Votes for Women and Other Plays: 1 - Softcover

How the Vote Was Won is a very funny piece and, with Hamilton's Pageant of Great Women, one of the most successful suffragette plays. Amongst the many feeble arguments put up against enfranchising women was the proposition that women did not need the vote because they had men to look after them. In the play women take men at their word, giving up their jobs and homes and turning to their nearest male relatives for support. Poor old Horace Cole, a clerk on £3 a week, finds himself with a houseful of female dependents and they are funnier, smarter, and richer than him! --Lucienne Boyce

...in the play Votes for Women by Elizabeth Robins, home as nation takes prominence. The feminist characters in the play strive to save British lower class women from their miseries, but they do not stop there. They also offer to save the men from themselves, promoting the enfranchisement of women as the remedy for England's crises at home for men as well as women... --Nancy Kerns

This book is brilliant - it has some better known Suffrage Plays and some lesser known gems as well as a list of all the Suffrage plays performed and lots of extra info. It's an extraordinary resource. Total gem. The author wears her scholarship lightly and it is easy to read - however the amount of information is fantastic and very detailed. There is so much to this book and it is an essential and much needed addition to the books available on Suffrage theatre. --NP - Amazon 5 * review

Editor Dr Susan Croft has done extensive research and published widely on women playwrights. Her work includes 'She Also Wrote Plays' and 'Art, Theatre and Women's Suffrage.' From 1997 to 2005 she was the Curator of Contemporary Performance at the Theatre Museum in London.