Spanish Female Writers and the Freethinking Press, 1879-1926 (Toronto Iberic) - Hardcover

'This study expands both the literary and the historical scholarship of early Spanish Republicanism, freemasonry, and anarchism while making an indispensable contribution to the histories of early Spanish feminism and the Spanish press.' -- Letras Femeninas A Journal of Women and Gender Studies in Hispanic Literature and Culture - winter 2015 'Arkinstall's well-written book is both a meticulous historical study and an insightful literary analysis... This is an important book that fills a glaring gap in Spain's literary history and revises the alleged absence of turn-of-the century female intellectuals from the nation's socio-political scene.' -- Margot Versteeg SHARP News vol 24:03:2015 'Christine Arkinstall has written a thorough and thoughtful book... The book makes important contributions to the history of progressive movements and of feminism in Spain.' -- Martha Ackelsberg Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature vol 34:01:2015

Christine Arkinstall's historical and literary study of female freethinking intellectuals in fin-de-siecle Spain examines the contributions of three intellectuals, Amalia Domingo Soler, Angeles Lopez de Ayala, and Belen Sarraga, to the development of feminist consciousness and democracy. These women wrote for, edited, and published radical and feminist periodicals that, until now, have been left unstudied. This significant gap in the scholarship has left us without an accurate sense of Spanish women's involvement in the public realm. Spanish Female Writers and the Freethinking Press, 1879-1926 recovers the lost history and literary contributions these women made to the so-called Generation of 1898. Using their extensive published works, Arkinstall not only illuminates the lives of Domingo Soler, Lopez de Ayala, and Sarraga, but traces the connections between feminism, freethinking, republicanism, freemasonry, anarchism, and socialism. By placing these women's work in the broader literary, social, and political context of the period, Arkinstall's study makes a major contribution to our understanding of the central role of women in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century democracy in Spain.