Research
These notes are not a blog. They are the background library behind the novels and the films — the real histories we went looking for while writing, kept in one place so they can be read on their own.
The notes
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The Woman Who Measured the Stars: How Henrietta Leavitt Made a Ruler for the Universe
How do we know how far away the stars are? In 1912, working on glass plates at the Harvard Observatory, Henrietta Swan Leavitt found the period–luminosity relation of Cepheid variables and turned a flickering rhythm into a ruler for the cosmos — and the Nobel nomination never reached her.
量星星的女人：亨丽埃塔·勒维特如何造出一把丈量宇宙的尺子
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Keepers of Rome's Sacred Fire: What Were the Vestal Virgins?
The Vestal Virgins guarded Rome's sacred fire. How they were chosen, what privileges and prohibitions came with the office, and how it finally ended.
罗马的圣火守护者：维斯塔贞女（Vestal Virgins）是什么
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The End of the Imperial Map: From Trajan's Scorched Expansion to Hadrian's Memoirs
From Trajan's expansion to its furthest limit to Hadrian's withdrawal and reflection: the Roman background behind the novel Death of a Gladiatrix.
帝国地图的尽头：从图拉真的焦土扩张到哈德良回忆录
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The Blank on the Imperial Map: The Real Seafaring World of the North Sea
Was the north really the empty wilderness Rome imagined? The North Sea peoples had a maritime world of their own: a single Viking-age wool sail took the fleece of around 2,000 sheep and thousands of hours of labour, and weaving it was very likely women's work.
帝国版图上的留白：北海人真实的航海世界
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Dancers on Sand: Did Female Gladiators Really Exist in Ancient Rome?
Female gladiators really existed in ancient Rome. Who they were, where they came from, how they fought in the arena, and the archaeological evidence they left behind.
沙地舞者：古罗马的女角斗士（Gladiatrix）真实存在吗
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Persian Lionesses: Women Warriors and Empresses of Sasanian Persia
The women fighters, commanders and two empresses of Sasanian Persia — Boran and Azarmidokht. This land has produced formidable women for a very long time.
波斯母狮：萨珊波斯的女战士与女皇
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The Folded History of Women in the Dunhuang Archive
Beyond the sutras and the caves, the Dunhuang manuscripts record women's marriages, divorce deeds and daily livelihoods. A history of women as the Dunhuang archive kept it.
敦煌档案里的女性折叠史
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A Carnival Across the Line: Women of the Tang Dynasty
Chang'an in the eighth century — foreign dress, horses and polo: how Tang women crossed the boundaries of gender in the most open period the empire had.
逾越边界的狂欢：唐朝的女人们
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A Letter from a Stranger, a Thousand Years Late: Women of the Silk Road
The Silk Road is remembered for camel trains and envoys. There was another group on those roads: the women who left contracts, letters and footprints behind them.
一个陌生女人，穿越千年的来信：丝路上的女人
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The Bluestockings: The Eighteenth-Century Englishwomen Who Took a Great Many Firsts
The Bluestocking circle and the women intellectuals of eighteenth-century Britain: Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Carter, Hester Chapone, Catharine Macaulay, Caroline Herschel and Mary Wollstonecraft — and the long list of firsts they took.
蓝袜女：18世纪英国拿下无数“史上第一”的女人们
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Seitō: “In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun” — Japan's First Women's Magazine
In 1911 Hiratsuka Raichō and four other young women founded the Seitō Society and published Japan's first literary magazine written entirely by women, for women. The real history of Seitō and the society behind it.
青鞜社与《青鞜》：“最初，女人是太阳”，日本第一本女性杂志的故事
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Male Impersonators on the Victorian Stage: Vesta Tilley, Bessie Bonehill and Hetty King
The male impersonators of the late nineteenth-century London music hall — Vesta Tilley, Bessie Bonehill, Hetty King — and, across the Atlantic, Ella Wesner, Florence Hines and Gowongo Mohawk.
维多利亚舞台上的男装丽人：维斯塔·蒂莉、贝茜·博希尔与海蒂·金
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The Iron Women Behind the Industrial Revolution
In the pits, picking sheds and canal banks of nineteenth-century Europe, working women in Britain, Belgium, France and Spain carried the Industrial Revolution on their bodies. Research for Bread and Roses.
工业革命背后，那些钢铁女性
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Holding Up Half the Front: Soviet Women Miners in the Great Patriotic War
During the Second World War the Soviet Union ordered that 80 per cent of coal-mining posts be filled by women. Maria Grishutina, Alexandra Leonova, Yevdokia Korolyova — the real history of Soviet women miners in the Great Patriotic War.
在战火中顶起半边天：卫国战争中的苏联女矿工
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They Worked at the Bottom of the Pit: The Real History of Japan's Women Miners
In the coal mines of Meiji Japan, women worked in pairs at the deepest point of the seam. The real history of Japan's women miners.
她们曾在矿井最深处工作：日本女矿工的真实历史
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Diamonds in the Rough: The All-Women Mine Rescue Team That Took Second in the World
At the 2022 International Mines Rescue Competition, the Canadian all-women team Diamonds in the Rough placed second in the world. Mining spent a century legally excluding women from underground. They proved by technique that women do not need protecting — they can do the protecting.
全女性矿山救援队“璞玉”：被矿业拒之门外百年，她们却拿下世界第二
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A Gun, a Horse and 160 Acres: How the Homestead Act Accidentally Made the First Independent Women
The Homestead Act of 1862 let single women claim land in their own name, and accidentally produced the first generation of independent women who owned property outright.
一把枪，一匹马，160英亩地：家庭土地法如何意外造就了第一批独立女性
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Cowboys Who Were Women: Western Legends That Were Real
Westerns cast women as the supporting character waiting to be rescued. In the real West, women lived and worked as men. The true stories of Charley Parkhurst, Little Jo Monaghan and Calamity Jane.
女扮男装的牛仔：历史上真实存在的西部传奇
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The Native Pen: The Women Who Indicted the Civilised World in Writing
Once the fighting stopped, a more concealed violence began. The Indigenous women who resisted through writing in the era of boarding schools and forced assimilation.
印第安的笔：用笔向文明世界控诉的女人们
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The Native Blade: The Forgotten War, and the Women in It
In the wars behind America's westward expansion in the nineteenth century, how Indigenous women fought, survived and resisted. Research for Western Story.
印第安的剑：当“天定命运”碾过草原，被遗忘的战争与女性