My title is all but absent from history. Question amongst women in the GNB and Odean V.
Nicely, Steven, the first editor of the original Dictionary of National Biography published at the end of the 19th century,
had strong views about women's roles exemplified by the way in which he constructed a hagiography of his wife,
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.
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.
Which became a classic expression of frustration at the blocks put upon women's access to higher education and
more broadly on the discrepancies between lofty idealisation of women and their practical marginalisation.
Quote, Schippert pervades poetry from cover to cover. She is all but absent from history.
Nonetheless, of course, as an upper middle class woman in a literary family, Virginia, Stephen later, Wolf,
did grow up with space and time and opportunity to read and talk and learn how to articulate these points.
Whilst in theory, had she studies at Oxford, she could have been amongst the first group of women to be awarded degrees,
her own life and writing are emblematic both of the intersectional complexities of cultural influence.
Her background gave her confidence to write influentially from outside institutions.
And if the ongoing power of deeply deep, laid assumptions about women's identities and natural rose.
Both the history of the DMV and the experience of the DMV.
The late 20th early 21st century project open up important critical perspectives on the functioning of Germany and the tendency for
established institutions to shape and delimit change in their own image and on the importance of challenging progressivist to theologies.
Lesly Stevens conception of biography clearly separated the public life of the subject from the private.
There is no acknowledgement of the complex relationship between the two.
This was underscored by the conventions of occupational categorisation so that any joint or voluntary
activity outside the headline occupation was necessarily separated off and indeed subordinated.
Women who did not have their own article was characteristically mentioned at the end of articles about men.
Normally, in fact, after the death of the male subject had been noted.
The range of independent female subjects ran from the saintly, the royal and aristocratic to the literary and theatrical.
With a sprinkling of eccentrics use, gendered character is telling.
Although unacknowledged, mythical women, witches, hysterics and freak show host hoax hoaxes like Mary Toft,
that the 18th century woman who claimed to have given birth to rabbits.
Leslie Stephen himself wrote the biography of Jane Austen, whom he praised for,
quote, the unconscious charm of the domestic atmosphere of the stories.
And commended for knowing better than any other writer. Quote, The precise limits of her own powers.
Whilst across the 20th century, a series of supplements to the DMV was produced, the criteria for inclusion,
in fact narrowed over the antiwar period, becoming more closely related to occupational structures dominated by men.
Within the project to produce a new GNB, a century on, there was to be scope for increasing the number of women subjects.
Although this was slightly qualified by the decision taken to retain and revise all the existing entries,
which given that there was to be a print edition, notice that the overall number of new biographies.
The positive rationale for retaining all subjects was that a more sophisticated dialogue between the
different iterations of the dictionary in different historical moments with thereby be facilitated.
I think this is an important, critical principle which may not have been sufficiently emphasised.
In any case, there was a distinct commitment to the redress of balance and a better representation of
the contribution of women to national life whilst eccentricity was still to be valued.
There was to be less emphasis on the presently weird. Moreover, as the consultant editor for Women.
I was determined that the concern should be not just with numbers,
but with the attention paid to gender and the treatment of gender throughout the dictionary.
Why is a Victorian natural scientists and astronomers who are now known to have worked alongside their husbands?
But you were referred to laconically in the original dictionary, Méliès help means we've become part of a joint biography.
The voluntary and philanthropic commitments of both men,
women and men could be put in a more holistic relationship with the other aspects of their lives so as
to problem distinctions between the professional and the amateur and between the public and the private.
The connected family were collectively engaged in conceiving and leading a multifaceted
philanthropic associational culture from their central London drawing room in the mid 19th century.
Lady Cornette didn't believe in women's speaking in public,
but organised others to do so and indeed wrote many of her husband's speeches for the House of Lords.
Aristocratic political hostesses of influential salons could take the lion's share in a revised entry for their often much less interesting husband's.
Group entries could both engage with a broader historical graphical issue through collective biography.
And include subjects who are clearly of great significance, but about whom little was known.
A fascinating article on lowland women late 14th, early 15th century.
To the forefront, the life question, whether the Lord women gave more or fewer opportunities to women, the mainstream religious engagement.
Emphasis in the article was placed on women's independent activity,
not the way in which women meeting together could construct particular contexts for debate and proselytisation.
Marjorie Baxter visited Joe in Cleveland of Norwich in midwinter and quote,
sitting and sewing by the fire instructor Joan and her two teenage female servants.
In a lengthy question and answer session, Joan's husband was absent,
I suppose the husband of another woman who organised the ritual breaking of the Lenten fast in her home.
Many law allowed women were married to loud men.
But this sort of fragmentary evidence gives snapshots of all female association and of independent female action.
The group entry could capture that energy in the process.
Hope to stimulate further research. The other significantly underrepresented area of the old dictionary was business.
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.
It rapidly became apparent, in fact, that the restimulating synergies between the two fields.
