200 Australian women: a Redress anthology, Heather Radi ed., Women's Redress Press Inc., 1988

This book was published in 1988 as a contribution to national history. In 1988 the nation was commemorating the arrival in 1788 of the First Fleet transporting settlers and convicts from Britain. Several historical projects were officially sponsored for the Bicentenniel. The women at Redress anticipated a gap in this coverage and welcomed a proposal for an anthology focused on women — 200 women to mark the passage of 200 years.
The exclusion of women still living simplified the process of selection. In consequence the anthology is richer in detail for the nineteenth and early twentieth century than for late twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Heather Radi was recently retired from some 30 years teaching Australian History when she edited this collection. Many of the other 136 authors also held university appointments, some in other disciplines. Most write from a feminist perspective. A few knew and admired the woman of whom they write.
About 60 of the articles were first published in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. The Dictionary and its publisher Melbourne University Press granted permission to reproduce its articles in return for a modest payment to be used, in the words of the Dictionary’s then editor Geoffrey Serle, ‘to assist in asserting/protecting copyright’. Permission to reproduce articles was conditional on Redress undertaking to abide by ASA recommended rate of royalties as, again in the words of the then editor, the Dictionary ‘considers its contributors should receive by far the greater part of any earnings’. Some articles are a shortened version, some were revised for this anthology; a few were yet to appear when the Redress anthology was published.
The contents of the book have been reproduced on this website without revision except for the insertion of a few uncertain birth dates and the correction of one date of death. The website has been organised by Jill Ogilvie, a longtime friend of the editor.