Kamala Harris, Madam President

Kamala Harris Secures the Number of Delegates Needed for Nomination (23 July 2024)

Let's get it right this time, okay? In the words of RuPaul, "Don't fuck it up!"

Barbara of Cilli: Queen, Empress, Regent

Barbara of Cilli, queen of Hungary and Bohemia, empress of the Holy Roman Empire, and regent of Hungary (died 11 July 1451)

The daughter of Herman II, count of Celje (a city in what is today Slovenia), and Anna of Schaunberg, Barbara of Cilli would become "one of the most powerful and influential women in fifteenth-century central Europe." Her recent biographer writes that Barbara of Cilli "is one of the most remarkable historical female personalities of the Middle Ages," a figure who became part legend, part myth, and part of the national folklore. 

Barbara of Cilli, from the
fifteenth-century Nuremberg Chronicle

Very little is known of Barbara's early life. Although her date of birth is conjectural, Daniela Dvořáková indicates that Barbara was probably born in 1392.

Dvořáková also notes that "how" Barbara was raised and "who" oversaw her childhood are both unknown. Nevertheless she asserts that Barbara of Cilli must "undoubtedly" have "received an excellent education."

Barbara's father was an influential feudal landholder and a supporter of Sigismund of Luxembourg, the man who would become his son-in-law. I've written about Sigismund before--his first wife was Mary of Hungary, and Sigismund fought long to secure his marriage to her and then to ensure her rights to inherit the crown of Hungary. Even after the pair were crowned, Sigismund struggled to maintain Mary's role as queen--as for his own position in Hungary, that was even more difficult. 

After Queen Mary of Hungary's early death in 1395--she was in her twenties and pregnant--Sigismund's role as king was disputed. He was king consort, not king--that is, he had been king of Hungary by marriage, not in his own right, by inheritance. 

To bolster his claims in Hungary, Sigismund settled on another bride, but before his marriage to Maragaret of Brieg could be made, he was imprisoned. He was freed in time to lead a Christian force against the Turks and to suffer a disastrous military defeat in 1396. Returning to Hungary, he was again imprisoned, but this time he had the support of Herman of Celje. A condition of Herman's effort on behalf of Sigismund seems to have included Sigismund's marriage Herman's daughter, Barbara of Cilli.

And so, in 1401, Sigismund was released from prison and betrothed to Barbara. Her family connections improved Sigismund's position in Hungary: Sigismund's first wife, Mary of Hungary, and his second, Barbara of Cilli, were cousins--although the origins of Herman's mother are unclear, she was closely related to Mary of Hungary's mother, Elizabeth of Bosnia. Another of Barbara's cousins,  Anna of Cilli, became the queen of Poland in 1402, when she married Jogaila of Lithuania (later known as Władysław II Jagiełło)--Jogaila was the widower of Jadwiga, queen of Poland. After Jadwiga's death, Jogaila had maintained his position as king of Poland, and he offered another important source of support for Sigismund.

Sigismund and Barbara of Cilli were married on 24 May 1405. After years of tumult and conflict, Sigismund finally found his fortunes changing. Following his marriage, he managed to retain the crown of Hungary, holding on to it until his death in 1437. In 1410, he was elected king of the Romans and Germans, he became king of Bohemia in 1419, and was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1433. 

As for Barbara, she was crowned queen of Hungary in 1405 and served as regent there during Sigismund's absences. She was crowned queen of the Romans and Germans in 1414, Holy Roman Empress in 1433, and queen of Bohemia in 1437. She also gave birth to the couple's only child, Elizabeth, on 28 February 1409.

From the mid-fifteenth century

Chronik des Konzils von Konstanz

(Österreichische Nationalbibliothek)--
the lower panel shows the entry of

Barbara of Cilli into the Council of Constance 

(her daughter Elizabeth is behind her in the procession)

Together, Sigismund and Barbara founded the Order of the Dragon in 1408, a chivalric order dedicated to the defeat of the Turks, the defense of Hungary, and the defense of Christianity. Barbara was regent of Hungary from 1411-14 and again from 1431-34, governing with powers "markedly exceed[ing] the practice of the era." In addition to serving as regent for her husband, Barbara attended the Council of Constance with him in 1414-5 and appeared in imperial diets in 1420, 1422, and 1429. Charters were issued in her name, she administered the collection of taxes, and she settled disputes that were brought to her.

Barbara also acquired significant properties during her marriage, assets that were developed and grown through her own "economic and financial policy." 

Although her "huge fortune" and her political power were used in support of Sigismund, Barbara's wealth and influence made her the subject of venomous attacks. While accusations about her infidelity did not seem to affect her relationship with her husband, the libels of her contemporaries shaped images of Barbara of Cilli as a "Black Queen," linked not only to sexual depravity and heresy but to practicing alchemical magic, the drinking of human blood, and keeping a harem full of women. 

By the seventeenth century, her reputation had been fixed:

[Sigismund's] consort Barbara was a German Messalina, a woman of insatiable appetite for lust; at the same time so heinous that she did not believe in God and neither angel nor devil, neither heaven nor hell. How she scolded her maidservants when they fasted and prayed, that they were agonizing their bodies and worshipped a fictional god: she on the other hand admonishes . . . that they should make use of all the pleasures of this life, because after this one, there is no other to hope for. (trans. Sara Katanec)

Although the scurrilous accusations about Barbara's infidelity may not have been the cause, there was some kind of disagreement between the couple in 1419. Her biographer, Daniela Dvořáková, suggests that Barbara of Cilli's independence and her "individual decisions" may have been the source of the rift. The two were ultimately reconciled, however, and Barbara's court was re-established and her control of her income fully restored. Whatever the nature of the problem between them may have been, by 1424 Barbara received further grants and territories from her husband.

Meanwhile, in 1421, Barbara of Cilli's daughter, Elizabeth, was betrothed to the Habsburg Albert II, duke of Austria. At the time of the engagement, Elizabeth's position as the sole heir to the crown of Hungary was affirmed. (For the sad end of all that, click here.) The two were married the next year, in 1422.

