Hypatia or Woman and Knowledge

1925

Storage Bliss QW R

London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.

Despite disapproving of marriage, Dora Russell (née Black, 1894-1986) wed the much older mathematician and philosopher, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) in 1921 because she was pregnant. A progressive, Dora campaigned her whole life on a variety of platforms – birth control, sexual freedom and equality for women, gender equality in education, peace, and at the end of her life, against nuclear armament. She worked hard to come out from behind her husband’s shadow, and despite his support of women’s suffrage, he believed women were the less intelligent half of the species. In the preface of her feminist work, Hypatia, Dora predicted that the book would go the way of its namesake and be torn to pieces; her prediction came true. In the text of the book, she writes in support ‘for women’s sexual freedom and against marriage’.