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Charlotte Carmichael Stopes was a British scholar, author, and campaigner for women's rights. She also published several books relating to the life and work of William Shakespeare. Her most successful publication was British Freewomen: Their Historical Privilege (published 1894), a book which influenced and inspired the early twentieth century British women's suffrage movement.
Stopes desired to become a writer, devising stories for her brothers and sisters when she was a child and at twenty-one publishing a collection, Alice Errol and Other Tales.
In 1865 Sarah Mair founded the Ladies' Edinburgh Debating Society, which published a regular writing journal, The Attempt. Charlotte Carmichael had become a member by 1866 and published sundry pieces in The Attempt. In a meeting of the society in 1867 Mary Crudelius presented her initiative of creating classes for women at a university level under the auspices of the Edinburgh Ladies' Educational Association. Charlotte Carmichael was present at the meeting. She pledged her willingness to attend such classes and guaranteed another twelve interested persons.
The first classes began in 1868, taught by Professor David Masson, Professor of English Literature at Edinburgh University, ‘at a time when the University was not open to women and courses were given to them privately by the male Professors’. Although women were not permitted to take a degree, she achieved the highest certificate then available to a female student, in subjects as diverse as literature, philosophy and science, achieving first class honours. In fact, she "was the first woman in Scotland to gain a Certificate of Arts". She used her education for the advancement of women and pursued scholarly interests in English Renaissance, particularly Shakespearean, literary history.
Her first book was The Bacon/Shakespeare Question, published in 1888: refuting the popular speculation that Francis Bacon was the actual author of Shakespeare's plays. This was the first of several works of scholarship concerning Shakespeare and literature of his period. Stopes received an award from the British Academy in 1916 for her Shakespearian research, thirteen years before her death in February 1929.
C.C. Stopes' study of British women’s history proved to be the most popular and influential of her numerous publications. British Freewomen: Their Historical Privilege was published by Swan Sonnenschein in 1894. It ran to several editions and was a key reference point for the British female suffrage movement.
As Laura E Nym Mayall observes, British Freewomen was ‘perhaps the single most influential text in casting women’s struggle for the vote within the radical narrative of loss, resistance and recovery’ since Stopes’ arguments, as outlined in successive editions of British Freewomen, were frequently cited by ‘suffragists of all stripes in making the case for women’s suffrage in print, before crowds, and in the courtroom’.
According to Frederick Boas, on the day after Stopes died, The Times published the following comment:
"The Royal Society of Literature has lost a distinguished veteran among its Fellows, and the study of Shakespeare a brave and devoted servant."
I was so looking forward for this book and I was so exited that someone had the brilliant idea to write a book exclusively on Shakespeare`s patron. For me however it was too difficult to follow and all the excitement was lost. There are too many letters and the author does not explain them properly, just lets the reader understand what they can from it. Also, the narrative is lost in too many details, the research is not organised as good as I would have liked it too, it makes it almost impossible for the reader to keep up.
ok so. Stopes is kind of a horrible biographer. Also, not the right person to write a Southampton. However, I have to give points for this being the. Only. Goddamn. Biography. Of. The. Man. and for her sensing the gay with Essex.