"A deeply poignant account of five women who defied convention to pioneer female scholarship at immense personal cost. If you want to understand why there is so little historical evidence of women's intellectual achievement, read this." —Madeleine Bunting, author of Love of Country
"A vivid and moving history of a pioneering group of women, sensitively told and rigorously researched." —Sarah Moss, author of Ghost Wall
"An engrossing, humbling and immensely enjoyable book." —Wendy Moore, author of Wedlock
In the first decades of the 20th century, five women - Katherine Routledge, Maria Czaplicka, Winifred Blackman, Beatrice Blackwood and Barbara Freire-Marreco - arrived at Oxford to take the newly created Masters in Anthropology. Though their circumstances differed radically, all were intent on visiting and studying remote communities a world away from their own. Through their work, they resisted the prejudices of the male establishment, proving that women could be explorers and scientists, too. In the wastes of Siberia; in the villages and pueblos of the Nile and New Mexico; on Easter Island; and in the uncharted interior of New Guinea, they found new freedoms - yet when they returned to England, loss, madness and self-doubt awaited them.
Frances Larson's masterful group biography is a revelatory portrait of five hidden heroines of British scholarship, whose contribution has for too long been left uncelebrated.
