Dr Pam Hirsch is a Lecturer in English Literature and Film History at the University of Cambridge. As a biographer she is particularly interested in the interweaving of personal and historical/political contexts. Her latest book, entitled ‘The Constant Liberal: The Life and Work of Phyllis Bottome’ is to be published by Quartet in Spring 2010. Pam has also published a full-length biography of the radical nineteenth-century feminist and artist, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, and a joint biography (written with New York author, Mark McBeth) of Oscar Browning and Elizabeth Hughes.

Her collection of biographies (edited with Mary Hilton) entitled ‘Practical Visionaries: Women Education and Social Progress 1790-1930’ charted women’s contributions to progressive movements. Pam has also published on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, George Sand, plus entries in the Dictionary of National Biography on Barbara Bodichon, the pre-Raphaelite painter Anna Mary Howitt and the avant-garde dancer, Margaret Morris. She has also written the entry on the scientist Hertha Marks Ayrton for the Encylopedia of Jewish Women.