Her Brilliant Career
Subtitle: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties
By: Rachel Cooke
Edition: First U.S. edition.
Publisher: Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 341
ISBN-13: 9780062333865
Subjects: Women; Nineteen fifties; History
Description: Journalist Rachel Cooke goes back in time to offer an entertaining and iconoclastic look at ten women in the 1950s--pioneers whose professional careers and complicated private lives helped to create the opportunities available to today's women. These intrepid and ambitious individuals--among them a film director, a cook, an architect, an editor, an archaeologist, and a race car driver--left the house, discovered the bliss of work, and ushered in the era of the working woman Daring and independent, these remarkable unsung heroines--whose obscurity makes their accomplishments all the more astonishing and relevant--loved passionately, challenged men's control, made their own mistakes, and took life on their own terms, breaking new ground and offering inspiration. Their individual portraits form a landscape of 1950s culture, and of women's unique--and rapidly evolving--role. Before there could be a Danica Patrick, there had to be a Sheila van Damm; before there was Barbara Walters, there was Nancy Spain; before Kathryn Bigelow came Muriel Box. The pioneers of Her Brilliant Career forever changed the fabric of culture, society, and the workforce. This is the Fifties retold: vivid, surprising and, most of all, modern.--From publisher description.
Notes: "Published in Great Britian in 2013 by Virago Press, an imprint of Little, Brown"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 313-316) and index.

Text in English.
Table of contents: title: In the kitchen with Patience Gray; title: The show must go on : three trouser-wearing characters : Nancy Spain, writer and personality; Joan Werner Laurie, magazine editor; Sheila van Damm, rally-car driver and theatre manager; title: A monumental ambition : Alison Smithson, architect; title: In the garden with Margery Fish; title: The Brontës of Shepherd's Bush : Muriel Box, director, and Betty Box, producer; title: Digging for victory : Jacquetta Hawkes, archaeologist; title: All rise : Rose Heilbron, QC; title: Fashion in the fifties; title: Some good and richly subversive novels by women, 1950-60.