A central principle of 1970s feminism was a concern with making women visible and the historical creation of women's public voices is an important methodological premise of feminist research. When written, biographies of female actors "recovered" from the condescension of posterity, can illuminate the telling of individual and collective…

This article tells the stories of four middle class, white, English women whose participation in educational policy making is little known: Annie Leigh Browne (1851-1936), Margaret MacDonald (1870-1911), Hilda Miall-Smith (born 1861) and Honnor Morten (1861-1913). In doing so, it provides a perspective on the circumstances that enabled or…