Barbara continued as her husband's financial manager, diplomatic negotiator, and political advisor throughout the 1420s and 1430s, her "power over Sigismund" widely recognized by their contemporaries. But as Sigismund lay dying, in 1437, Albert decided his mother-in-law offered a challenge to his own interests. He confiscated many of her possessions in Hungary, and after Sigismund's death, he had her imprisoned. Barbara of Cilli was ultimately able to find protection at the court of the Polish king. (In the years since their marriage in 1402, both Anne of Cilli and Jogaila had died--the new Polish king, Ladislaus III, was the son of Jogaila and his fourth wife.) 

A fifteenth-century depiction of

Barbara of Cilli. from Konrad

Kyeser, Bellifortis

(Besançon, France,

Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 1360) 

After Albert's death in 1439, Barbara of Cilli went to Bohemia, where she was the dower queen and where she had maintained lands originally given to her by Sigismund. She died there, of the plague, on 11 July 1451.

Unfortunately, a great deal of the scholarship on Barbara of Cilli is inaccessible, at least to me--much of the original work is in German, Croatian, and Slovenian, and while there seems to be a great deal of interest, particularly archival work and reassessments of Barbara of Cilli's role in fifteenth-century politics, I am handicapped as a reader. 

The one recent biography in English is also, unfortunately, largely inaccessible--Daniela Dvořáková's Barbara of Cilli (1392-1451): A Hungarian, Holy Roman, and Bohemian Queen, trans. David McLean, is so expensive I don't know who can afford to read it. It's so expensive that I doubt many academic libraries would purchase a copy. The book's publisher, Brill, does not provide a sample to read on Amazon, and not even a snipper view is available via Google Books. 

Dvořáková's "The Economic Background to and the Financial Politics of Queen Barbara of Cilli in Hungary," in Roman Zaoral's Money and Finance in Central Europe during the Later Middle Ages, is more accessible and is the source I've quoted from here. (This book is also extremely expensive, but at least some of it can be found via Google Books.)

The most helpful account of Barbara of Cilli I have found is found in Sara Katanec's M.A. thesis, "The Perquisite of a Late Medieval Wedding: Barbara of Cilli's Acquisition of Wealth, Power, ad Lands." I've linked to this thesis in numberous places, above, and although Katanec notes that hers is a "limited" study of Barbara, it includes an invaluable survey of Barbara of Cilli's reputation among chroniclers and historians, from the fifteenth century through today.

I do not usually link to Wikipedia in my posts here--not because there are not excellent essays to be found there, but because anyone can find them, and I like to point readers in directions that they may not otherwise find. But I will note here that the Wikipedia entry for Barbara of Cilli is excellent.

A two-Euro commemorative coin,
issued in 2014 on the occasion of 
the 600th anniversary Barbara of Cilli's coronation 

Alice Perrers, "Lady of the Sun"

Alice Perrers (death of Edward III, 21 June 1377)

Alice Perrers and Edward III
detail from Ford Maddox Ford's
Chaucer at the Court of Edward III

Alice Perrers was the mistress of Edward III of England for nearly two decades, from about 1360 until the king's death in 1377. During her lifetime, she was vilified and banished, at times suspected of having "bewitched" the aging monarch. 

Since her death in about the year 1400, Alice Perrers has been more or less defined by the view of a Benedictine monk, Thomas Walsingham. Here is his description of her in his Chronica majora:

At that same time there was a woman in England called Alice Perrers. She was a shameless, impudent harlot, and of low birth, for she was the daughter of a thatcher from the town of Henny, elevated by fortune. She was not attractive or beautiful, but knew how to compensate for these defects with the seductiveness of her voice. Blind fortune elevated this woman to such heights and promoted her to a greater intimacy with the king than was proper, since she had been the maidservant and mistress of a man of Lombardy, and accustomed to carry water on her own shoulders from the mill-stream for the everyday needs of that household. And while the queen was still alive, the king loved this woman more than he loved the queen.*

In the chronicler's view, Alice Perrers was unscrupulous, avaricious, ambitious, manipulative, and power-hungry. But even if we were to accept Walsingham's view of Alice, that would mean she was just like like every other unscrupulous, avaricious, ambitious, manipulative and power-hungry member of the English court. But, oops, she was a woman, so that is obviously really unforgivable.

Modern historians can be just as vicious. For example, in her biography of Katherine Swynford, John of Gaunt's mistress and thus Alice Perrers's contemporary, Alison Weir repeats all the old slanders about Alice. She loves "queening it" at court, she is not beautiful, she has a bad figure, she "wheedled" gifts out of a king "descending into a childlike dotage," she was "shameless, rapacious, and ruthless, and exploited to the full her dominance over the senile king," and she may have infected him with gonorrhea (though, Weir concedes, this claim has "never been substantiated"). Sigh.** 

Since the time Walsingham made his claim about Alice's origins, a great deal of historical effort has gone into trying to identify her background--was she, as Walsingham claimed, a woman of "low birth"? While her many contemporary critics were certainly happy to take the monk at his word, at least some historians were eager to place her among the gentry. Their desire to find a more "acceptable" family background for Alice may have arisen from a need to explain her appearance as a member of the queen's household--how could a woman of "low birth" achieve such a position? But they may also wished to make more understandable the aging king's attraction to her and his dependence on her.

The historian C. L. Kingsford, a widely recognized authority on late-medieval England, authored the essay on Alice Perrers for the Dictionary of National Biography. Kingsford suggested Alice may have been a member of the Perrers family of Hertfordshire, perhaps the daughter of Sir Richard Perrers, or maybe of John Perrers of Holt. Kingsford's claims about Alice's origins were and still are widely accepted. That Alice was probably the daughter of Sir Richard Perrers is noted in brief entry for Alice Perrers in the Encyclopedia Britannica and in biographical essay in Women in World History. Weir, too, identifies Alice as the "married daughter of Hertfordshire knight."

But, after extensive archival research, historian W. M. Ormrod has concluded that, however much Walsingham may have disparaged Alice Perrers, he may not have been entirely wrong in assessing her social class. Ormrod's "unequivocal" documentary evidence demonstrated that Perrers was Alice's married name, not her birth name--she was not the daughter of Sir Richard Perrers but the wife of a man named Janyn Perrers, the two established in a household in London. Whatever Janyn Perrers's social class, he was a man of some means. Given Janyn Perrers's name, Ormrod also wondered if Walsingham might have been correct in his identification of Alice's husband as a "man of Lombardy." But, aside from uncovering his name, Ormrod could find nothing more about Alice's husband.

