Long before Sandi Toksvig was cracking jokes on QI and Carol Ann Duffy was appointed Poet Laureate, lesbians were making groundbreaking discoveries, challenging political discourse and pioneering cultural change. But if you were asked to list a handful of our impressive female forebears, how many could you name? For most, the answer is not very many.
Thanks to centuries of culture weighted in favour of our male counterparts, public awareness of lesbian lives remains limited. While Virginia Woolf and Anne Lister now enjoy a relatively mainstream reputation, the stories of countless other women deserving of historical status remain buried, their legacies all but forgotten.
As we approach International Women’s Day, we’re remembering the Herstories of some of the most fascinating lesbians we wish we could have learned about in the classroom. From writers and artists, to politicians and activists, these women took a leading role in restrictive times, and helped create a freer, fairer future for generations to come.