Ninety years after the vote was first extended to women in the UK - or to women over 30, in any case - OUP have gathered together 25 entries from the Dictionary of National Biography about major figures in the struggle for women's votes.
Short biographies of three of the radical Pankhursts - Emmaline, Christabel and Sylvia - alongside constitutional reformer Millicent Fawcett are fairly dry, but the odd, telling detail brings the bitterness of the campaign to life: Christabel Pankhurst spitting in a policeman's face; Sylvia carried on a stretcher to meetings and processions; Emmaline brandishing a heavy earthenware jug at doctors trying to force feed her.
There's a certain amount of frustration for anyone using the site outside a public library, or at least without a library card to hand, as links within the body of the entries come up short against the ODNB subscription service - confusingly enough, even the very entries you can get to via their Votes for Women section. But more than a century after the Pankhursts started smashing windows and breaking laws, the frustration of struggling with a slightly wonky site seems trivial in comparison.