In further research, Ormrod also linked Alice Perrers to a man named John Salisbury, identified as "her brother" by a petitioner seeking to recover money owed to him. While Ormrod investigated every John Salisbury he could find who might be Alice's brother, and there are a number of John Salisburys who seemed to be possible candidates, in the end, Ormrod claimed only "two firm facts" had "emerged" from his research in newly catalogued archival material: "that Alice had a brother named John Salisbury and a first husband named Janyn Perrers."

Following Ormrod's discoveries, further information about John Salisbury emerged, documented by researcher Laura Tompkins; she identified a writ of protection issued to a man named Janyn Perrers by Edward III. In the writ, Perrers is described as "our beloved Janyn Perrer, our jeweller." 

Using that clue, Tompkins added to what is known about Janyn Perrers and, thus, his wife Alice: "first," Tompkins revealed, "he was a member of the Goldsmiths' Company; second, . . . he lived and worked in London; and third, . . . the date of his death . . .  must have been sometime between 19 May 1361 and 18 May 1362." And one additional detail--the writ suggests Janyn may have had origins in France, not Italy, but there is some confusion about the wording, and it may well be that that description referred only to the workers traveling with him. 

Janyn Perrers was apprenticed to a goldsmith named William "de Salesburi"; Tompkins notes that a man named John Salisbury "who appears in the Goldsmiths' Company accounts and was active during Alice's lifetime" had also been apprenticed to William Salisbury. Researching these two Salisbury men, Tompkins validated one of Ormrod's hypotheses about Alice Perrers's family background: "that Alice was the daughter of William Salisbury, goldsmith, and his wife Joan, and that Alice had three elder brothers who were also practising goldsmiths, William, Thomas and John." 

So, that old monk Walsingham may have been "right" when he said Alice was "low born," but she clearly wasn't the daughter of a thatcher. Her family were not gentry but, rather, craftsmen and merchants. She was almost certainly not the "maidservant," much less the "mistress" of a "man of Lombardy," but a wife, and her husband was probably not Italian, but he may have had some foreign connections, to France rather than to Lombardy, either by birth or through his business dealings.

Aside from the name of her husband and her brother, nothing more is known about Alice Salisbury Perrers before she appears in the household of Philippa of Hainault, queen of Edward III. Alice's date of birth is not certain, but she is likely to have been born about the year 1340. Tompkins's essay provides an excellent overview of what a kind of education and upbringing a girl born into a family of successful London goldsmiths would have received in the fourteenth century, but there is no evidence that Alice received such an education.

Nor is it clear when Alice Salisbury may have married Janyn Perrers, but she had clearly become a wife by 1360, the date of the legal petition identifying her husband as Janyn Perrers. Alice's birth has at times been placed as late as 1348, but the evidence that she was married to Perrers by 1360 makes the later date highly unlikely. Janyn died some time between May 1361 and May 1362. As a widow, Alice Perrers was able to conduct business on her own as a femme sole, a single woman.

Alice Perrers's appearance as a member of Philippa's household, one of the queen's domicellae, has raised questions in the minds of historians, chief among them, how she managed that placement. As we have seen, attempts have been made to find a "suitable" family background for her--that is, a family among the gentry class at least. These attempts seemed to have been motivated by efforts to explain how an otherwise unknown Alice showed up at court as a member of the queen's household. But, with the new evidence, Alice's appointment may well have been as a result of her husband's connection to Edward III. 

Whatever Alice's family background, there has been some general agreement among historians that she became a member of the queen's household about 1359 (that's a date Ormrod uses, for example), but it also seems possible that she may not have joined the court until after her husband's death in 1361 or 1362. Soon after she began to serve as one of Queen Philippa's "damsels," she also became the king's mistress--Alice would have been in her mid-20s, the king in his 50s. She gave birth to their first child, a son, between 1364 and 1366. All three children were born before Queen Philippa's death in August 1369, and all three--John de Southeray, Jane, and Joan--were acknowledged by the king.

A grant to Alice Perrers is first recorded in 1366, with further lucrative grants following. She also began acquiring property, some of it received as gifts, some of it purchased on her own. In 1367, the king granted her custody of a royal ward, and other wardships followed. She received gifts of jewels from Edward, and some of her own purchases of jewels were paid for by the king. In 1373, she was assigned a life annuity by the king. Her name also appears frequently in court records as the recipient of robes, fine cloth, wine, and other goods. 

While she undoubtedly received many valuable gifts from the king, Alice seems also to have been an excellent businesswoman. As historian Dan Moorhouse notes, "whilst it is true that the King bestowed gifts onto Alice Perrers, it is also the case that most of her wealth was generated by other means. Alice held lands in 25 counties. It included 56 manors, castles, town houses. This was a large portfolio of estates, rivalling the lands of some of the most powerful nobles. 15 of these manors were granted to Alice Perrers by the King. The other 41 of them were acquired through business acumen."

Alice Perrers also appeared at tournaments, richly attired. On one notable occasion in 1375, she rode through London, from the Tower to Smithfield, costumed as the "Lady of the Sun." Her intimacy with the king meant that many notable men sought favors from Edward by appealing to her, including John of Gaunt, the king's son; William, lord Latimer; William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester; and even the pope, Gregory XI, who appealed to her for help when his brother needed to be ransomed.

Aging and increasingly isolated, King Edward became more and more dependent on Alice as his health declined. As for Alice, her entire position depended on the king. Uncertainty about her future after the king's death may have led to her secret marriage to William de Windsor, a man who had fought with Edward III in France and then, in Ireland, under the king's son, Lionel. By 1369, he had become the king's deputy in Ireland, but he had returned to England several times. Alice Perrers likely married Windsor in 1376, when he had been summoned to England by the king.

