Mum's Army

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Loraine Fletcher

Charlotte Turner Smith (1749-1806) was born into the landed gentry and married off at 15, on the insistence of a hostile stepmother, to a wastrel from a West Indian family whose money came from the slave trade. When her husband's fecklessness forced her to support herself and their nine surviving children alone, she at once became a celebrated poet and novelist. Writing at the time of the French Revolution, she wanted change in England too and commented sharply on the injustice of England's class system, on the legalized looting of Empire and the legal prostitution of arranged marriages. Her Elegiac Sonnets with their lonely landscapes greatly influenced William Wordsworth, while Jane Austen devoured her satirical fiction and adapted her plots and settings for novels of her own. Her personality comes across vividly from her letters, published here for the first time, and from Loraine Fletcher's sympathetic, scholarly narrative.

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Babette Smith

New edition of the bestselling history that traces the chequered story of 100 women transported together in 1829 to Sydney. Includes new information on the women and treatment of convicts, and new illustrations.Intrigued to discover a convict ancestor in her family tree, Babette Smith decided to investigate her life and the lives of the 99 women who were transported with her on the ship Princess Royal in 1829.Piece by piece she reveals the story of her ancestor the indomitable Susannah Watson who, trapped in the crowded filthy slums of Nottingham, stole because she could not bear to see her children starving'. Separated forever from her husband and four children, she was transported to Australia for 14 years. She endured the convict system at its worst, yet emerged triumphant to die in her bed aged 83 singing Rock of Ages'.Babette Smith reconstructs the lives of the women from the Princess Royal from fragments of information in shipping lists, official records, newspapers and court transcripts. Her research overturns stereotypes of women convicts as drunken whores and criminals. Caught in an England convulsed by change, they become the unwitting and unwilling pioneers of a new land. Many proved to be resourceful and resilient, taking advantage of the opportunities offered by a new society.First published two decades ago, A Cargo of Women became a bestseller and remains one of the most valuable accounts of convict life in Australia. This new edition includes further information about the women from the Princess Royal and new illustrations.Smith comes as close as any historian has come to reconstructing the complex experience of a convict woman an absorbing story.'Kay Daniels, Australian Historical Studies

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Pamela Mordecai and Elizabeth Wilson

Like the scattered islands themselves, these fragments from 31 women writers display the range and variety of Caribbean cultures and traditions. From memories of turn-of-the-century Dominica to contemporary USA, Africa and Britain, writers from Haiti to Cuba and Jamaica are included.

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Robert Green

Examines the life of the present British queen, discussing her royal upbringing, the job she inherited, her commitment to the monarchy, and her highly publicized family.