Jane Ellen Harrison (1850-1928) is the most famous female Classicist in history, the author of books that revolutionized our understanding of Greek culture and religion. This lively and innovative portrayal of a fascinating woman raises the question of who wins (and how) in the competition for academic fame.

Jane Ellen Harrison (1850-1928) is the most famous female Classicist in history, the author of books that revolutionized our understanding of Greek culture and religion. This lively and innovative portrayal of a fascinating woman raises the question of who wins (and how) in the competition for academic fame.

A rebel against Victorian mores, Jane Ellen Harrison (1850-1928) became one of the first women to hold a research fellowship at Cambridge. A friend of such distinguished figures as Gilbert Murray and Francis Cornford, she was renowned for her public lectures on Greek art, for her books on Greekreligion and mythology, and for her unconventional and outspoken views.In her application of anthropology to classical studies, Harrison stirred up controversy amongst her academic colleagues, while, at the same time, influencing many writers, including Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf. Driven by the conviction that the study of primitive Greek culture was anintensely practical enterprise, addressing the fundamental emotional needs of all people, she set her academic research in the broader context of human life. Her work on Greek religion is really a critique of all religion.Although she was a powerful role model for academic women and addressed issues which were central to the women's movement, when it came to women's rights, her own views were not always in keeping with those of her suffragist contemporaries. Harrison wrote not to champion any cause, but out of apassionate desire to share what she believed to be important and true. In so doing, she both opened up new possibilities for academic women and made a considerable contribution to classical studies.

Giovanni Boccaccio devoted the last decades of his life to compiling encyclopedic works in Latin. Among them is this text, the first collection of biographies in Western literature devoted to women.

Pompeii is the most famous archaeological site in the world, visited by more than two million people each year. Here, acclaimed historian Beard explores what kind of town it was, and what it can reveal about "ordinary" life there.

Virginia Woolf's playful exploration of a satirical »Oxbridge« became one of the world's most groundbreaking writings on women, writing, fiction, and gender. A Room of One's Own [1929] can be read as one or as six different essays, narrated from an intimate first-person perspective. Actual history blends with narrative and memoir. But perhaps most revolutionary was its address: the book is written by a woman for women. Male readers are compelled to read through women's eyes in a total inversion of the traditional male gaze. VIRGINIA WOOLF [1882–1941] was an English author. With novels like Jacob’s Room [1922], Mrs Dalloway [1925], To the Lighthouse [1927], and Orlando [1928], she became a leading figure of modernism and is considered one of the most important English-language authors of the 20th century. As a thinker, with essays like A Room of One’s Own [1929], Woolf has influenced the women’s movement in many countries.