Examining the works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Shulamith Firestone, writer and broadcaster Margaret Heffernan asks why few utopias are not about women, and explores the kinds of utopias women have imagined and envisaged. Heffernan also looks at why our age is so drawn to dystopias – when being able to imagine something better is a driving force in all political change – and at what women especially can offer now in utopian thinking.
This booklet presents the lecture Heffernan presented as part of an annual series inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s radical lectures in Bristol in 1795. Set in a tradtional grid the typography slowly enlarges throughout the booklet, creating sense of immediacy as we move to more modern texts. The centerfold is a fold out poster for the event.