1 00:00:10,940 --> 00:00:19,150 My title is all but absent from history. Question amongst women in the GNB and Odean V. 2 00:00:19,150 --> 00:00:25,840 Nicely, Steven, the first editor of the original Dictionary of National Biography published at the end of the 19th century, 3 00:00:25,840 --> 00:00:32,050 had strong views about women's roles exemplified by the way in which he constructed a hagiography of his wife, 4 00:00:32,050 --> 00:00:43,030 who had died prematurely and expect his daughters both to pay homage to their mother in the same way and to substitute for her role in caring for him. 5 00:00:43,030 --> 00:00:52,370 His daughter, Virginia, was, of course, to write a room of one's own, delivered his lectures in Newnham and Girton Colleges in Cambridge in 1928. 6 00:00:52,370 --> 00:00:59,780 Which became a classic expression of frustration at the blocks put upon women's access to higher education and 7 00:00:59,780 --> 00:01:08,470 more broadly on the discrepancies between lofty idealisation of women and their practical marginalisation. 8 00:01:08,470 --> 00:01:16,480 Quote, Schippert pervades poetry from cover to cover. She is all but absent from history. 9 00:01:16,480 --> 00:01:23,200 Nonetheless, of course, as an upper middle class woman in a literary family, Virginia, Stephen later, Wolf, 10 00:01:23,200 --> 00:01:32,180 did grow up with space and time and opportunity to read and talk and learn how to articulate these points. 11 00:01:32,180 --> 00:01:39,020 Whilst in theory, had she studies at Oxford, she could have been amongst the first group of women to be awarded degrees, 12 00:01:39,020 --> 00:01:46,190 her own life and writing are emblematic both of the intersectional complexities of cultural influence. 13 00:01:46,190 --> 00:01:52,030 Her background gave her confidence to write influentially from outside institutions. 14 00:01:52,030 --> 00:01:59,640 And if the ongoing power of deeply deep, laid assumptions about women's identities and natural rose. 15 00:01:59,640 --> 00:02:03,720 Both the history of the DMV and the experience of the DMV. 16 00:02:03,720 --> 00:02:12,660 The late 20th early 21st century project open up important critical perspectives on the functioning of Germany and the tendency for 17 00:02:12,660 --> 00:02:23,270 established institutions to shape and delimit change in their own image and on the importance of challenging progressivist to theologies. 18 00:02:23,270 --> 00:02:30,030 Lesly Stevens conception of biography clearly separated the public life of the subject from the private. 19 00:02:30,030 --> 00:02:34,940 There is no acknowledgement of the complex relationship between the two. 20 00:02:34,940 --> 00:02:40,970 This was underscored by the conventions of occupational categorisation so that any joint or voluntary 21 00:02:40,970 --> 00:02:48,410 activity outside the headline occupation was necessarily separated off and indeed subordinated. 22 00:02:48,410 --> 00:02:54,890 Women who did not have their own article was characteristically mentioned at the end of articles about men. 23 00:02:54,890 --> 00:03:00,170 Normally, in fact, after the death of the male subject had been noted. 24 00:03:00,170 --> 00:03:09,000 The range of independent female subjects ran from the saintly, the royal and aristocratic to the literary and theatrical. 25 00:03:09,000 --> 00:03:12,960 With a sprinkling of eccentrics use, gendered character is telling. 26 00:03:12,960 --> 00:03:23,410 Although unacknowledged, mythical women, witches, hysterics and freak show host hoax hoaxes like Mary Toft, 27 00:03:23,410 --> 00:03:28,730 that the 18th century woman who claimed to have given birth to rabbits. 28 00:03:28,730 --> 00:03:32,660 Leslie Stephen himself wrote the biography of Jane Austen, whom he praised for, 29 00:03:32,660 --> 00:03:38,420 quote, the unconscious charm of the domestic atmosphere of the stories. 30 00:03:38,420 --> 00:03:46,330 And commended for knowing better than any other writer. Quote, The precise limits of her own powers. 31 00:03:46,330 --> 00:03:52,720 Whilst across the 20th century, a series of supplements to the DMV was produced, the criteria for inclusion, 32 00:03:52,720 --> 00:04:02,070 in fact narrowed over the antiwar period, becoming more closely related to occupational structures dominated by men. 33 00:04:02,070 --> 00:04:09,150 Within the project to produce a new GNB, a century on, there was to be scope for increasing the number of women subjects. 