The Spinster and Her Enemies : Feminism and Sexuality 1880-1930 ([New ed.])

This feminist text is released here with a revised and updated introduction.

It examines the activities of feminist campaigners around such issues as child abuse and prostitution and how these campaigns shaped social purity in the 1880s and 1890s.

It demonstrates how the thriving and militant feminism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was undermined, and asserts that the decline of this feminism was due largely to the promotion of a sexual ideology which was hostile to women's independence.