Petition submitted against Alice Perrers

(National Archives SC 8/104/5166)

In April of that year, increasingly upset about the state of affairs in England, parliament met and moved moved against Alice, accusing her of a variety of financial misdeeds. They charged that she "had ‘two or three thousand pounds of gold and silver’ a year from the king’s coffers, and it would be therefore of great profit to the realm to ‘take measures to remedy her [Alice’s] outrageous behaviour, and, as much for the king’s honour as his personal good, to have her removed from his presence, for she had tarnished his honour both in this land and all the neighbouring kingdoms.’"

In the view of some members of parliament, Alice Perrers was not only the reason for the "ills and damages" within the kingdom, but for the "bad management of the war" in France. Parliament also informed the king that she had married William de Windsor secretly. In May, the king agreed to demands that his "evil councillors and wrongdoers" be dismissed. Alice Perrers was sentenced to banishment and the forfeiture of all her property. According to one contemporary chronicle account, Edward was forced to swear "that the said Alice would never come into his presence again." Devastated by his loss of Alice, the king begged for mercy for her. 

But it was clear the king was dying, and by October, Edward had overruled parliament and reprieved Alice, who rejoined the king. In January 1377, parliament overturned some of its rulings against her: she had been "deprived of the liberty which each loyal liege of the king . . . should enjoy and have freely." Alice remained with him for the last eight months of his life and was at his bedside when he died on 21 June 1377.

Alice Perrers at the death of
King Edward III
(from Cassell's Illustrated History
of England [1865])

Alice herself would live for another twenty-three years. Soon after the king's death, the first parliament of Richard II confirmed the sentence of 1376. She was to be exiled, her property all forfeited. Her husband appealed, and in 1379, that sentence was again revoked. Alice was engaged in a number of lawsuits in the years that followed, primarily related to land, but after her husband's death in 1384, the debt that he owed the crown became another source of legal disputes.  

Lawsuits continued until Alice's death in 1400. The exact date she died isn't known, but her will is dated 20 August 1400, and it was proved on 3 February 1401. 

While history has not been kind to Alice Perrers, the assessment of one of Edward III's most recent biographers, Ian Mortimer, is a nuanced one:

No one--contemporarily or historically--has a good word to say about Alice. She may well have been the most corrupt and self-seeking person at Edward's court but that does not mean we should not try to understand her situation. . . . She had met the king when relatively young and perhaps a little naive. Certainly she would have been powerless to prevent his advances toward her when she was serving Philippa. . . . [W]ho was she to deny the king?

Whatever the nature of their relationship, Edward remained faithful to Alice. Mortimer notes that, unlike other medieval kings, Edward did not dismiss Alice after she gave birth to their son--he recognized the boy as his own, kept Alice with him, and they had two more children together.

And whatever kind of woman Alice was--and whatever her feelings for the king may have been—she remained loyal to him as well, despite her marriage to William de Windsor. When the king was abandoned by all of his other courtiers and family members, she remained by his side until his death. 

Thomas Walsingham, the angry St. Albans chronicler (one of Alice's many lawsuits was with St. Albans abbey), said that Alice took the king's rings off his fingers after his death. Maybe she did. I wouldn't blame her if she had.

As for the children of Alice Perrers and Edward III:

Their firstborn child was a son, John de Southeray (or Surrey), born between 1364 and 1366. In 1374, the life annuity the king had assigned to Alice Perrers was assigned to their son, named in the grant as John de Surrey. He is named as a "chivaler" in a 1377 grant of several manors and was knighted by Edward in April of the same year. The ages for most of the other young men and boys knighted at the same time suggest that John would have been between twelve and fifteen, but no younger than ten (the age of the youngest boy knighted on this occasion); notably, at this same ceremony, those knighted include Richard, the prince of Wales; Edward III's youngest son Thomas of Woodstock; Henry, the son of John of Gaunt; and several young prominent nobleman. After Edward III's death, Alice and the king's son continued to receive gifts from the king’s successor, Richard II. In the same year, 1377, John de Southeray was married to Maud de Percy, daughter of Henry de Percy, third baron Percy. Maud sought an annulment in 1380, claiming the marriage had been made without her consent. In 1381 John was in Castile with Edmund Langley, one of Edward III's sons (and John's half-brother). John de Southeray seems to have died about 1383.

Edward and Alice's elder daughter, Jane, married a man named John Northland, about whom nothing is know.

Joan married, probably by 1400, Robert Skerne of Kingston-upon-Thames (Surrey), member of parliament in 1420 and 1421; the couple engaged in a protracted legal battle with Jane over their inheritance. Joan died by 1431.

Brass rubbing of Jane Skerne, 
daughter of Alice Perrers and Edward III
(from All Saints' Church, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey)

*The translation is from John Taylor, Wendy R. Childs, and Leslie Watkiss, eds. The St Albans Chronicle: The Chronica maiora of Thomas Walsingham, as quoted by W. M. Ormrod, "Who Was Alice Perrers? The Chaucer Review 40, no. 3 (2006): 219.

**Katherine Swynford's relationship with Edward III's son, John of Gaunt, parallels that of Alice Perrers and the king in interesting ways. The two women are contemporaries, though Swynford is likely the younger of the two. (Alice's date of birth is conjectural.) Both women became mistresses to men who were already married, and both gave birth to children acknowledged by their fathers. John of Gaunt's children with Katherine Swynford were all born while his wife, Constance of Castile, was still giving birth to children. After twenty years as Gaunt's mistress, Swynford became his wife after the death of Constance. Alice's children, too, were born before Queen Philippa's death, though by the time Alice became Edward's mistress, Philippa was past child-bearing years--who knows whether Edward III might, like his son, have married his mistress if he had not been old, sick, and increasingly senile. Weir's main reason for disparaging Alice Perrers and almost beatifying Katherine Swynford seems to be that, while Swynford undoubtedly "profited materially" from her position as a royal mistress, she did not profit "excessively." Hmm.

Alice Chaucer, Politician and Patron (and Granddaughter of the Poet)

Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk (died 20 May 1475)

As an academic, I was trained as a medievalist, and for decades, I taught not only medieval but early-modern literature courses at a liberal-arts university. I continued to teach Beowulf, Chaucer, Malory, Wyatt, Surrey, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Marlowe, among many other canonical writers and texts, long after my own research and writing interests had transitioned to women's history and women writers. This site, The Monstrous Regiment of Women, is a post-retirement project that allows me to continue to read and write about women, women's history, and women writers. 

