Meet the unsung heroines of British history who refused to play by the rules

 

Roaring Girls tells the game-changing life stories of eight formidable women whose grit, determination and radical unconventionality saw them defy the odds to forge their own paths.

 

From notorious cross-dressing thief Mary Frith and proto-feminist science-fiction writer Margaret Cavendish through to rebel slave Mary Prince and landowner, industrialist, traveller and LGBTQ+ trailblazer Anne Lister, aka ‘Gentleman Jack’, these diverse characters redefined what a woman could be
and what she could do in pre-twentieth-century Britain.

 

They rejected the norms, challenged the status quo
and helped sow the seeds of modern feminism. Some used words, others action. Some broke the law, others changed it. Some used their femininity, others rejected it. All of them played with fire – and sometimes they
got burned.

 

Bold, inspiring and powerfully written, Roaring Girls tells the electrifying histories of women who, despite every effort to suppress them, dared to be extraordinary.