There is much to be done to extract women from the shadows of a history recorded by men. Anna Funder has certainly contributed to that endeavour with her fourth offering, ‘Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisable Life’ (2023).

The tenacity and effort it takes to erase women from the narrative is brought to bear by Funder, and it is evident she has taken great skill and care to undo what was done to Eileen Blair. The book is comprised of many short and sharp chapters spanning 400 pages, followed by 50 pages of footnotes. The chapters range from biography, memoir, the writing manifesto, and feminist commentary. The story that unfolds is a page-turner. It is intelligent, entertaining, informative, frustrating, and belongs on every person’s shelf who is interested in wading through the muck of patriarchy to get a little closer to a History, yes, the one with a capital H, where women can exist.

The book is a record of a life that was deliberately undermined by the husband when it was lived and ignored ever since by the ten male biographers of the husband that have come after. It is also aiming a beacon at the insidious nature of patriarchy and misogyny, dished out by a man who is, and rightly so, known for calling out classism and political ideologies that seek to oppress. Funder looks critically at the contrasts. By cleaning up the context where several great works were written, Funder unashamedly laments the character of the man who wrote them. Wifedom is a book that will appear on the curriculum in no time at all.