Knowledge of the experience of women during Victorian times has developed considerably during the last thirty years. History had a privileged place within the British Women’s Liberation movement in the early 1970s and reclaiming the past was often deliberately intended to establish the kind of legitimating tradition evident in other forms of political thought. This development in historical thinking was closely linked to the consciousness raising groups set up to pool collective knowledge and begin to answer questions about the politics of women’s situation. There was a concern with making women visible which included the aim of finding out more about women’s experience, besides giving a voice to women who were previously unresearched subjects. More recently, there has been an insistence on diversity, recognising the very different experiences, situations, and needs of different groups of women, as well as what women have in common. There has also been greater recognition that gender relations include women and men, besides greater attention to questions of sexuality, masculinity and imperial power. The result has been to widen the range of accounts but also to produce controversy.