34 00:04:09,150 --> 00:04:14,940 Although this was slightly qualified by the decision taken to retain and revise all the existing entries, 35 00:04:14,940 --> 00:04:21,900 which given that there was to be a print edition, notice that the overall number of new biographies. 36 00:04:21,900 --> 00:04:27,690 The positive rationale for retaining all subjects was that a more sophisticated dialogue between the 37 00:04:27,690 --> 00:04:34,430 different iterations of the dictionary in different historical moments with thereby be facilitated. 38 00:04:34,430 --> 00:04:41,280 I think this is an important, critical principle which may not have been sufficiently emphasised. 39 00:04:41,280 --> 00:04:45,930 In any case, there was a distinct commitment to the redress of balance and a better representation of 40 00:04:45,930 --> 00:04:51,240 the contribution of women to national life whilst eccentricity was still to be valued. 41 00:04:51,240 --> 00:04:57,840 There was to be less emphasis on the presently weird. Moreover, as the consultant editor for Women. 42 00:04:57,840 --> 00:05:01,240 I was determined that the concern should be not just with numbers, 43 00:05:01,240 --> 00:05:06,880 but with the attention paid to gender and the treatment of gender throughout the dictionary. 44 00:05:06,880 --> 00:05:13,530 Why is a Victorian natural scientists and astronomers who are now known to have worked alongside their husbands? 45 00:05:13,530 --> 00:05:21,590 But you were referred to laconically in the original dictionary, Méliès help means we've become part of a joint biography. 46 00:05:21,590 --> 00:05:24,200 The voluntary and philanthropic commitments of both men, 47 00:05:24,200 --> 00:05:30,710 women and men could be put in a more holistic relationship with the other aspects of their lives so as 48 00:05:30,710 --> 00:05:39,240 to problem distinctions between the professional and the amateur and between the public and the private. 49 00:05:39,240 --> 00:05:44,910 The connected family were collectively engaged in conceiving and leading a multifaceted 50 00:05:44,910 --> 00:05:52,200 philanthropic associational culture from their central London drawing room in the mid 19th century. 51 00:05:52,200 --> 00:05:55,680 Lady Cornette didn't believe in women's speaking in public, 52 00:05:55,680 --> 00:06:03,170 but organised others to do so and indeed wrote many of her husband's speeches for the House of Lords. 53 00:06:03,170 --> 00:06:13,810 Aristocratic political hostesses of influential salons could take the lion's share in a revised entry for their often much less interesting husband's. 54 00:06:13,810 --> 00:06:20,140 Group entries could both engage with a broader historical graphical issue through collective biography. 55 00:06:20,140 --> 00:06:26,540 And include subjects who are clearly of great significance, but about whom little was known. 56 00:06:26,540 --> 00:06:32,520 A fascinating article on lowland women late 14th, early 15th century. 57 00:06:32,520 --> 00:06:42,020 To the forefront, the life question, whether the Lord women gave more or fewer opportunities to women, the mainstream religious engagement. 58 00:06:42,020 --> 00:06:46,260 Emphasis in the article was placed on women's independent activity, 59 00:06:46,260 --> 00:06:55,180 not the way in which women meeting together could construct particular contexts for debate and proselytisation. 60 00:06:55,180 --> 00:07:00,400 Marjorie Baxter visited Joe in Cleveland of Norwich in midwinter and quote, 61 00:07:00,400 --> 00:07:06,430 sitting and sewing by the fire instructor Joan and her two teenage female servants. 62 00:07:06,430 --> 00:07:12,370 In a lengthy question and answer session, Joan's husband was absent, 63 00:07:12,370 --> 00:07:20,230 I suppose the husband of another woman who organised the ritual breaking of the Lenten fast in her home. 64 00:07:20,230 --> 00:07:23,150 Many law allowed women were married to loud men. 65 00:07:23,150 --> 00:07:31,900 But this sort of fragmentary evidence gives snapshots of all female association and of independent female action. 66 00:07:31,900 --> 00:07:35,560 The group entry could capture that energy in the process. 67 00:07:35,560 --> 00:07:45,760 Hope to stimulate further research. The other significantly underrepresented area of the old dictionary was business. 68 00:07:45,760 --> 00:07:55,330 Both deficits were in part ideological and in part consequential on the volume and type of research then prevalent in women's and business history. 