Early Modern
Grace O’Malley, the Pirate Queen
Sixteen century Irish clan leader Grace O’Malley was the most famous “pirate queen” in the English-speaking world, and in fact the woman for whom the term seems to have been coined. Ireland in the sixteenth century was a decentralized society, ruled by independent clan chieftains who were continually at war with each other. It…
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From the Archives: Isabella Who?
I recently took a little research detour to find out something about Isabella Jagellion, who has been popping up in my reading for roughly a year now, usually in the form of a one-liner to the effect that she was the first ruler in history to issue an edict of universal religious toleration in 1558–an…
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Butterflies, Bugs, and Maria Sibylla Merian
Once you start looking, it seems like you find examples of women who did important things in the past everywhere. Women you’ve never heard of unless you happen to be in their field of expertise—and maybe not even then. Take, for instance, naturalist and illustrator Maria Sibyella Merian (1647-1717). She was trained as a painter…
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