When an end to militancy was called on the outbreak of war in 1914, she encouraged women to engage in war work as a way to win their enfranchisement. Four years later, when enfranchisement was granted to certain categories of women aged thirty and over, she stood unsuccessfully for election to parliament, as a member of the Womenâs Party.
In 1940 she moved to the USA with her adopted daughter, and had a successful career there as a Second Adventist preacher and writer. However, she is mainly remembered for being the driving force behind the militant wing of the womenâs suffrage movement.
This full-length biography, the first for forty years, draws upon feminist approaches to biography writing to place her within a network of supportive female friendships. It is based upon an unrivalled range of previously untapped primary sources.
June Purvis is Emeritus Professor of Womenâs and Gender History, University of Portsmouth, UK. She has published extensively on the suffragette movement in Edwardian Britain, her Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography (Routledge, 2002) receiving critical acclaim. She is the Founding and Managing Editor of Womenâs History Review, the Editor for a Womenâs and Gender Book Series with Routledge, the Chair of Womenâs History Network and the Secretary and Treasurer of the International Federation for Research in Womenâs History.