Madame de Sevigne made a significant contribution to the understanding of seventeenth-century France through her voluminous correspondence. The most famous epistoliere of the Splendid Century, the Marquise recorded important political events, religious controversies, wars and disasters, medical practices and the social and cultural life of the court of Louis XIV. She was a keen observer and brilliant writer; her literary style has been admired for over three hundred years.

In this fascinating study of the Dhan-Gadi Aboriginal people of New South Wales, Australia, the author combines the skills of a social historian with the detailed observation of a social anthropologist. In so doing he brings alive the contours of crude racism, as well as the more subtle expressions of paternalism, bureaucratic social control and educational and economic marginalization.

George Sand was admired by Dostoevsky, Whitman, Flaubert, Thackeray and Elizabeth Barret Browning as on of the greatest writers of her time. Her sixty novels received critical acclaim and earned her enough money to donate over a million pounds to socialist causes. But now she is remembered mainly as a 'femme fatale' who wore trousers, smoked cigars and lived with Chopin, among other well-known men. In this critical introduction to Sand's works, Dickenson pulls together all the myths about her and vigorously challenges them, offering fresh insights into Sand's writings, sexuality and the...

Talks about Gertrude Bell, who is remembered as a friend and colleague of T E Lawrence. She was an intrepid traveller, journeying alone through the deserts of the Middle East or scaling peaks in the Swiss Alps. Later, as a British political officer in Baghdad, she was able to play a considerable role in determining the future of Mesopotamia.