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by Frances Larson (Author)
The inspiring story of five women who set out to explore the furthest reaches of the globe and redefine scholarship
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.
Author Biography
Dr Frances Larson is the author of Severed, a Sunday Times Book Of The Year, and a biography of Henry Wellcome, An Infinity of Things, a Sunday Times Book of The Year and a New Scientist Best Book of 2009. She is an honorary research fellow at the University of Oxford.
