Mary Ann Shadd Cary was a teacher, publisher, lawyer, and civil rights activist who published a weekly newspaper called The Provincial Freeman.
6 Brilliant Women Philosophers of Ancient Greece
These women philosophers of Ancient Greece defied society to pursue knowledge, and became famous for the contributions they made to philosophy.
Ida B. Wells: Fierce Anti-Lynching Activist and Abolitionist
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, better known as Ida B. Wells, was an African American writer and activist famous for her work campaigning against lynching in the South.
The Amazing Nellie Bly, Adventurer and Pioneering Journalist
Nellie Bly was only 23 years old when, against all odds, she earned a job at Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper, The New York World. Nellie had spent 10 days undercover in Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum, proving that women could be successful, intrepid journalists, not just confined to the fashion and society pages. In an active career […]
Grace Dalrymple Elliott, Courtesan and Spy
The infamous eighteenth-century courtesan Grace Dalrymple Elliott’s birth has not been recorded, but she was certainly born in Scotland, most likely in Edinburgh around 1754. She was to grow up to achieve a scandalous notoriety due to her divorce and high-profile lovers — but there was much more to Grace than mere scandal. She was […]
Mary Treat, Victorian Entomologist and Visionary Biologist
Mary Treat (1830-1923) was a prolific scientific writer who earned a reputation as “the world’s most famous and industrious woman naturalist” at a time when few women were professionally engaged in biology. The daughter of a minister, Treat attended a private girls’ academy early in life. Such academies, or “seminaries,” were an answer to the […]
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Feminist Writer, Lecturer, and Thinker
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a feminist writer, lecturer, and thinker at the turn of the 20th century. Despite her lack of formal education, she authored Women in Economics, a foundational text of early feminism, and became known as a preeminent sociologist, philosopher, and social critic. Her works of fiction represented the psychological impact of traditional […]
Melanie Klein, the Founding Mother of Children’s Psychology
As with many fields of study, the canonical works of the social sciences are overrun with the findings of white males. But in the field of psychoanalysis, Melanie Klein, a Viennese Jewish woman, made an impact on the field with her unlikely-sounding theories published in her book The Psychoanalysis of Children, where she documents infants’ […]
Daphne du Maurier, English writer
Daphne du Maurier was an English writer, most famous for her novel Rebecca. Other significant works include My Cousin Rachel, The Scapegoat, and The House on the Strand. Several of her stories have been made into films, most notably Hitchcock’s Rebecca and The Birds, and Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. Du Maurier came from an […]
Henrietta Dugdale, Australian women’s rights and suffrage pioneer
It should always be the aim of woman to rise from the degrading position assigned her in the age of bestial ignorance and brute power. Henrietta Dugdale Henrietta Dugdale (1827–1918) was a passionate, confident, and assertive feminist who was one of the pioneers of Victoria, Australia’s feminist movement. She founded the Victorian Women’s Suffrage Society, […]
