-
The Historical Birthday-Tea Party 12th January
No famous birthday today, but three for tomorrow so let’s celebrate Carolyn Gold Heilbrun (aka Amanda Cross) January 13, 1926 – October 9, 2003 a day early. She’d probably quite like getting in early, she never was one for conventions. Described as the Mother of feminist academia (personally not sure I’d want to be described as…
-
The Historical Birthday-Tea Party 11th January
Another date with no dame. So here is Jane Anger. Possibly a pseudonym, possibly her real name, but whoever she was she had a way with words once she got a head of steam on, and went into print in 1589 in defence of women, in response to a scurrilous pamphlet, defiantly entitling her broadsheet…
-
The Historical Birthday-Tea Party 10th January
That enchantress, Abigail Hill Masham. Here’s a nice obscure lesbian for you – no birthdate, (best guess 1670’s) but sufficiently influential because of her relationship with Queen Anne to have caused quite a furore in her lifetime. If you know anything about Queen Anne and her female friends, then it is probably Sarah Churchill you…
-
The Historical Birthday-Tea Party 8th January
Sound the Trumpets for Bathsua Reginald Makin, another woman of unknown birthdate, some time around 1608. A child prodigy who spoke mulitple languages and published at the age of sixteen. (You’d think that would make it easier to guess her birthday wouldn’t you). A very clever woman and an excellent self publicist, she became tutor…
-
The Historical Birthday-Tea Party 7th January
No-one is owning up to being born on 7th January, so another ‘who knows?’ And because it’s wild weather I thought we’d go for a pirate. Mary Read. Cross-dressing lover of Anne Bonny, and several men, a proper swashbuckler, served in the King’s army, ran a pub and later became a pirate, but no one…
-
The Historical Birthday-Tea Party 6th January
Today’s birthday belongs to Stella Benson, 1892-1933 a feminist, writer and traveller (particularly America and China). She was a friend of Virginia Woolf, and of Winifred Holtby. She wrote travel books, poetry, novels and short stories. She died rather young, but I can’t help feeling she got a lot of fun from life while she…
-
The Historical Birthday-Tea Party 5th January
No convenient birthday for 5th January so the first of the ‘who knows?’ BIERIS (Biatritz) DE ROMANS Thirteenth Century Trobairitz (Female Troubadour – writer of songs) from Romans-Sur-Isère. Writing from around 1200-1235. Probably nobility since she could read and write. The tune does not survive. During and following the Albigensian Crusade, troubadours were treated with…
-
The Historical Birthday-Tea Party January 4th
The matchless Orinda – Katherine Phillips. Her birthday is actually 1st January 1631 but she deserved a really class party so I’ve waited til now. She was also known as the English Sappho. (So were lots of women poets, it didn’t mean what we think it would mean now, just that she was a poet,…
-
The Historical Birthday-Tea party 2nd January
The second in my celebrations of women from history who stuck up for themselves and each other, and this one rather more likely to be a lesbian than dear Maria E. M. Carey Thomas, born 2nd January 1857 in th USA, prefered to be known as Carey rather than her given name of Martha (another…
-
The Historical Birthday-Tea Party 1st January
So: YEARS ago, pre the internet, A and I used to go to the Lesbian History Group at the London Women’s Centre, and for a while we had this plan to produce a birthday book with a lesbian from history for every day of the year, complete with a good quotation for every week. It…
Cherry Potts, Writer 