Tomb effigy of Alice Chaucer,

duchess of Suffolk

(parish church of St Mary,

Ewelme, Oxfordshire)

Now here's an admission. I taught an upper-division course in Chaucer for decades, as well as teaching selections from The Canterbury Tales in lower-division literature survey courses. I knew Chaucer had married Philippa de Roet, whose sister, Katherine, later known as Katherine Swynford (her first husband was Sir Hugh Swynford), would become the mistress, then wife, of John of Gaunt, third son of Edward III. Many students over the years found this personal connection--one between the poet and the royal patron whom he served--to be an intriguing one. 

But beyond knowing that Geoffrey Chaucer had married Philippa de Roet, I never thought much about Chaucer's wife, much less his children, except for the claim that his Treatise on the Astrolabe may have been written for his son, Thomas--despite the fact that the piece is addressed to "Lyte Lowys my sone." This reference has resulted in a great deal of speculation. Some critics have argued that "Louis" really means "Thomas," others that the poem may have been addressed to a godson or another child to whom Chaucer was close, while still others have concluded that Chaucer had a second son, named Louis. It's best just to say that the treatise "may or may not" refer to Chaucer's own son.

In fact, it isn't clear exactly how many children Chaucer and Philippa had, though it's generally said that they had four (or three). Certainly they had a son named Thomas, who made an advantageous marriage and had a notable political career. Chaucer and Philippa may have had two daughters, and if they did, these daughters may be Elizabeth (a woman named Elizabeth Chaucy became a nun at Barking Abbey, and Agnes (a woman named Agnes Chaucer played a role in the coronation of Henry IV).

So, as I said, how many children Chaucer and his wife had is not clear--but what is clear is that Alice Chaucer is Geoffrey Chaucer's granddaughter, the child of Thomas Chaucer. About her, historian John Kirby Edges would write, "Few women ever had a more gradual and successful rise in the world than Alice Chaucer. Born the daughter of a gentleman of no illustrious descent, she became in name a lady by her contract of marriage with a knight; next a countess by her first marriage, and during her [subsequent] marriage she reached the higher dignities of marchioness and duchess." 

Brass rubbing of
Matilda Burghersh,
mother of Alice Chaucer
(Victoria and Albert Museum)

Born about the year 1404, just a few years after her grandfather's death (Geoffrey Chaucer died on 25 October 1400), Alice was the daughter of Thomas Chaucer and Matilda Burghersh, an heiress to a significant estate. Ewelme Manor (Oxfordshire), where Alice Chaucer would spend a great deal of her life, came into the Chaucer family's possession at the death of Sir John Berghersh, Matilda'a father. 

Alice Chaucer's now-famous grandfather, Geoffrey, was the son of a wine merchant who became a courtier, diplomat, and bureacrat, in addition to becoming one of the great poets of the English language. He began his astonishing rise as a page in the household of Elizabeth de Burgh, married to Lionel of Antwerp (like John of Gaunt, a son of Edward III). 

Her father, Thomas Chaucer, was able to have a distinguished political career--he served in various capacities under Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V, and was was elected to parliament fifteen times, serving as Speaker of the House of Commons five times. 

While such careers were not possible for a woman, Alice Chaucer nevertheless found advancement through marriage, a career option that was available to women.

When she was about eleven (by October 1414), Alice was married to Sir John Phelip, a man about twenty-five years older than she was. Although his Suffolk family was "of no very great local importance," they had experienced a "spectacular rise" while serving John of Gaunt and Henry IV. Sir John died on 2 October 1415, about a year after his marriage to Alice. As his widow, Alice Chaucer gained control of significant property, including Donnington Castle, which had been acquired by her father and was part of her dowry.

Alice's second marriage was a much more prestigious one--by 30 November 1424, when she is known to be attending a marriage in France with her husband, Alice had become the wife of Thomas Montagu, fourth earl of Salisbury. Salisbury was one of the great English commanders during the Hundred Years War. On the occasion of a celebration of marriage, the duke of Burgundy seems to have been captivated by Alice Chaucer and went so far as to try to seduce her--despite the fact that the wedding being celebrated was his own. Alice did not succumb, though her second marriage was not to last long. Salisbury was wounded at the siege of Orléans, and he died on 3 November 1428.

Two years later, in 1430, the twice-widowed Alice married William de la Pole. Like Thomas Montagu, he was an important English commander--he had also been at the siege of Orléans--and he served Henry VI in several capacities. (He also helped to negotiate the marriage between Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou.) John de la Pole was made earl, then marquess, and, in 1448, duke of Suffolk. As for Alice Chaucer, she became one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting. 

In May 1432, Alice Chaucer was granted the "distinguished privilege" at the feast of St. George of "wear[ing] the Order of the Garter." Like the knights of the Order, the "Ladies had not only the habit of the Order, but they, like the Knights, had also the ensign of the Garter delivered to them. . . . These Garters might be worn by Ladies about their left arm."

But Suffolk's career would end disastrously. His years in service to Henry VI earned him many enemies. In 1450, he was accused of treason, imprisoned in the Tower, and then sent into exile. Before he got too far on his voyage from England--just off the coast of Dover, in fact--his ship was overtaken, and he was beheaded. 

Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk, had given birth to only one child during her three marriages. John de la Pole was born on 27 September 1442. By the terms of her husband's will, Alice was named the sole executrix of his estates: "above all the earth my singular trust is most in her." During the years immediately following Suffolk's death, Alice too was the focus of a great deal of anger. Much of it was the result of her husband's disastrous actions.

Most significantly, she was implicated in her husband's decision to marry their son, John de la Pole, to Margaret Beaufort. Fears that Suffolk intended to secure the throne of England for his own son by means of this marriage ("presuming and pretending" Margaret Beaufort "to be next inheritable to the crown") had led to the charges of treason brought against Suffolk. Alice found herself charged with treason in 1453, but she was acquitted.

