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  • Published: 16 March 2021
  • ISBN: 9781784709730
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $24.99

Difficult Women

A History of Feminism in 11 Fights (The Sunday Times Bestseller)




The imperfect and unfinished story of the battles for women's rights, and of the complicated women who fought them

Well-behaved women don't make history: difficult women do.

'This is the antidote to saccharine you-go-girl fluff. Effortlessly erudite and funny' Caroline Criado-Perez

Strikers in saris. Bomb-throwing suffragettes. The pioneer of the refuge movement who became a men's rights activist.

Forget feel-good heroines: meet the feminist trailblazers who have been airbrushed from history for being 'difficult' - and discover how they made a difference.

Here are their stories in all their shocking, funny and unvarnished glory.

** Shortlisted in the 2020 Parliamentary Book Awards **

'All the history you need to understand why you're so furious, angry and still hopeful about being a woman now. A book that is part intellectual weapon in your handbag, part cocktail with a friend' Caitlin Moran
'Compulsive, rigorous, unforgettable, hilarious and devastating' Hadley Freeman

'A great manifesto for all those women who have never been very good at being well-behaved.' Mary Beard

'Difficult Women is full of vivid detail, jam-packed with research and fizzing with provocation' Sunday Times


  • Published: 16 March 2021
  • ISBN: 9781784709730
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $24.99

About the author

Helen Lewis

Helen Lewis is a staff writer at the Atlantic, and a former deputy editor of the New Statesman. She has written for the Guardian, Sunday Times, New York Times and Vogue. She is a regular host of BBC Radio 4’s Week in Westminster, a regular panellist on the News Quiz and Saturday Review, and a paper reviewer on The Andrew Marr Show. She was the 2018/19 Women in the Humanities Honorary Writing Fellow at Oxford University. She tweets at @helenlewis

Praise for Difficult Women

This is the antidote to saccharine you-go-girl fluff. Effortlessly erudite and funny, Helen Lewis tackles the great unacknowledged truth of feminist history: no one ever changed the world by being nice. A landmark in modern feminist scholarship, it manages to be important, irreverent and a joy to read.

Caroline Criado Perez

A great manifesto for all those women who have never been very good at being well-behaved.

Mary Beard

An extremely important and timely book that shows why sometimes it pays to be a "difficult woman".

Konnie Huq

Well-behaved women may not make history but brilliant women certainly write it. Helen Lewis’s glorious history of feminists, feminism, and female causes is a rallying cry for women to take up intelligent action and fight – fight for those rights!

Amanda Foreman

Brilliant, from one of the brightest journalists in Britain today. Compulsive, rigorous, unforgettable, hilarious and devastating. Everything but difficult, ironically enough.

Hadley Freeman

All the history you need to understand why you're so furious, angry and still hopeful about being a woman now. A book that is part intellectual weapon in your handbag, part cocktail with a friend.

Caitlin Moran

Some names you will recognise, others will be new. All deserve your respect. In a world where equality still feels like an uphill struggle, it is wonderful to celebrate eleven epic and ultimately victorious battles.

Anita Anand

Through her telling of the fascinating histories of Difficult Women, Lewis gifts us with a fresh, whip-smart and compassionate perspective on contemporary feminism. A brilliant and inspiring book.

Cordelia Fine

I loved Difficult Women. Helen Lewis writes with a devilish wit and a clear eye about the harder edges of meaningful progress. Engaging, moving, witty and sobering - Difficult Women is a book for all humans who value all humans, as difficult as they may be.

Stephen McGann

A witty and wise corrective to the whitewashed heroines of the "rebel girls" and "awesome women" industry.

Tom Gatti, New Statesman

Helen Lewis is one of the very few journalists whose every word I will read. Her debut book…makes the very solid point that the acquisition of rights for women has not always come from those who one would necessarily like.

Adam Rutherford, The Week

Whoever said feminists lack a sense of humour has not read enough Lewis... A funny, sparky, wide-ranging account... Her book isn’t at all a conventional history. It’s a collection of powerful personal essays on the gnarly issues that women continue to face... I read Difficult Women with gratitude. It’s an authoritative benchmark of modern feminism, written by someone on top of her game... Hooray for a great book by a clever, clear-sighted, straight-talking, difficult young woman.

