6 The suffragettes: a personal history

One of the most important types of literary and historical writing is biography, an account of an individual person’s life. Earlier in this course you read a biography from the ODNB when you examined the life and work of Ada Nield Chew. Biographies help us to connect with history on a human level, offering us a perspective on the past from the point of view of a single human experience. For some readers, biography seems more accessible than an impersonal account of social forces or cultural trends. In this section you will have a chance to explore your own response to this issue, as you find out about an individual suffragette.