In the same year, her son's marriage to Margaret Beaufort was annulled. In 1458, after years of a close relationship to Henry VI, Alice Chaucer decided to ally herself with Richard, duke of York. A marriage was arranged between John de la Pole and Elizabeth of York, the sixth child and third daughter of the duke and his wife, Cecily Neville. Through this marriage, Alice would become grandmother to eleven grandchildren. 

Throughout the years that followed her husband's death, Alice Chaucer remained a potent force. In her work on women in medieval England, Mavis E. Mate notes, "she continued to dominate politics in East Anglia," where the de la Pole family resided. Beyond her continued political maneuvering, Alice Chaucer was an important patron of the arts and literature. She commissioned tapestries, and she may have commissioned a poem by John Lydgate. Mate acknowledges that Lydgate "ostensibly produced works" for her husbands, but suggests that "in each case the real motivating force behind the commission may have been Alice Chaucer herself." Whether or not she herself commissioned any of Lydgate's work, she was a lover of books and amassed a large library. Notably, she is known to have owned a copy of Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies.

She was also known for her acts of piety. She made donations of books and money to Oxford University, she made contributions to various religious institutions, and she gave alms to the poor. In this last role, she supported God's House at Ewelme, an almshouse that she had founded with her husband, a charity that survives today.

In 1472, not long before her own death, Alice Chaucer was once more in contact with Margaret of Anjou, when the widow of Henry VI was transferred to her "care." After the death of Henry VI and Margaret's defeat at the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, the former queen was taken captive by William Stanley and imprisoned in Wallingford Castle and then the Tower of London. She was transferred into the custody of Alice Chaucer and presumably remained with her until the duchess of Suffolk died. (Margaret of Anjou was finally ransomed by Louis XI of France in 1475.)

Alice Chaucer's strenuous efforts to protect--and expand--her son's inheritance helped insurance his future, even while they did nothing for her own reputation. Historian Lauren Johnson claims that Alice Chaucer and her husband were "well matched": "both ambitious, cunning and charming, but willing to be ruthless if necessary." 

And what a future it was--I've already noted John de la Pole's large family. Three of his sons made claims to the throne of England: the eldest, John de la Pole, first earl of Lincoln, was made heir to the crown by his uncle, Richard III, but he died in 1487, at the battle of Stoke, two years after Henry VII claimed the throne; Edmund de la Pole also claimed the English throne and was executed by Henry VIII in 1513; Richard de la Pole, the seventh and youngest son of Alice Chaucer, continued the claim but lived on the continent until his death in 1425 at the battle of Pavia. Another son, William, made no claim to the throne but was imprisoned in the Tower for allegedly plotting with his brothers--he remained there for thirty-seven years, dying in 1539.

Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk,
tomb, St. Mary's Church, Ewelme,
showing Order of the Garter

Fortunately for Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk, she did not live to see her grandsons' deaths. She died on 20 May 1475 and is buried in St. Mary's Church, Ewelme (Oxfordshire). Her tomb effigy shows her wearing the Order of the Garter on her wrist. 

Information about the remarkable Alice Chaucer is often found by scrounging in the biographies of men--Geoffrey Chaucer, Henry VI, her own husbands. Until now, there has been no biography of her, but one will soon be available: Michèle Schindler's What Is Better Than A Good Woman: Alice Chaucer, Commoner and Yorkist Matriarch will be published in July of this year.

I've linked to Marjorie Anderson's 1945 article, "Alice Chaucer and Her Husbands," above. 

There are also two excellent (but difficult to access) articles about Alice Chaucer as a book collector: Karen Jamback's “The Library of Alice Chaucer, Duchess of Suffolk: A Fifteenth-Century Owner of a ‘Boke of le Citee de Dames’,” The Profane Arts of the Middle Ages 7, no. 2 (1998): 106-35; and Carol M. Meale, “Reading Women’s Culture in Fifteenth-Century England: The Case of Alice Chaucer,” in Mediaevalitas: Reading the Middle Ages, ed. Piero Boitani and Anna Torti (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. 1996), 81-101. 

You may also want to check out Rachel M. Delman's "Gendered Viewing, Childbirth and Female Authority in the Residence of Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk, at Ewelme, Oxfordshire" (click here). This essay not only provides an unusual account of Alice Chaucer's preparations for the birth of a grandchild, it also includes a great deal of information about the books she owned. (And since it's online, it's more accessible than the two articles I've noted above.)

As for me, I came upon the name of Alice Chaucer in Lauren Johnson's The Shadow King: The Life and Death of Henry VI, from which I have quoted, above. 

 

Cecilia de Ridgeway and Her "Extraordinary Abstinence"

Cecilia de Ridgeway (pardon signed 25 April 1357)

Sometimes there is a tiny crack in the historical narrative that allows us to glimpse beyond the stories that are the usual stuff of history. Such is the case of Cecilia de Ridgeway, a fourteenth-century Englishwoman who was imprisoned in Nottingham Castle. Except for a very few details. we know nothing about her--but those few details are tantalizing. 

I first came across the name of Cecilia de Ridgeway in Ian MortimerIan Mortimer's Edward III: The Perfect King. What could be more representative of the traditional view of  "history" than a biography of one of history's "great men"? A king, wars, power, political scheming, political allies, political rivals, law, economics . . . 

Mortimer's biography of Edward III encompasses 402 pages (that's just the text--including notes, appendices, bibliography, charts, and index, the book has 536 pages).

A nineteenth-century "reconstruction" of
Nottingham Castle--like Cecilia de Ridgeway's
life, the medieval castle has been lost

Of these 402 (or 536) pages, only 6 lines on page 328 refer to Cecilia de Ridgeway, 3 complete sentences. Three sentences to relay a person's life. 

A second reference--only a phrase--appears on p. 341. In this case, the king's pardon of Cecilia Ridgeway is included among the Edward's "significant religious acts."

As Mortimer's reference to her demonstrates, what remains of Cecilia de Ridgeway's life can be relayed in a few short sentences.

In 1357, Cecilia de Ridgeway was accused of having killed her husband, John. When she was indicted for his murder, she refused to plead. 

She was imprisoned in Nottingham Castle until such time as she would make her plea, subject while imprisoned to peine forte et dure--that is, a person accused of a crime could be imprisoned and punished until such time as the defendant would plead. In most cases, this involved starving the person into submission. (In the fifteenth century, a defendant who refused to plead could be subjected to the punishment of pressing--this is what happened to Margaret Clitherow, who was pressed to death.)

