Bold in Her Breeches: Women Pirates Across the Ages - Softcover

Stanley, Jo

3.39

70 ratings by Goodreads

9780044409700: Bold in Her Breeches: Women Pirates Across the Ages

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0044409702 ISBN 13: 9780044409700

Publisher: Pandora, 1996

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As far back as 480 BC, when Artemisia commanded her Greek trireme, women have taken to the high seas in pursuit of life and liberty. Simultaneously revered and reviled by superstitious male mariners, the realities of these women pirates' lives have been lost in a murky fog of sexual and racial preconceptions.
Bold in her Breeches takes a wholly fresh look at these mythical figures and places them in their true historical and cultural contexts. From Artemisia to the contemporary women pirates of today, via eighteenth-century Grace O'Malley and nineteenth-century Cheng I Sao, we learn why women took to piracy, what it was actually like, how they were regarded by people of their own time and what history has done to their stories. What emerges, by virtue of insight, intuition and some wonderful research, is a retrieval of an entire women's seafaring history, culled from trial reports, from journalists' stories, and from the margins of history books.
With contributions from Anne Chambers, Dian H. Murray and Julie Wheelwright as well as editor Jo Stanley, Bold in her Breeches is a riveting insight into a wild and salty world hitherto all but obscured from view.

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From the Back Cover:

From swashbuckling heroines to weary prostitutes, images of women pirates have been as varied and colourful as the seas on which they have plied their centuries-old trade. As far back as 480 BC, when Artemisia commanded her Greek trireme, women have taken to the high seas in pursuit of life and liberty; but the realities of their lives have been lost in a murky fog of sexual and racial preconceptions.

Contributors Anne Chambers, Dian Murray and Julie Wheelwright, as well as editor Jo Stanley, take a wholly fresh look at these mythical figures and give us a riveting insight into a wild and salty world hitherto all but obscured from view.

"To shine a harsh light into these half forgotten pockets of women's experience is what gives feminist history a good name... In the case of pirates, well, thieves and murderers they may have been, but it still delights us that women before Margaret Thatcher proved themselves so nonchalantly capable of leading warlike bands of desperate men and escaping to a quiet retirement at the end of the tale."
SUNDAY TIMES

"This book succeeds admirably. It is by turns questioning, sceptical, imaginative, personal. The authors reconstruct, suppose and, above all, tell what can be known. It's written with wit and a light touch."
EVERYWOMAN

Synopsis:

The world of piracy has traditionally been seen as the preserve of men. This book reveals the extent to which women have been involved in piracy, skulduggery and seafaring over the centuries. This book is divided into several parts. Anne Chambers looks at how women of privilege have embraced life at sea; Julie Wheelwright, author of "Amazons and Military Maids", looks at life at sea for penniless women such as the legendary lovers Mary Read and Anne Bonny; Delei Davin explores the tradition of Chinese women warriors at sea, and Dea Birkett examines what women pirates are doing today.

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