chose to set the story there? How does the academic setting impact the story? What does Oxford represent to you?
8. What do you think were the main arguments and worries against women receiving a higher education? How do you see these arguments played out in the book?
9. It is important to Annabelle that she continue her education, even after she marries Sebastian. Is education important to you? Why do you think Annabelle is so determined to receive her Oxford degree?
10. It took British women and their male allies nearly seventy years to achieve the right for women to vote in Parliamentary elections or to run for the office of Member of Parliament. Why do you think the process was so slow? How does it compare to the women’s suffrage movement in the United States?
11. Annabelle and her friends organize protests and lobby politicians to fight for their rights. What parallels can you draw to today’s political activism? How has political activism changed since then?
12. Both Queen Victoria, the most powerful woman in Europe, and Miss Elizabeth Wordsworth, the first warden of Oxford’s first women’s college, were against female political activism and women’s suffrage. Why do you think such influential and educated women would oppose women’s rights? What connections can you draw to present-day politics?
13. In order for the National Society for Women’s Suffrage to succeed, they needed to gain the support of influential male figures in the government. What role do men play in modern feminism?
Don’t miss Lucie and Tristan’s story, coming Fall 2020 from Berkley!
London, 1880
Had she been born a man, none of this would be happening. She would not be left waiting in this musty antechamber, counting the labored tick-tocks of the pendulum clock. The receptionist wouldn’t shoot suspicious glances at her from behind his primly sorted little desk. In fact, she would not be here at all today—Mr. Barnes, editor and current owner of half of London Print, would have signed the contract weeks ago. Instead, he was having her credit and credentials checked and checked again. He had done so very discreetly, of course. But she knew. There were things a woman could do just because she was a woman—such as fainting dead-away over some minor chagrin—and there were things a woman could not do just because she was a woman. And it seemed women did not simply buy a fifty-percent share of a publishing enterprise.
She let her head slump back against the dark wall paneling as far as her hat permitted. Her eyelids were drooping, heavy as lead. It had been another long night away from her bed. But she was close. Barnes had already agreed to the deal, and he was eager to sell quickly because he seemed in some hurry to relocate to India—some trouble with the British treasury, most likely. If she were serious about keeping the place, the side entrance would be the first thing she’d dispose of. From the outside, London Print had an appealing modern look, befitting an established mid-sized English publishing house: a gray granite façade four stories high on one of London’s increasingly expensive streets. The interior, however, was as dull as the publisher’s editorial choices—desks too small, rooms too dim. And the obligatory side entrance for the only two women working here—one woman, actually, after Mr. Barnes took his typist daughter to India with him—was nothing but a cobwebbed servants’ staircase at the back of the house. That entrance would be the first thing to change.
The tinny sound of a bell made her eyes snap open.
The receptionist had come to his feet. “Lady Lucinda, if you please.”
Mr. Barnes approached in his usual hasty manner when she entered his office. He hung her tweed jacket onto an overburdened hat rack, then offered her tea as she took her seat at his desk, an offer she declined because she had a train to catch back to Oxford.
More covert glances, this time from the direction of Miss Barnes’s desk in the left corner. Unnecessary, really, considering the young woman had seen her in the flesh before. She gave the typist a nod, and Miss Barnes quickly lowered her eyes to her typewriter. Oh, hell’s bells. One would think she was a criminal on the loose, not merely a figure in the women’s rights movement. Though for most people that amounted to one and the same. Most people gave radicalism a wide berth, lest it might be catching.
Mr. Barnes eyed her warily. “It’s the board,” he said, “the editorial