Aussie Feminists Who Saw Through It All
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- Miriam Dixson's The Real Matilda was published by Penguin Australia in 1976 and remains the foundational text on Australian women's colonial history.
- Gloria Steinem co-founded Ms. Magazine in 1971 and published Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions in 1983.
- Barbara Ehrenreich co-wrote Remaking Love in 1986, analysing how the sexual revolution reshaped and constrained women's desire.
- Ray Strachey's The Cause, first published in 1928, chronicled the British suffragette movement from an insider's perspective.
- Harriet Goldhor Lerner published The Dance of Deception in 1993, following her bestselling The Dance of Anger (1985).
The Real Matilda: Woman and Identity in Australia 1788 to 1975 — Miriam Dixson
The book that rewrote Australian women's history by refusing to let convict women be footnotes.
Before Dixson, Australian history treated women as backdrop — decorative wives, anonymous convicts, silent mothers. The Real Matilda dragged them centre-stage and asked why colonial Australia produced a culture so hostile to female autonomy. Dixson traces the matriarchal Irish Catholic families, the Protestant fear of female sexuality, and the colonial silence that turned women into ghosts in their own country. It's dense, unapologetic, and the reason every Australian feminist history written since 1976 has to reckon with her thesis. Explore our current copy of The Real Matilda. Browse more History books at Patina.
Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions — Gloria Steinem
The collection that turned Steinem's decades of activism into the sharpest feminist essays of the 1980s.
Steinem didn't set out to be an icon — she went undercover as a Playboy Bunny in 1963 to expose the exploitation, and the resulting essay launched her into feminist journalism. Outrageous Acts collects her best work from the 1970s and early '80s: essays on reproductive rights, the myths of "having it all," and the everyday compromises women make to survive patriarchy. It's intimate, furious, and still bracingly relevant — the kind of book you underline in pen and then pass to your friends. Explore our current copy of Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions. Browse more History books at Patina.
Remaking Love — Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs
The book that asked what happened to the sexual revolution after women got the Pill and men got complacent.
Ehrenreich and her co-authors wrote Remaking Love in 1986, at the tail end of second-wave optimism, and their thesis is blunt: the sexual revolution promised liberation but delivered new scripts where women still performed for male pleasure. They trace how 1960s free love morphed into 1980s self-help, how Cosmopolitan replaced radical feminism, and how women were still faking orgasms to keep men happy. It's a sharp, uncomfortable read — the kind that makes you squirm because it names things you've lived. Explore our current copy of Remaking Love. Browse more History books at Patina.
The Dance of Deception: Pretending and Truth-telling in Women's Lives — Harriet Goldhor Lerner
The psychology book that named the exhaustion of pretending everything is fine.
Lerner's earlier book, The Dance of Anger, taught women how to stop swallowing rage. The Dance of Deception goes deeper: it's about the lies women tell themselves to survive — pretending a marriage is working, faking enthusiasm for a career, nodding along when a man explains your own life to you. Lerner writes with clinical precision but also deep empathy, tracing how women's "niceness" is often a survival mechanism learned in childhood. It's not about becoming ruthlessly honest overnight; it's about recognising when silence costs more than speaking up. Explore our current copy of The Dance of Deception. Browse more History books at Patina.
The Cause — Ray Strachey
The insider history of the British suffragette movement, written by a woman who was there.
Ray Strachey published The Cause in 1928, less than a decade after British women over 30 won the vote, and it reads like a war diary — because it was. Strachey was active in the suffrage campaigns, knew the key players, and refused to romanticise the decades of marches, hunger strikes, and government violence that preceded partial enfranchisement in 1918. It's cooler-headed than Emmeline Pankhurst's memoirs but no less fierce, and it remains the definitive primary source on British first-wave feminism. If you want to understand how political change actually happens — slowly, messily, with setbacks — this is the book. Explore our current copy of The Cause. Browse more History books at Patina.
These books don't offer easy answers or tidy narratives. They're the feminist texts that refused to be polite, that named the systems holding women back, and that insisted women's stories — convict, activist, lover, liar — deserved to be told in full. As of July 2026, Patina's history collection includes rotating stock of feminist classics alongside lesser-known voices from Australia and beyond. Shop all History books at Patina Paperbacks →
Where can I buy secondhand feminist history books in Australia?
Patina Paperbacks stocks preloved feminist history titles — including Australian classics like The Real Matilda — and ships Australia-wide from Sydney. Our online collection rotates regularly, so if you're after a specific title, check back or sign up for stock alerts.
What's the difference between The Real Matilda and other Australian feminist history books?
Miriam Dixson's The Real Matilda (1976) was the first book to centre convict women and trace how colonial Australia's gender dynamics shaped modern Australian identity. It's foundational — every Australian feminist history written since references or argues with Dixson's thesis.
Is Gloria Steinem's Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions still relevant today?
Yes. Steinem's essays from the 1970s and early '80s address reproductive rights, workplace inequality, and the compromises women make under patriarchy — issues that haven't disappeared. Her prose is sharp, personal, and avoids the dated academic jargon that makes some second-wave texts hard to read now.
What should I read if I'm new to feminist history?
Start with Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions if you want accessible, essayistic writing, or The Real Matilda if you're specifically interested in Australian women's history. Both are readable, opinionated, and grounded in lived experience rather than abstract theory.
Does Patina stock other books on women's history and feminism?
Absolutely. Our history collection includes titles on suffrage movements, reproductive rights, women's labour history, and feminist theory from the 1970s onwards. Check the collection page for current stock — we add new preloved titles weekly.