Antonia Fraser is the author of many widely acclaimed historical works which have been international bestsellers. She was awarded the Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association in 2000 and was made a DBE in 2011 for services to literature.Her previous books include MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, KING CHARLES II, THE WEAKER VESSEL: WOMAN'S LOT IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND which won the Wolfson History Prize, MARIE ANTOINETTE: THE JOURNEY, PERILOUS QUESTION; THE DRAMA OF THE GREAT REFORM BILL 1832 and THE KING AND THE CATHOLICS: THE FIGHT FOR RIGHTS 1829. MUST YOU GO?,a memoir of her life with Harold Pinter, was published in 2010, and MY HISTORY; A MEMOIR OF GROWING UP in 2015. She lives in London.Visit Antonia Fraser's website at www.antoniafraser.com
Fraser gives insightful judgment on the questions that remain
questions despite Caroline's extensive archive ... Fraser's is a
spirited book, particularly moving on Norton's old age. It is
impressive to see one of our most important intellectual figures
turning her mind to this remarkable woman from an earlier,
different and not so different era
*THE GUARDIAN*
Fraser's is the first [book] to emphasise what a modern figure
[Norton] is, portraying her not as a hapless victim but as a
working mother and bestselling writer who refused to submit to what
can only be called the patriarchy - a "difficult" woman whose
bloody-mindedness improved the lot of other women. Fraser is surely
right to call her a 19th-century heroine
*THE SUNDAY TIMES*
Antonia Fraser's tale of double standards is a delight. Combining
high society campery and historical scholarship in ways rivalling
Nancy Mitford, Antonia Fraser is the great chronicler of
melodramatic queens and fearsome princes, from Boadicea to Louis
XIV, even Harold Pinter. She is peerless at pageantry, and no
slouch when it comes to technical footnotes - there are plenty in
her new book, The Case of the Married Woman... The major theme of
Fraser's book is rage - hers and Caroline's - that women in those
days had no rights over their children. In the eyes of the law,
married women simply didn't exist... This is a rousing book -
classic Antonia Fraser
*THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH*
The life of Caroline Norton, the 19th century author and campaigner
who is the remarkable subject of Antonia Fraser's engaging new
biography The Case of the Married Woman, plays out like a Victorian
sensation novel... It's a fascinating story, and Fraser's account
is compulsively readable, filled with intriguing period details
(early Victorian aristos' favourite euphemism for pregnancy, we
learn, was "going on the sofa"). The veteran biographer paints
Caroline as a very modern woman, but doesn't try to smooth out her
complexities and contradictions to fit her tidily into the mould of
21st century feminism... this is a fitting tribute to a
captivating, campaigning heroine
*EVENING STANDARD*
[Caroline Norton's] life and writings are vividly realised in
Fraser's new analysis of the woman and her words, straddling both
the Regency and Victorian eras in the fight for women's rights as
wives, mothers and workers ... In Fraser's book the woman who leaps
from the page is vastly complex, at times almost unlikeable, and
yet equally unforgettable ... For those who wish for a detailed
history of one of the most important female figures of the 19th
century and the world around her, this is an ideal read. Fraser's
illuminating book shows how Caroline Norton's presence in
19th-century society still has so much to say about the rights
women lack and the abuses they suffer, even today
*BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE*
[A] blend of adroit character study and readable prose ... In this
retelling, [Caroline Norton] is revealed in all her complexity: as
a flawed, difficult woman who, against the odds, still managed to
make the world better for the women who came after her
*THE SPECTATOR*
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