How we “do” history is changing. For centuries historians have searched for the few, the privileged, the “victors”. But as millions tune into A House Through Time and Who Do You Think You Are?, those social and alternative histories (including women’s history) that had been pushed to the sidelines are breathing new life into how we engage with the past. We cannot be what we cannot see, and many of us are searching for aspects of ourselves in what has gone before. History is becoming a richer subject now the people that have been ignored or written out are being put back in. It’s not just about dates and data – a historian can be a detective searching for human stories from the past.
Historians found their work on documents and artefacts. But they also seek people from the past through the words, rituals, songs, artwork, buildings and music they’ve left behind. Looking for lost women requires a different set of tools and techniques. Today we can all access archives, have our DNA examined, trace our genealogies and research globally at the click of a mouse. Breakthroughs in archaeology, with the help of technology and science, are bringing us a rich and full cast of people who lived before us. Women have always made up half the globe’s population. Putting the frame on them can allow us a different way of thinking about the past.
In writing Femina I wanted to show a version of the medieval world that is as rich and diverse as our present, full of fascinating characters who challenge assumptions. Not just mothers and wives, these medieval women are spies, writers, scientists, entrepreneurs and warriors – all words usually associated with men. My approach puts the frame on lost women to expose broader societies and draw in others that have also been overlooked. Here are 10 books that have pushed the boundaries of history as a discipline and put the women back in:
1. The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
This book has done more for women’s history than almost any other. Rather than continuing to fetishise the murderer, Hallie presents the victims’ stories. By immersing readers in the social conditions the women experienced, the five have contexts other than being written off as “prostitutes”. This book has also affected the true crime genre, where more writers are focusing on victims rather than perpetrators.
2. River Kings: The Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads by Cat Jarman
Archaeology has always looked for the many rather than the few, so it is the natural bedfellow for more inclusive historical approaches. It is easy to assume that everyone in the middle ages, particularly women, lived and died within sight of their local parish church. But many travelled vast distances and engaged with cultures thousands of miles away, as this book reveals.
3. Medieval Women: Village Life in the Middle Ages by Ann Baer
When asked what historical person they would have been, the majority of people pick out a ruler or a rich person. However, most of us would have lived lives more like that of the protagonist of this book – Marion. By following a poor woman for a year, the reader gains insights into broader issues including natural disasters and plague. Yet it’s the almost incidental moments that give real glimpses of everyday life in the medieval period.
4. The Voices of Nîmes: Women, Sex and Marriage in Reformation Languedoc by Suzannah Lipscomb
For anyone hunting down the elusive female voice in history, it is an unfortunate fact that many are written about, rather than giving their own accounts. By plundering the records of the consistories – or “moral courts” – of the Huguenot church of Languedoc between 1561 and 1615, this book puts the pieces of the puzzle together and reveals how medieval women understood friendship, spirituality and feminine power.
5. Death in Ten Minutes: The Forgotten Life of Radical Suffragette Kitty Marion by Fern Riddell
The death of suffragette Emily Wilding Davison at the Epsom Derby in 1913 has become familiar. She was a fascinating woman striving for equal rights, yet it was Death in Ten Minutes that really showed me quite how radical the actions of the early suffragettes were. This book reveals the dangerous acts that women performed in desperate attempts to gain the vote. By plundering Kitty’s diaries, Riddell has put this woman at the centre of her own narrative.
6. Medieval Women: Social History of Women in England 450-1500 by Henrietta Leyser
Now is the time of the social historian. We want to know who walked where we walk, what they experienced and how they left their mark on history. This book is unparalleled in its breadth – ranging across centuries and including all sorts of evidence from poetry to privy deposits. Leyser deals with individually remarkable women, such as Alice de la Pole and Julian of Norwich, but uses them to explore broader issues that affected women’s lives, such as trade, labour and education.
7. The Taxidermist’s Daughter by Kate Mosse
Historical fiction was the main way I connected with women’s stories from the past when I was young, and Mosse is at the forefront of the genre. I love all her books but this one is most powerful for me because of the way she positions her protagonist Constantia within a complex and believable Sussex village more than a century ago. You can see, smell, touch and taste the past. The backdrop of taxidermy is also fascinating, since it is an art form that tries to capture time and preserve life after death.
8. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture by Mary Carruthers
Today we tend to consider ourselves intellectually advanced because of great developments in science and technology. But this book shows how brilliant the minds of the medieval world could be. Through techniques of rumination and meditation, practised by men and women, the memories of those that lived a millennium ago retained vast amounts of information in ways our modern minds can’t because we depend so heavily on writing.
9. Valkyrie: The Women of the Viking World by Jóhanna Katrín Friõiksdóttir
We wouldn’t consider describing what it’s like to be alive today based purely on news stories. We would personalise and fill our account with music, film, food, fashion and more. This is what an interdisciplinary historian tries to do – bring a period to life by combining all types of evidence. Valkyrie includes Old Norse poetry alongside archaeological finds and painted runestones to show how the lived experiences of women in the Viking world were varied and fascinating.
10. The Book of Margery Kempe (edited by Barry Windeat)
The last word must go to an actual woman from history. This book is a chance survivor, a medieval manuscript buried in a cupboard and rediscovered in the 1930s. It’s the oldest surviving autobiography in English, but was initially dismissed as the ramblings of a ‘“madwoman”. Yet inside its pages a remarkable person emerges. Margery tells us about the problems with medieval package holidays, caring for her sick husband, and how much she craves sex. The text is more than 600 years old yet when you read it you feel as if Margery is alive and sitting next to you.
• Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages Through the Women Written Out of It by Janina Ramirez is published by WH Allen. To help the Guardian and Observer, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