And a small but enthusiastic cohort of historians in House and elsewhere were keen to contribute.
Historiographical marginalisation within both subdisciplines enabled the posing of different questions, which began to set a new research agenda.
For example, a focus on the role of wives of late 18th and early 19th century industrialists in innovatory personnel
management suggested different ways of understanding what created the momentum behind the industrial revolution.
The sheer volume of the DNP enterprise, the construction of 50000 entries of varying lengths and the commitment to
publish the whole dictionary at the same time created pressures and compromises.
There were also resistance's from different directions. When Colin Matthew, the founding editor of the new GNB,
proposed the appointment of two thematic consultant editors for women and business in addition to the editors defined by period.
The initial response was scepticism that an editorship for women was necessary.
Perhaps more surprising pushback came from some practitioners of women's history
who declined to participate in either the planning or the writing on the ground.
That's what the project was, irredeemably patriarchal. This related to its institutional oversight in the August form of the university, though,
UAP and the British Academy, as well as to the whole notion of individual biography.
And, of course, to the roots of the enterprise in the late Victorian mind of Leslie Stephen.
Some of the assistant editor,
some contributors were more sympathetic than others to writing through the lens of gender in many areas as most conspicuously in business.
The research, it's simply not been done.
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.
It was one of the consequential ironies of women's exclusion in the past from institutions like Oxford.
Their activities in informal and on institutionalised contexts and their frequent materialisation
and dematerialisation solely in relation to the better recorded work of the men in their lives,
that the very process of research was made more difficult. The fact that the dictionary is to be produced simultaneously in a digital version,
which would continue to evolve and be added to for as long as the whole project continue to be supported.
Represented and represents its dynamic potential.
It could commit to the radical idea of princess of ongoing self reflexivity and interpretative change.
Whilst also, through its structure, making transparent the moves which had been gone through.
Each new entry is accompanied by the previous archived entry.
If relevant and contributors were encouraged to include a summative assessment of their subjects legacy situating it historic GraphicLy.
The making of the available available of the online version in public libraries
and other public sector institutions and the subscription to it at universities,
other academic bodies and individuals worldwide.
I've made possible the input and suggestions of a wide range of people, many of whom come from outside an institutional framework.
In this sense, it has paved the way for the development of a more open and democratic research engagement,
a form of public history which belies the characterisation of the project is inherently institutional or patriarchal.
The invitation to members of the public to make suggestions about emphasis on language or to add information has been invaluable,
not least in enabling individuals and groups to use the search functions to customise their own histories and to reflect upon them.
Neat respects the dictionary can respond to, as well as helping to create cultural shifts.
Looking back over 25 years, it's striking how rapidly a debate about the conceptualisation of gender has developed in ways
which are certainly not on the agenda when they NDB was first laid out in the early 1990s.
The imaginary then was still the framework in many respects.
Still is predicated on gender binaries. There is a place for discussion about ways of reviewing language and conventions of expression.
It is to be hoped that this will take place.
Alongside the paying of greater attention to other intersexual sexualities, which were not explicitly highlighted in the 1990s,
is needing systemic attention, including disability, ethnicity and sexuality.
However, even apart from adding significantly to the number of women in the dictionary.
A key achievement deriving from the focus on gender that more broadly relevant to the impact of the project as a whole.
Was the opening up of perspectives from new angles.
And the recognition of the multiplicity of influences, both shaping lives and enabling individuals and groups in turn to shape the world around them.
The demonstration of the complicated interplay of the institutional and the noninstitutional has the effect of problematise King.
Some of the complacency is of professionalising rhetoric's and the often anachronistic assumptions of disciplinary histories.
Radical cultural change can only come from such critical awareness. It is constantly under threat.
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.
One feature newspaper article chases its cover image, a picture of a white rabbit on a black background.
Depressingly, we had returned to Lesly Stevens fascination with Mary Toft without any indication that the whole thrust of the
attention to agenda in the new dictionary had been to deep centre and indeed to contextualise such preoccupations.
More challenging to various forms of presentist progressivism would have been a reference to the inclusion in the dictionary of a
17th century Oxford laundress who lived in Hollywood Street and kept up Convento School attended by members of the university.
The mock heroic epitaph on her grave read. Since death, another Queen Elizabeth, she needs not us, but dearly, miss.
Shall we? Oh, she. Professor of Divinity.
Years after women were officially allowed to study in Oxford colleges and more years still after the awarding of degrees in 1920.
The first woman to hold the lady Margaret. Professor of Divinity Carol Harrison was appointed in 2015.
The first ever professor of women's history in Oxford, Brenda Stevenson, starts in October 2021.
The laundress, Elizabeth Hampton, like Virginia Woolf.
Would not have been allowed on the grass, nor indeed into a college at all.
Yes, she had a voice to which the GNB has given recognition.
Thank you.