Open up this cabinet of curiosities and you'll find objects that have been highly esteemed – even, like the Bayeux tapestry, fought over by nations – and others that are humble and domestic. Some (like a sixteenth century glass dildo) are objects of female pleasure, some (a thumbscrew) of female subjugation. There are artefacts of women celebrated by history and of women unfairly forgotten by it; examples of female rebellion and of self-revelation; objects that are inspiring, curious or (like radium-laced chocolate) just fundamentally ill-conceived.

Through the variety and nuance in all these 101 objects, Annabelle Hirsch has created a new history - teeming, unexpected, witty and always illuminating. This overdue corrective reveals what a healed femur says about civilization, what men have to fear from hat pins, and it shows that the past has always been as complicated and fascinating as the women that peopled it.

Canongate Books, 2023.
ISBN: 9781805300878. 416 pp.
Illus.
Translated by Eleanor Updegraff.
Hardcover. Near fine.