An engrossing and vivid account of a remarkable woman, undeservedly forgotten, who is rightly 'recovered' for us in this fine biography, which is richly detailed, elegantly written and meticulously researched.
Baroness Patricia Hollis
This immensely readable biography combines the personal story of an outstanding public person with the intellectual story of social research in the past century. It rescues from oblivion a woman social scientist who, like so many of her generation, unstintingly devoted her life to improving social knowledge, only to be forgotten by new waves of political and intellectual fashions. Unputdownable!
E. Stina Lyon, professor emeritus of sociology, London South Bank University
Barbara Wootton's life of public engagement was remarkable . . . Ann Oakley describes how [her] conviction that the economic and the social must be integrated led Wootton towards sociology . . . . Oakley shows too how Wootton pierced through received views of propriety with a resolute sense of personal justice.
Sheila Rowbotham, Times Higher Education
What makes this biography an important contribution to sociology is not only the impressive detail of its scholarly as well as humanistic and ethical approach to personal evidence, but also its careful attention to methodological issues inherent in ‘doing a life’ with its many ‘fateful moments’ shaped by a combination of personal drive and social and political constellations. The critical attention it pays to Wootton’s many publications and research reports makes this biography a contribution to the history of ideas as well as to a history of the development of social research in political practice . . . engrossingly written and highly moving.
- E Stina Lyon, London South Bank University, UK, Work, Employment & Society