69 00:07:55,330 --> 00:08:01,500 It rapidly became apparent, in fact, that the restimulating synergies between the two fields. 70 00:08:01,500 --> 00:08:08,600 And a small but enthusiastic cohort of historians in House and elsewhere were keen to contribute. 71 00:08:08,600 --> 00:08:18,740 Historiographical marginalisation within both subdisciplines enabled the posing of different questions, which began to set a new research agenda. 72 00:08:18,740 --> 00:08:26,090 For example, a focus on the role of wives of late 18th and early 19th century industrialists in innovatory personnel 73 00:08:26,090 --> 00:08:35,270 management suggested different ways of understanding what created the momentum behind the industrial revolution. 74 00:08:35,270 --> 00:08:42,710 The sheer volume of the DNP enterprise, the construction of 50000 entries of varying lengths and the commitment to 75 00:08:42,710 --> 00:08:48,820 publish the whole dictionary at the same time created pressures and compromises. 76 00:08:48,820 --> 00:08:56,760 There were also resistance's from different directions. When Colin Matthew, the founding editor of the new GNB, 77 00:08:56,760 --> 00:09:05,650 proposed the appointment of two thematic consultant editors for women and business in addition to the editors defined by period. 78 00:09:05,650 --> 00:09:11,690 The initial response was scepticism that an editorship for women was necessary. 79 00:09:11,690 --> 00:09:17,960 Perhaps more surprising pushback came from some practitioners of women's history 80 00:09:17,960 --> 00:09:22,250 who declined to participate in either the planning or the writing on the ground. 81 00:09:22,250 --> 00:09:32,660 That's what the project was, irredeemably patriarchal. This related to its institutional oversight in the August form of the university, though, 82 00:09:32,660 --> 00:09:39,170 UAP and the British Academy, as well as to the whole notion of individual biography. 83 00:09:39,170 --> 00:09:45,370 And, of course, to the roots of the enterprise in the late Victorian mind of Leslie Stephen. 84 00:09:45,370 --> 00:09:46,620 Some of the assistant editor, 85 00:09:46,620 --> 00:09:56,290 some contributors were more sympathetic than others to writing through the lens of gender in many areas as most conspicuously in business. 86 00:09:56,290 --> 00:09:59,110 The research, it's simply not been done. 87 00:09:59,110 --> 00:10:07,320 So if it could not be done in-house, all we could do is lay down a marker to signpost the need for future work. 88 00:10:07,320 --> 00:10:14,340 It was one of the consequential ironies of women's exclusion in the past from institutions like Oxford. 89 00:10:14,340 --> 00:10:20,940 Their activities in informal and on institutionalised contexts and their frequent materialisation 90 00:10:20,940 --> 00:10:27,510 and dematerialisation solely in relation to the better recorded work of the men in their lives, 91 00:10:27,510 --> 00:10:36,810 that the very process of research was made more difficult. The fact that the dictionary is to be produced simultaneously in a digital version, 92 00:10:36,810 --> 00:10:43,670 which would continue to evolve and be added to for as long as the whole project continue to be supported. 93 00:10:43,670 --> 00:10:47,960 Represented and represents its dynamic potential. 94 00:10:47,960 --> 00:10:56,720 It could commit to the radical idea of princess of ongoing self reflexivity and interpretative change. 95 00:10:56,720 --> 00:11:02,890 Whilst also, through its structure, making transparent the moves which had been gone through. 96 00:11:02,890 --> 00:11:06,940 Each new entry is accompanied by the previous archived entry. 97 00:11:06,940 --> 00:11:17,530 If relevant and contributors were encouraged to include a summative assessment of their subjects legacy situating it historic GraphicLy. 98 00:11:17,530 --> 00:11:21,980 The making of the available available of the online version in public libraries 99 00:11:21,980 --> 00:11:27,320 and other public sector institutions and the subscription to it at universities, 100 00:11:27,320 --> 00:11:30,970 other academic bodies and individuals worldwide. 101 00:11:30,970 --> 00:11:40,400 I've made possible the input and suggestions of a wide range of people, many of whom come from outside an institutional framework. 