Melanie Reid, The Times

Difficult Women was a joy to read... I learned so many delicious facts about women whom I thought I knew. In fact, reading Difficult Women felt like sitting down with a friend and gossiping about other women in our circle... It has some howl-out-loud funny moments... Helen Lewis does more than just tell their stories – she allows them to be complicated, something that women are so rarely permitted to be.

Jess Phillips, New Statesman

Difficult Women is full of vivid detail, jam-packed with research and fizzing with provocation.

Christina Patterson, Sunday Times

Inspiriting and energetic…searching, and bracing...clever and compelling... This is a capacious book... I liked this roominess: it speaks of open-mindedness and warmth. But what I loved most of all is her clear respect for those who went before us.

Rachel Cooke, Observer

This sensible, forthright personal history of the women who fought for the vote, for equal pay, for women to have control over their bodies, is a breath of fresh air in a feminist climate too often bogged down in petty spats over ideas of privilege and virtue signalling... Lewis’s trenchant, witty voice steers the reader to focus on the details that matter.

Claire Allfree, Metro

[Difficult Women is] written in a feistily accessible style…so it’s easy to engage with the actual substance.

Melanie McDonagh, Evening Standard

Difficult Women has real bite and is brimming with the kind of sharp wit that renders it unsuitable reading on public transport lest you start cackling.

Gillian Furmage, The Times

Difficult Women is smart, thoughtful and rich in detail... Lewis proves an excellent storyteller who seamlessly blends scholarly inquiry and journalistic investigation with autobiographical titbits and flashes of caustic wit (her footnotes are a hoot).

Fiona Sturges, Guardian

Difficult Women is a well-researched, lively overview of the history of modern feminism... An important resource on the ongoing fight for equal rights.

Mia Levitin, Spectator

Intellectually rigorous, satisfying, eloquent and witty with it. What more could you want?

India Knight, Sunday Times

Ultimately it chimes with a resounding clarion call: we are difficult women. Don’t sand our edges away. Celebrate us in all our uneven glory. After all, well-behaved women don’t make history.

Jemma Crew, UK Press Syndication

Blending rigorous research with passages that make you bark with laughter, this is an effortlessly smart study of feminism’s power to make society better for everyone.

Gwendolyn Smith, Mail on Sunday

Helen Lewis has produced a real gem in Difficult Women... With wit and understanding...it is effective and often very moving.

Julia Langdon, Tablet

A collection of fascinating, well-researched and vividly told biographies of women who made tangible contributions to the lives we live now… Lewis’ book is challenging, punchily written and refreshing in equal measure, and a joy to read.

Clare Jarmy, Times Educational Supplement Scotland

A lesson modern progressives would be remiss to ignore.

Phil Wang, Guardian

A sparkling history of feminism in 11 fights… The book is full of Lewis’ short, sharp political observations…almost always as funny as they are informative… It proves her point; that we all have something to learn from each other, if we can open our minds to the true, complicated nature of humanity.

Nell Frizzell, Daily Telegraph

Any one of these women could fill a book on her own, but Lewis deftly threads their lives together into an irresistibly rumbustious account of this movement; sometimes affecting, sometimes very funny (the footnotes are a sass-filled joy) and sometimes shocking.

Sarah Ditum, In the Moment

[Difficult Women] is meticulously researched and intelligently argued whilst also being extremely readable. Unusually for a non-fiction book, it is a page-turner. Lewis' style is playful and engaging, and after each chapter you find yourself turning the page asking eagerly "but what happened next?"… Interspersed with personal anecdotes and often funny footnote asides, she deals with the serious alongside the light-hearted in a way which demonstrates her talent as a writer, researcher and journalist

Emily Menger-Davies, Glasgow Guardian

Enthralling... Witty, thoroughly researched and intelligently argued, Lewis's book turns received thinking on feminism on its head: history, like women, is always more interesting when it's difficult.

Jane Anderson, Radio Times

This is a really good history of feminism in Great Britain... Real progress comes from people who are not friendly, but who are difficult, nasty, and who pay a really high price for this progress.

Rutger Bregman, Observer

This history of feminism eschews feelgood, empowering clichés and goes in search of the 'difficult women' who shaped the fight for gender equality.

The Times, *This year's best reads so far*

Engaging and witty, this history of feminist fights will keep you gripped to the last page.

Independent

This often hilariously funny book taught me about the women who fought for my freedoms. Unlike in so many accounts, these women are not canonised but written as they are, imperfect.

Jess Phillips, Week

Helen Lewis is one of the very few journalists whose every word I will read.

Adam Rutherford, Week
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