Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon: Feminist, Artist and Rebel

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon was the most unconventional and influential leader of the Victorian women’s movement. Enormously talented, energetic, and original, she was a feminist, law-reformer, painter, journalist, close friend of George Eliot, and a cousin of Florence Nightingale. As a painter, she is now recognized as a vital figure among Pre-Raphaelite women artists. As a feminist, she led four great campaignsfor married women’s legal status, for women’s right to work, to vote, and to be educated. Pamela Hirsch has written a biography that is as lively and powerful as its subject, resurrecting this half-forgotten figure and placing her squarely in the context of women’s struggle for equality.