Sailing on the Etoile, or Outed in Tahiti

Over the last year, as I’ve wandered through the dusty attics and flooded basements of history in my search for women warriors I’ve stumbled across plenty of other fascinating women that I–and presumably you–had never heard of. Case in point: French botanist Jeanne Baret (1740-1807), part of the astonishingly large number of women who disguised…

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The Pirate Queen

I came across Barbara Sjoholm’s The Pirate Queen: In Search of Grace O’Malley and Other Legendary Women of the Sea, when I was in the midst of my own search for Grace O’Malley, the sixteenth century Irish pirate who was a thorn in the side of English officials in Ireland.* I must admit, I’m a…

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