Cecilia de Ridgeway is supposed to have been deprived of food and drink for forty days. But Cecilia neither died nor pleaded--her case was reported to Edward III. 

Regarding her survival under such circumstances as "against human nature" and thus a miracle, the king pardoned Cecilia: "We, for that reason, moved by piety, to the praise of God and the glorious Virgin Mary his Mother, whence the said Miracle proceeded, as it is believed, by our special grace, pardoned the execution of the aforesaid Cecilia" (“Nos, ea de causa, pietate moti, ad laudem Dei & glori[osae] Virginis Mariae Matris suae, unde dictum Miraculum proc[essit], uc creditur, de gratia nostra speciali, pardonavimus eidem Ceciliae Executionem Judicii praedicti.")

Further, the king issued his pardon "desiring that the same Cecilia should be freed from prison, and that her body should not be attacked any further, on the occasion of the above-mentioned judgment" (“Volentes quod eadem Cecilia a prisona praedicta deliberetur & de Corpore suo ulterius non sit impetita, occasione judicii supradidite”).

Edward III's judgment was made at Westminster on 25 April 1357. 

For the pardon, click here.

Sir Walter Scott somehow came across the case of Cecilia de Ridgeway, including it in his 1809 Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts, on the Most Interesting and Entertaining Subjects: But Chiefly Such as Relate to the History and Constitution of These Kingdoms . . .  (click here).

A brief headnote about Cecilia de Ridgeway and a transcription of the pardon are included in a 12-page collection of  cases of "extraordinary abstinence" (click here).

A rather gruesome account of Cecilia de Ridgeway's crime, which seems to have been embellished by details the source of which are unknown, was published in J. G. N. Clift's article on fasting in The Journal of the British Archaeological Association in 1909 (click here). According to Clift, Cecilia poisoned her husband "secretly and with malice aforethought," giving him "a certain loathsome, noxious drug." There are no citations--I'd love to know where the details come from. I also quite like Clift's suggestion that Cecilia de Ridgeway's jailer might be able to "throw some light" on how she managed to survive forty days without food or water . . . 

There are a few other references, aside from these, but they all rely on the pardon as their source or on the account by Scott, who is also relying on the pardon.

If this brief detail about Cecilia de Ridgeway isn't the stuff of historical fiction, I don't know what is . . . Who was her husband? Did she actually murder him? If so, how? If not, how was it that she was accused? How did her story make its way to the king? What happened to her after she was pardoned? Somebody, please write this novel!

Yay! Let's Bring Back the Comstock Act!

When Women Became No Longer Human, Part 15: Let's Bring Back the Comstock Act! 

I really couldn't decide which series of posts this one belonged to: "When Women Became No Longer Human" or “Back to the Future.” It could be either. Or both. 

Because after Dobbs, women lost their ability to make decisions for themselves and their future--they became a human-ish sorta thing. Almost but not quite human.

Seal of Anthony Comstock's 
New York Society for the Suppression of Vice
(founded 1873)

Then again, nothing like resurrecting an 1873 law and deciding it's just what we need now!

Both Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas called upon the Comstock Act during yesterday's oral arguments, FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a case about access to the anti-abortion drug mifepristone. According to the Guttmacher Institute, medication abortions accounted for 63% of abortions in 2023, the year after the Dobbs decision--up 53% since 2020. So you can see why denying women access to mifepristone is high on the agenda . . . 

Alito rejected claims the Comstock Act was "obsolete" and wanted to know why the Food and Drug Administration hadn't considered the provisions of the Comstock Act before making its decision allowing access to mifepristone. Here's Alito: “This is a prominent provision. It’s not some obscure subsection of a complicated, obscure law. . . .  Everybody in this field knew about it.”

And here's Thomas: addresing the lawyers for one of the drug's manufacturers, he asked “How do you respond to an argument that mailing your product and advertising it would violate the Comstock Act? [The act] is fairly broad, and it specifically covers drugs such as yours.”

And here's the original Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use, first passed in 1873, when Ulysses S. Grant was president of the United States:

Every obscene, lewd, or lascivious, and every filthy book, pamphlet, picture, paper, letter, writing, print, or other publication of an indecent character, and every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for preventing conception or producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use; and every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for preventing conception or producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose and every written or printed card, letter, circular, book, pamphlet advertisement, or notice of any kind giving information directly or indirectly, where, or how, or of whom, or by what means any of the hereinbefore-mentioned matters, articles or things may be obtained or made, or where or by whom any act or operation of any kind for the procuring or producing of abortion will be done or performed or how or by what means conception may be prevented or abortion may be produced, whether sealed or unsealed; and every letter, packet, or package, or other mail matter containing any filthy, vile, or indecent thing, device or substance and every paper, writing, advertisement or representation that any article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing may, or can be, used or applied, for preventing conception or producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose; and every description calculated to induce or incite a person to so use or apply any such article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing, is hereby declared to be a non-mailable matter and shall not be conveyed in the mails or delivered from any post office or by any letter carrier. Whoever shall knowingly deposit or cause to be deposited for mailing or delivery, anything declared by this section to be non-mailable, or shall knowingly take, or cause the same to be taken, from the mails for the purpose of circulating or disposing thereof, or of aiding in the circulation or disposition thereof, shall be fined not more than five thousand dollars, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

Here's the text of the law currently, as cited by Alito and Thomas, now titled "Mailing Obscene or Crime-Inciting Matter" (18 U.S. Code 1461):

Every obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile article, matter, thing, device, or substance; and

Every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use; and

Every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose; and

Every written or printed card, letter, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice of any kind giving information, directly or indirectly, where, or how, or from whom, or by what means any of such mentioned matters, articles, or things may be obtained or made, or where or by whom any act or operation of any kind for the procuring or producing of abortion will be done or performed, or how or by what means abortion may be produced, whether sealed or unsealed; and

Every paper, writing, advertisement, or representation that any article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing may, or can, be used or applied for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose; and

Every description calculated to induce or incite a person to so use or apply any such article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing

Is declared to be nonmailable matter and shall not be conveyed in the mails or delivered from any post office or by any letter carrier.

