Following on from my paper on the Role and Dynamics of Female Spheres of Influence on the Early career of Frances Darlington at The Royal Society of Sculptors ‘Pioneering Women’ conference, (Women’s History Month 2021) I was invited to submit an article for a special edition of Sculpture Journal (University of Liverpool Press) focussing on women sculptors. My article was published in this special edition in March 2023 : Reform, Nonconformists and the Press: The Role of Women’s Suffrage Networks in the Early Sculpture Commissions of Frances Darlington. The article focusses upon information gleaned from ‘The British Newspaper Archive’ which proved to be a gold mine of historical eyewitness commentary during lockdown when access to physical archives was impossible. The information proved revelatory when added to my previous research from The West Yorkshire Archive towards the biography I’d written in 2013.
This was my first journal article and the editorial / peer review process was quite a learning curve. To some extent one is expected to abandon one’s own authorial style in favour of that of the editors (two sets of editors in this case), that of those at peer review and then the copy editors. This process was painful as well as confusing (especially when one editor contradicted another) but necessary, I am told, for clarity and translation purposes.
Naturally, I’m enormously proud and grateful to have an article published in such a prestigious journal and am sure this test of ego may do my soul some good. The important thing was the communication of information, not my literary output – and hopefully the wounds will heal sufficiently for me to write again one day.
Sculpture Journal is available online by subscription only and in some good academic libraries.
the mutability cantos 
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