What has the Renaissance “commonplace” book got to do with intellectual female rebellion? Oxford English graduate, Marianne, explores the forgotten women of the Renaissance, avid scientists, rhetoricians, poets and orators, barred from formalised education, but who rebelled by engaging with the masculine commonplace book tradition.

Oxford University PhD English researcher, Izzy, gives us an insight into the liberation of female roles in 19th century European literature, spotlighting three female characters who emerge from European literature in the later 19th Century; Anna Karenina in Russian, Madame Bovary in French and Effi Briest in German.