Whoever knowingly uses the mails for the mailing, carriage in the mails, or delivery of anything declared by this section or section 3001(e) of title 39 to be nonmailable, or knowingly causes to be delivered by mail according to the direction thereon, or at the place at which it is directed to be delivered by the person to whom it is addressed, or knowingly takes any such thing from the mails for the purpose of circulating or disposing thereof, or of aiding in the circulation or disposition thereof, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both, for the first such offense, and shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both, for each such offense thereafter.

The term "indecent", as used in this section includes matter of a character tending to incite arson, murder, or assassination.

The law has long been considered "effectively dead”--since the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut decision and the 1972 Eisenstadt v. Baird decision, both recognizing the right to contraception, and the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Tessa Stuart notes that even before Roe, “federal courts held Comstock only applied to unlawful abortions."

"St. Anthony Comstock, the Village Nuisance” 

Louis M. Glackens, 1906

(National Archives Museum)

But the Comstock Act is what's known as a "zombie law." I'm not a lawyer, much less a legal scholar, so here is Harvard University law professor Molly Brady's definition: "There is a phenomenon known in legislation when there are laws on the books that have been declared unenforceable by a court. The term for these is “zombie laws”—the idea being that these laws might come back, might reanimate, if, for instance, the court changes its position. So, actually, after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a lot of the laws that were invalid under Roe v. Wade came back once Dobbs revisited Roe. These were examples of zombie laws." (For a more complete analysis, click here for Howard M. Wasserman's "Zombie Laws," Lewis & Clark Law Review.)

So the Comstock Act is back . . . and ready to be used for those who would like to deny access not only to mifepristone but to birth control pills and devices and any other "thing" right-wing zealots decide is "obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile"!

Cartoons like the one I've embedded, above, "St. Anthony Comstock, the Village Nuisance," may be funny, but the Comstock Act has been used to many horrific ends. Among others, see the cases of Ida Craddock, Victoria Woodhull, Alice Bunker Stockham, and Margaret Sanger. 

Here's a fine summary of the effects by Jonathan Freedman and Amy Werbel:

During the Comstock Law’s reign, millions of books, newspapers, magazines, prints, photographs and circulars were burned under court order. More than 3,000 persons arrested for violations of the Comstock Act served a total of 600 years in prison, most for writing about topics that today are widely accepted in society, including atheism, homosexuality and sexual health. Medical professionals writing about abortion or contraception were prosecuted, as well as "freethinkers" who believed in the separation of church and state. Gilded Age freethinker and editor D.M. Bennett was imprisoned for "crimes" including advocating for equality of the sexes.

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's "Ladyland"

 Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's "Ladyland"

Last fall, I read Michael Dirda's Washington Post review, "'Tis the Season for Horror and Weird Tales. Here Are Some Favorites." Now, I am not a reader of fantasy, science fiction, or horror, though my son is, and Christmas was coming. I not only read Dirda's review, but I bought some of the books he recommended for Christmas, including Joshua Glenn's collection of short stories, Voices from the Radium Age. I wrapped it up, put the book under the tree, and never thought about it again. Until a few days ago, when my son handed me the book and told me I needed to read the first story, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's “Sultana's Dream,” published in 1905.

I didn't know what to expect, or why my son wanted me to read it, but now I do! I've spent a lot of time reading, teaching, and writing about a recurring theme in writing by women: the dream of finding or creating a private and secluded retreat from the world of men. 

These imagined “women’s worlds” may be very small, a single room, for example, perhaps most famously Virginia Woolf's "a room of one's own." 

But many women writers are much more ambitious, fantasizing about cities (like Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies), even entire countries (like Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland), created for and inhabited exclusively by women.

I even wrote a book, Reading Women's Worlds from Christine de Pizan to Doris Lessing: A Guide to Six Centuries of Women Writers Imagining Rooms of Their Own.

And so my son's recommendation to me of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's short story, "Sultana's Dream," republished in Glenn's Voices from the Radium Age.

In the story, which appeared a decade before Gilman's Herland, Rokeya Sahkawat Hossain's narrator, Sultana, is resting on a chair in her bedroom while "thinking lazily of the condition of Indian womanhood." In her dream, she meets a woman whom she takes for her friend, Sister Sara. With "Sara," she walks out of her room and through a garden into the town around them--and it's at this point that she realizes the woman she is with is not her friend, but a stranger.

She is at first anxious--not only is she with someone she doesn't know, but as she tells the stranger, "as being a purdahnishin woman I am not accustomed to walking about unveiled." But she soon realizes that "there was not a single man visible."

Sultana finds herself in Ladyland, a place "free from sin and harm," a place where "Virtue herself reigns." And, notably, a place where men are "in their proper places": shut indoors, where they can be kept out of trouble.

What follows is a delightful overview of a world-turned-upside-down. Women know everything, do everything, create everything, and control everything. . . . And rather than getting and maintaining their position by force, women rule with their brains.

In reading a bit about Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, I learned she wrote a novella with a similar theme, Padmarag: "Her novella Padmarag is similarly utopian in its depiction of a women-run school and welfare center, and is both feminist and anti-colonial in its outlook." (Quoted from the Penguin edition’s description of the work.)

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain
(c. 1880-1932)

The novella's focus on the important of education for women and the creation of "a woman-run school and welfare center" puts me in mind of Mary Astell's A Serious Proposal to the Ladies . . . 

You can read "Sultana's Dream" online at Other Women's Voices (click here).

A Penguin edition that contains both "Sultana's Dream" and Pradmarog, edited by Barnita Bagchi and with an introduction by  Tanya Agathocleous, is also available (click here). 

An excellent introduction to Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and her work is by Roushan Jahan, ed. and trans., "Sultana's Dream" and Selections from The Secluded Ones, accessible through the Internet Archive (click here).

For a website dedicated to Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, you may want to check out the Hossain Memorial website--there you will find a biographical essay, bibliography, photo gallery, letters and speeches, along with a wealth of assorted material. 

And if you like science fiction and fantasy, don't forget Joshua Glenn's collection of short stories, Voices from the Radium Age!