Vida
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  • Published: 15 September 2020
  • ISBN: 9781760899783
  • Imprint: Penguin Random House Australia Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Length: 9 hr 17 min
  • Narrator: Jacqueline Kent
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Vida

A woman for our time

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
15 Sep 2020
EBook
15 Sep 2020
Audiobook
15 Sep 2020
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Vida Goldstein was an advocate for women's rights, a campaigner for peace, fought for the distribution of wealth, and a trail-blazer who provided leadership and inspiration to innumerable people.

Blazing her trail at the dawn of the twentieth century, Vida Goldstein remains Australia’s most celebrated suffragette and social reformer. Her life – as a campaigner for women’s rights and suffrage in Australia, Britain and America, an advocate for peace, a fighter for social equality for all and a shrewd political commentator – marks her as one of Australia’s foremost women of courage and principle. In 1903 she became the first woman in Australia to stand for the Senate, and the the first woman in the Western world to stand for a national Parliament.

Vida grew up mostly in Melbourne. After working as a teacher, she became an indefatigable advocate for social justice on behalf of women and children. She first came to national prominence in her work for woman’s suffrage – where she established a pattern of working quietly against men’s means of controlling Australian society. Her work for the peace movement and against conscription during the heightened emotions of the First World War marked her as a woman who was willing to defy governments in the name of justice.

Vida came to adulthood when Australia was in the process of inventing itself as a new nation, one in which women might have opportunities equal to those of men. Her work for her own sex, especially her battles for equality in politics, illuminated issues that persist to this day.

Jacqueline Kent has written acclaimed biographies on Julia Gillard, Hepzibah Menuhin and Beatrice Davis.
  • Published: 15 September 2020
  • ISBN: 9781760899783
  • Imprint: Penguin Random House Australia Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Length: 9 hr 17 min
  • Narrator: Jacqueline Kent
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Jacqueline Kent

Jacqueline Kent is the author of five acclaimed biographies. A Certain Style, her biography of pioneering editor Beatrice Davis, won the National Biography Award, Australia’s premier prize for life writing. She is also an award-winning book editor and reviewer.

Also by Jacqueline Kent

Take Your Best Shot: Penguin Special
Take Your Best Shot: The Prime Ministership of Julia Gillard: Penguin Special
The Making of Julia Gillard
An Exacting Heart
See all

Praise for Vida

Jacqueline Kent’s absorbing biography, is packed with illuminating historical detail from Goldstein’s life and times. An energetic teacher, an inspired writer and magazine publisher, and a devoted Christian Scientist, Goldstein turned down all suitors—including the dashing John Monash—and pursued her own path. Goldstein became an internationally celebrated feminist figure and a staunch ally of the suffragettes. She died four years after the end of WWII—a war that she, as a pacifist, saw coming in the mess of WWI. With her progressive socialist beliefs and armed with a calm inner strength, she is a visionary woman for our times—anyone trying to make sense of the misogyny directed at the Julia Gillard prime ministership, for example, would do well to read this book.

Julia Taylor, Bookseller + Publisher

I am a progressive politician

Vida Goldstein

Is Vida a woman for our time, as the title claims? I think Kent has proved that she is.

Kathy Gollan, Newtown Review of Books

Kent shows Goldstein as a pioneer who worked tirelessly for all her 80 years and lived a full and, for her time,, unusual life. Through exploring the details of Goldstein's background and the way she was perceived, Kent seeks to answer why we have not heard more about her. Kent has been thorough with her research, and the inclusion of pertinent correspondence and speeches highlight Goldstein's voice, which is warm and strong, with a striking contemporary feel. Kent draws learned and sometimes depressing parallels between then and now, and the text is punctuated with her funny asides and opinions about the situations Goldstein found herself in.

Louise Swinn, The Saturday Paper

Inspirational.

Australian Womens Weekly

This book is extraordinary not just because of the achievements of Vida Goldstein but that these occurred more than 100 years ago. Jacqueline Kent reminds the reader of how far the position of women in society has advanced, particularly their right to vote and to be treated equally, but at the same time highlights that many of the challenges faced by Vida all those years ago remain today.

Vittoria Bon, Sunday Herald Sun