and poet Baron Richard Monckton Milnes, to pursue nursing. Famous for her pioneering work during the Crimean War, she was called the Lady with the Lamp. Nightingale established her nursing school at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London in 1860. International Nurses Day is celebrated on the anniversary of her birth.
Joan Greenwood (1921–1987)
An actress famous for her sexy, husky voice, Greenwood’s most notable roles were as Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), one of Oscar Wilde’s most delightful plays, first performed on Valentine’s Day, 1895, and as wicked temptress Sibella in the glorious black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949).
Emily Davies (1830–1921)
Emily Davies was a feminist and suffragist who, with Barbara Bodichon, founded Girton College, Cambridge, in 1869, the first university college in England to educate women. A lifelong friend of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Davies campaigned all her life for women’s rights to a university education.
Davies also campaigned for the vote for women and, like Mary Somerville, supported John Stuart Mill’s petition to Parliament in 1866. Refusing to surrender the cause despite widespread opposition, in 1906 she headed a delegation to Parliament. This was the year women were given the vote in Finland, the first country in the world to do so. The United States gave women the vote in 1920.
The Forbidden Room
Beatrix Potter (1866–1943)
Helen Beatrix Potter came from a wealthy family and was privately educated by a governess. She wrote, illustrated and self-published The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1901. A year later it was published by Frederick Warne & Co., and Potter fell in love with her editor, Norman Warne. Because Warne was a tradesman Potter’s parents disapproved of the match but Warne died before they could be married.
Establishing herself as a novelist, Potter bought Hill Top Farm in the Lake District. Over the years she bought more farms in an effort to preserve the countryside and left nearly all her property to the National Trust, thus creating much of the Lake District National Park.
At forty-seven she married William Heelis and they lived happily together until her death. Potter published more than twenty beautifully illustrated books featuring animals, including The Tailor of Gloucester (1903), The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle (1905) and The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies (1909).
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
Born Adeline Virginia Stephen, her most famous works include Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928). Her essay “A Room of One’s Own” (1929) extolled the importance of women’s independence, famously noting that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” The daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, Virginia was educated by her parents and raised among the Victorian literati, including Henry James. However, unlike her brothers, Virginia and her sister Vanessa were not permitted to attend Cambridge University.
The death of her mother in 1895 triggered the first of Virginia’s several nervous breakdowns, and when her father died in 1904 she was briefly institutionalized. She committed suicide at fifty-nine by filling her pockets with stones and drowning herself in the River Ouse. Although she had several love affairs, most notably with Vita Sackville-West, in her last letter to her husband, Leonard Woolf, she wrote, “I owe all the happiness in my life to you . . . I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.”
Other Women of Hope Street
Greer Garson (1904–1996)
Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson was Greer’s namesake on account of Garson’s glamour and her red hair. Greer Garson performed in a television production of Twelfth Night in 1937, possibly the first time a Shakespearean play was shown on television. Garson received her first Academy Award nomination for her role in Goodbye, Mr. Chips but lost to Vivien Leigh for Gone With the Wind.
She was nominated by the Academy five times, winning for Mrs. Miniver in 1942, and giving the ceremony’s longest acceptance speech—five minutes and thirty seconds—after which the Academy set a time limit.
More Literature in the House
In addition to all the books written by the women of Hope Street, the works of E. M. Forster play a significant role in the story. Forster (1879–1970) wrote a great many beautiful novels, most famously: A Room with a View, A Passage to India, Maurice and Howards End. He was an honorary fellow of King’s College, Cambridge (Alba’s college) and lived there for much of his life. He was gay, though he didn’t admit to it and his only novel about homosexual love, Maurice, was published after his death and he always lived a bachelor. Another significant work to feature in Hope Street is Tractarians and the ‘Condition of England’: The Social and Political Thought of the Oxford Movement (2004) by Dr. S. A. Skinner. This is the only book that Alba keeps reading after she’s thrown out of King’s College. This real-life Dr. Skinner was the author’s much admired and beloved professor of modern history while she took her degree in the subject at Balliol College, Oxford. While she borrowed his irresistible name for the character of Dr. Alexandra Skinner in Hope Street, the only quality both Dr. Skinners share is the brilliance and beauty of their lectures.
The Colors of Alba’s World
Bright Green—Truth and Strength
Royal Blue—Sorrow
Sky Blue—Kindness and Friendship
Silver—Hope
Bright Red—Lust
Violet—Joy
Magenta—Desire
Puce—Passion
Rich Orange—Insight
Bright Yellow—Inspiration, youth and the breath of trees
White—Belief
Dark Red—Obsession
Gold—the color of ghost’s words and the color of contentment
Scarlet—Dedication
Deep Purple—Wisdom
Black—Complaints and Arguments and Lies
Dirt Gray—Disgust
Dark Brown—Boredom
Fire—Zoë’s words when she talks about love
Radioactive Egg Yolks—Ridiculous Optimism
* Another Englishwoman, Elizabeth Blackwell, was the first woman to qualify as a doctor in the United States, in 1849. The two met in London in 1859.
* In 1918 women over thirty were given the vote. In 1928, all women eighteen and older could vote.
* Daphne was a cousin of the Llewelyn Davies boys, who inspired J. M. Barrie’s 1904 play Peter Pan. Du Maurier’s other brilliant works of literature include Jamaica Inn, Frenchman’s Creek and My Cousin Rachel.
* These included smashing windows and assaulting police officers. Pankhurst, her daughters and other members of the Women’s Social & Political Union were frequently put in prison, where they staged hunger strikes to protest the dreadful conditions.
* A celebrated group of New York City writers, critics, actors, and wits, including Harpo Marx, Art Samuels and Charles MacArthur. They met for lunches at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 to 1929.
* As Alba mentioned, Christie’s estate places her third in the list of best-selling books of all time, after Shakespeare and the Bible.
* Virginia Woolf wrote the novel Orlando in tribute to Vita, whose son described it as “the longest and most charming love-letter in literature.”
* Of course, there is no evidence to suggest that Nightingale was, as Peggy told Alba, “a little too fond of sailors.” That was the author’s little joke.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Epilogue
A Guide to the Women of Hope Street
The Colors of Alba’s World
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Epilogue
A Guide to the Women of Hope Street
The Colors of Alba’s World