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Preface I first encountered Emily Davison in Morpeth—­ the Northumbrian market town which was home to her family, and where my husband and I lived part of each year from 2004 to 2011. A medievalist with a particular interest in the literary presentation of medieval women and the Virgin Mary, I was busy one day trying to research the history of the Lady Chapel ruins in the woods between Bothal and Morpeth, using the archives of the Morpeth Herald, a local newspaper edited for nearly 150 years by the McKay family. Turning the pages of issues from the time of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee when a fountain in honor of the queen had been constructed very near the ruins of the medieval Lady Chapel, I found my attention diverted by James McKay’s stentorian observation that I was wasting my time on the Lady Chapel project and should instead look into Emily Davison. “Who is she?” I asked, and from that moment there was no turning back. Over the course of four years Emily Davison brought me into contact with members of her extended family, with Northumbrian archives, the Northumberland County Council, the Women’s Library Davison archive, the suffrage archives of the Museum of London, and especially with Maureen Howes—­ a Northumberland genealogist whose work on Davison in the context of her family history promises an entirely fresh understanding of Emily Davison’s connections and actions. I write of Emily Davison as if she were alive, because, in very many ways, she is. Her life and her deeds are the stuff of living memory in Morpeth, where descendants on her mother’s side of her family tell stories of her and reveal the existence of her ring, her christening gown, even her needlework, among them. For me, however, she is most alive in her writing which, I was amazed to discover, had never been edited. Given that Emily Davison’s mo- x Preface tivations for her various actions in her career as a militant suffragette are matters of speculation and conjecture for modern scholars, it seemed to me that her words ought to be part of the record of her life and deeds—­ that she be invited to speak for herself today as she had done so forcefully and so often in her own lifetime. More than a public apologia for her life, her writing provided a site where she worked out her immediate thoughts, her personal philosophy, and her social vision. As I transcribed her manuscript stories and recollections, I found myself fascinated by her gift for the telling detail, her sense of humor, and her ability to channel passionate conviction through narrative as well as argument. Davison’s writing reflects her own personality and the tenor of the times she lived in. It is an intimate personal testament to the motivation of militant suffragists, and a guide to all the major themes and figures of the tumultuous years between 1909 and 1913: the height of the militant suffrage movement. It lays out the political tactics of the Liberal government, the horrors of force-­ feeding, and the spirit of the time when people believed they lived on the cusp of a new world of equality—­ the achievement of which required sacrifice and struggle. In spite of the time that has passed since she lived, much of what Davison wrote resonates with issues in the world we live in today—­ the use of force in support of a righteous cause, a government’s use of torture against its perceived enemies; defense of women’s claim to be fully human and politically equal to men, with a right to control their own bodies and their children; and the use of public writing in the form of letters-­ to-­ the-­ editor columns, proto blogs where suffragists and their opponents argued their convictions in brisk give and take. Today, it is hard to imagine how frustrating the struggle for woman suffrage was in Edwardian Britain. The fight for the vote was waged using the tools of argument, persuasion, the arts, public opinion, militancy, and destruction against an intransigent and implacable foe—­ the British government—­ which stalled, prevaricated, and used unspeakable degrees of force to defeat militancy and forfend woman suffrage. Today, scholars debate the effectiveness of suffragette militancy, wondering if it advanced or retarded the suffrage cause; whether it might have exacerbated the government’s forceful retaliation . Militant suffragettes like Emily Davison believed they were forced into militant resistance by having...

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