102 00:11:40,400 --> 00:11:46,140 In this sense, it has paved the way for the development of a more open and democratic research engagement, 103 00:11:46,140 --> 00:11:55,460 a form of public history which belies the characterisation of the project is inherently institutional or patriarchal. 104 00:11:55,460 --> 00:12:02,460 The invitation to members of the public to make suggestions about emphasis on language or to add information has been invaluable, 105 00:12:02,460 --> 00:12:12,810 not least in enabling individuals and groups to use the search functions to customise their own histories and to reflect upon them. 106 00:12:12,810 --> 00:12:19,130 Neat respects the dictionary can respond to, as well as helping to create cultural shifts. 107 00:12:19,130 --> 00:12:26,780 Looking back over 25 years, it's striking how rapidly a debate about the conceptualisation of gender has developed in ways 108 00:12:26,780 --> 00:12:33,480 which are certainly not on the agenda when they NDB was first laid out in the early 1990s. 109 00:12:33,480 --> 00:12:37,470 The imaginary then was still the framework in many respects. 110 00:12:37,470 --> 00:12:48,860 Still is predicated on gender binaries. There is a place for discussion about ways of reviewing language and conventions of expression. 111 00:12:48,860 --> 00:12:51,910 It is to be hoped that this will take place. 112 00:12:51,910 --> 00:12:58,840 Alongside the paying of greater attention to other intersexual sexualities, which were not explicitly highlighted in the 1990s, 113 00:12:58,840 --> 00:13:06,750 is needing systemic attention, including disability, ethnicity and sexuality. 114 00:13:06,750 --> 00:13:12,680 However, even apart from adding significantly to the number of women in the dictionary. 115 00:13:12,680 --> 00:13:20,220 A key achievement deriving from the focus on gender that more broadly relevant to the impact of the project as a whole. 116 00:13:20,220 --> 00:13:23,990 Was the opening up of perspectives from new angles. 117 00:13:23,990 --> 00:13:34,820 And the recognition of the multiplicity of influences, both shaping lives and enabling individuals and groups in turn to shape the world around them. 118 00:13:34,820 --> 00:13:42,630 The demonstration of the complicated interplay of the institutional and the noninstitutional has the effect of problematise King. 119 00:13:42,630 --> 00:13:51,640 Some of the complacency is of professionalising rhetoric's and the often anachronistic assumptions of disciplinary histories. 120 00:13:51,640 --> 00:14:00,340 Radical cultural change can only come from such critical awareness. It is constantly under threat. 121 00:14:00,340 --> 00:14:10,660 When the printed edition of the DMV was launched in 2004, one of the highlighted elements was the issue of gender and the representation of women. 122 00:14:10,660 --> 00:14:19,240 One feature newspaper article chases its cover image, a picture of a white rabbit on a black background. 123 00:14:19,240 --> 00:14:26,470 Depressingly, we had returned to Lesly Stevens fascination with Mary Toft without any indication that the whole thrust of the 124 00:14:26,470 --> 00:14:35,000 attention to agenda in the new dictionary had been to deep centre and indeed to contextualise such preoccupations. 125 00:14:35,000 --> 00:14:41,960 More challenging to various forms of presentist progressivism would have been a reference to the inclusion in the dictionary of a 126 00:14:41,960 --> 00:14:51,700 17th century Oxford laundress who lived in Hollywood Street and kept up Convento School attended by members of the university. 127 00:14:51,700 --> 00:15:00,390 The mock heroic epitaph on her grave read. Since death, another Queen Elizabeth, she needs not us, but dearly, miss. 128 00:15:00,390 --> 00:15:05,980 Shall we? Oh, she. Professor of Divinity. 129 00:15:05,980 --> 00:15:15,060 Years after women were officially allowed to study in Oxford colleges and more years still after the awarding of degrees in 1920. 130 00:15:15,060 --> 00:15:22,950 The first woman to hold the lady Margaret. Professor of Divinity Carol Harrison was appointed in 2015. 131 00:15:22,950 --> 00:15:31,690 The first ever professor of women's history in Oxford, Brenda Stevenson, starts in October 2021. 132 00:15:31,690 --> 00:15:36,150 The laundress, Elizabeth Hampton, like Virginia Woolf. 133 00:15:36,150 --> 00:15:41,900 Would not have been allowed on the grass, nor indeed into a college at all. 134 00:15:41,900 --> 00:15:48,140 Yes, she had a voice to which the GNB has given recognition. 135 00:15:48,140 --> 00:15:50,164 Thank you.