poor as being destitute due to their own moral failings and being uneducated, rather than look to the way Victorian society was set up to keep the pecking order intact, is still seen today. One only has to think of the way benefit claimants are viewed by some sections of society today to see this. I think this book should be widely read so people can see just where the fights for the rights of women and the rights of the poorest in our society came from, how far we have come, and what still needs to be done.

Thanks to NetGalley and publishers, Pen & Sword, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

A well-researched, well-presented insight into the politics and societal attitudes leading up to British women winning the right to vote (in 1918 providing they were over thirty years old; in 1928 once they were twenty-one years of age). I learned a great deal from this book, and am surprised that so much of its content isn't taught in schools — I didn't know a single thing about Peterloo until I researched it for an essay during my Bachelor's degree! For a teenager, or somebody looking to expand their knowledge on a neglected area of history, A Century of Female Revolution is a worthy read, ending on this fitting, sadly true note:

"Although the situation of women is rather different in 2019, the repressions, cruelties, and taunts of 1819 are being repeated with the same intentions, proving that true female emancipation has yet to come. Nineteenth-century attitudes towards women are still there, still simmering, just below the surface."

A Century of Female Revolution by Glynis Cooper starts with an explanation of how bad life was for the working-class in the 1810s. A volcanic eruption in Indonesia in 1815 was followed by “the year without a summer”. Harvests were poor and food prices rose. The poor barely earned enough to live and the lack of work and food made them desperate. The upper-class were terrified of revolution and Parliament passed the “Gagging Acts” and banned meetings of over fifty people. On the 16th August, 1819, there was a mass gathering in St Peter’s Fields in Manchester to hear the famous orator, Henry Hunt. Hunt had warned attendees to leave sticks and any other weapons at home to ensure there would be no excuse for the authorities to attack the crowd. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop the drunken Manchester Yeomanry from rushing upon the crowd with their sabres drawn, killing twenty and injuring several hundred people.

The book is very good on the detail of the day, listing individuals’ names and quoting eye-witness accounts. Although the authorities tried to suppress tales of what had happened, the Times correspondent, John Tyas, published a 10,000 word account, strongly emphasising that the crowd was innocent and that the cavalry was to blame for the unprovoked murderous attack. The editor of the Manchester Observer was persecuted, as were his wife and children, until he was ruined. However, the Manchester Guardian sprang up in its place and is still going strong, still promoting left-wing causes, although without “Manchester” in its title.

Cooper then covers the century following Peterloo, discussing the long drawn-out fight for female suffrage. She is good at the macro level, covering various Reform Acts; and at the micro-level, with lots of mini-biographies of women such as Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Lydia Becker. There are times when I felt battered by lists, e.g. the Female Reform Societies formed in various towns in the North West; and the individuals involved. The book is very well structured, with relatively short chapters giving us a chronological perspective. Most of the book can be read as an absorbing narrative, but there are some sections where the narrative halts and we have these lists. They will be absolutely invaluable as reference material but they made me feel that I was wading in treacle.

Cooper makes the excellent point that “The working classes were neither ignorant nor illiterate. Everyone who worked in the mills and manufactories had to be able to read instructions and warning notices. Writing was seen as a different matter and not everyone could write, but they could read.” That explains why adverts for schools in the early 1800s taught reading as part of the curriculum but charged extra to teach writing.

I was delighted to learn that the weavers who went on strike in 1875 decided that an all-female strike committee was the best option to defeat the owners. (And they did win.)

Cooper is good at explaining the Poor Laws and Factory Acts, talking us through the changes governing the employment of women and children. She is realistic, though, and accepts that what took children out of the mills and put them into school was men’s realisation that the increase in technology meant the future workforce had to be educated enough to handle it.

This is an excellent book, even if my boots were in treacle at times, and would be a brilliant book for a teenage history student. I’m grateful to Pen and Sword for letting me have a free copy to review.

#ACenturyofFemaleRevolution #NetGalley

History and the history of women is a really interesting topic to me, and this certainly gave me the depth and interest. A book that centres on the first wave of feminism, we see the strength of women grow throughout this century and it makes for such incredible reading - and Cooper does a great job delivering the history in an easy to read and understandable way throughout this book.

I really appreciated seeing the different local societies and the importance of grassroots activism when often in books around suffrage we rarely get to see alongside of course the prolific campaigners who tended to be London-centric - being able to see that women no matter where they were were pushing for change I think is important. Class was a major factor in here, and it shows in this book for me, as I feel all classes are represented in this book.

A great insight into the politics and social movements of the time, this book covers a range of perspectives that really enhanced my knowledge and if you’re interested in British Women’s Suffrage, I feel like this might be a book to begin with as it gives you a good foundation of knowledge about the time - and gives you plenty of sources to go and find to go deeper.

I thought I was pretty knowledgeable in this space but this book taught me a lot. Essential reading for anyone interested in the history of suffrage and the experience of being a woman during a period of great change. I always like it when historians balance expertise with accessibility and this book is a product of meticulous research and a commitment to clarity in writing.