Her Brilliant Career

Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties

Rachel Cooke

• Publisher: Harper
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780062333872
• eBook ISBN: 9780062333889
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

An exuberant group biography—"a splendidly various collection of 'brief lives' written with both gusto and sensitivity" (The Guardian)—that follows ten women in 1950s Britain whose pioneering lives paved the way for feminism and laid the foundation of modern women's success.

In Her Brilliant Career, Rachel Cooke goes back in time to offer an entertaining and iconoclastic look at ten women in the 1950s—pioneers whose professional careers and complicated private lives helped to create the opportunities available to today's women. These plucky and ambitious individuals—among them a film director, a cook, an architect, an editor, an archaeologist, a race car driver—left the house, discovered the bliss of work, and ushered in the era of the working woman.

Daring and independent, these remarkable unsung heroines—whose obscurity makes their accomplishments all the more astonishing and relevant —loved passionately, challenged men's control, made their own mistakes, and took life on their own terms, breaking new ground and offering inspiration. Their individual portraits gradually form a landscape of 1950s culture, and women's unique—and rapidly evolving—role.

Before there could be a Danica Patrick, there had to be a Sheila van Damm; before there was Barbara Walters, there was Nancy Spain; before there was Kathryn Bigelow, came Muriel Box. The pioneers of Her Brilliant Career forever changed the fabric of culture, society, and the work force.

This is the Fifties, retold: vivid, surprising and, most of all, modern.

Her Brilliant Career is illustrated with more than 80 black-and-white photographs.

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. In the Kitchen with Patience Gray
• 2. The Show Must Go On: Three trouser-wearing characters – Nancy Spain, writer and personality; Joan Werner Laurie, magazine editor; Sheila van Damm, rally-car driver and theatre manager
• 3. A Monumental Ambition: Alison Smithson, architect
• 4. In the Garden with Margery Fish
• 5. The Brontës of Shepherd’s Bush: Muriel Box, director, and Betty Box, producer
• 6. Digging for Victory: Jacquetta Hawkes, archaeologist
• 7. All Rise: Rose Heilbron, QC
• Fashion in the Fifties
• Some Good and Richly Subversive Novels by Women, 1950–60
• Select Bibliography
• Acknowledgements
• Index
• About the Author
• Credits
• Copyright
• About the Publisher