'I have looked into hell', said Josephine Butler. What she saw during her work with prostitutes in the slums shocks us still. That this genteel wife of a schoolmaster and mother of four became a powerful force for change is one of the great stories of the nineteenth century. Josephine Butler was no ordinary reformer. She understood the economic causes of prostitution. The houses she established for prostitutes were not punitive, but helped them to rebuild their lives. These were fellow women. She saw them as friends and took them into her own home. Physically frail, she brought superhuman energy to her often dangerous campaigning work, swaying huge crowds with her speeches and arguing her case in countless letters, pamphlets, essays. She was largely responsible for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts in 1886, which had subjected women to painful, humiliating physical examinations, and was controversially prominent in the exposure of the sale of young girls into prostitution, which brought about the raising of the age of consent for girls from 13 to 16. Jane Jordan's vivid biography is of a compelling woman - a feminist, such a force in her own time, yet, in much of what she thought and what she did, such a modern woman, too. Book jacket.

Dr Jane Jordan is a Senior Lecturer in the English Department at Kingston University