'Women's Suffrage Drama', in Maroula Joannou and June Purvis (eds), The Women's Suffrage Movement: New Feminist Essays, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 127–39.

The rediscovery of the drama of the British women's suffrage movement by feminists in recent years has led to the publication of eighteen short plays or monologues which may be said to constitute a provisional canon of 'women's suffrage drama'.1 Plays such as Elizabeth Robins's Votes for women and How the vote was won by Cicely Hamilton and Christopher St John were written and performed to raise awareness and money for the women's suffrage movement most were written by women and include characters who are invariably middle class and involved in the women's suffrage agitation, either for or against it. If working-class characters are presented, they tend to be servants who do not develop in their own right but merely function as the agent of a middle-class character's conversion to the campaign. The number and type of roles in these plays favoured the female performer, while male (and anti-suffrage) characters often provide the dull background against which some crackling comedy or incisive argument is staged.