Stella Browne

Not a domestic utensil, but a woman and a citizen' (1917) Stella Browne Photo

Stella Browne in 1938

'I have never met the normal woman' (1938)



Frances Worsley Stella Browne (1880-1955), feminist, socialist, sex radical, campaigner for women's rights to reproductive control. I first came across Stella when cataloguing the archives of the Abortion Law Reform Association, of which she was an inspirer and founder. I was further intrigued by Sheila Rowbotham's brief essay, A New World for Women (1977). In the course of unrelated researches I found Stella cropping up again and again. Much of the material I encountered had not been available when Rowbotham was writing; this, plus the further leads I came across, persuaded me that a fuller biography was a distinct possibility. While gathering material and looking for a publisher, I have deployed the fruits of my researches in a number of papers, published or forthcoming, and unpublished.

I have now signed a contract with the publishers IB Tauris to produce a biography of Stella Browne.


Some of Stella Browne's writings

My published/forthcoming papers on Stella

Plus texts of two unpublished, somewhat informal papers intended for verbal delivery

'Stella and her Friends' given at a conference on Women and Friendship at the Centre for Women's Studies, University of York, April 1995 'Desperately Seeking Stella' given at a meeting of the London Women's History Network, January 1996.

Citing Electronic Resources
Useful information

Literary abortion:
references to abortion in literary texts, mainly but not all from the UK, several during the period when Stella Browne was campaigning for law reform

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Last Updated April 7, 2008 by Lesley Hall