JANE MARTIN is Senior Lecturer in History of Education at IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society, University College London, UK.

Considering the role of women as educational policy-makers, and in particular focusing on 29 women members of the London School Board, this book examines the link between private lives and public practice in Victorian and Edwardian England. These political activists were among the first women in England to be elected to positions of political responsibility. Key concerns in the book are issues such as gender and power, and gender and welfare.