SARA READ

Dr Sara Read is a Senior Lecturer in English at Loughborough University. Her research is in the cultural representations of women, bodies and health in the early modern era.

She has published widely in this area with her first book Menstruation and the Female Body in Early Modern England being published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013.
She is a member of the organising committee of the Women's Studies Group, 1558-1837 and recently co-edited a special collection produced to celebrate the group's 30th anniversary.

She is also the co-editor of the popular Early Modern Medicine blog. With founding editor Dr Jennifer Evans, Sara wrote a book about health and disease in this era Maladies and Medicine: Exploring Health and Healing, 1540-1740 (Pen and Sword 2017).

Sara regularly writes for history magazines such as Discover Your Ancestors and History Today. In 2017 she published an article 'My Ancestor was a Midwife' tracing the history of the midwifery profession for Who Do You Think You Are? magazine in 2017. She has appeared on BBC Radio 3's Freethinking programme and is often to be heard on BBC Radio Leicester and BBC Radio WM.

Follow Sara on Twitter @saralread
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The Gossips’ Choice is an historical literary fiction novel and could be viewed as a seventeenth century Call the Midwife.
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Should you find yourself unexpectedly in the seventeenth century and wondering about pregnancy and labour, this guide will tell you all you need to know.
The Midwife's Truth
The sequel to The Gossips' Choice set during the Great Fire of London.

The birth stories, which form the backdrop to the stories,  are inspired by the case notes of a Bristol midwife published in 1737.

The books mix humour, compassion, and sorrow, and have been scrupulously researched. 
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THE GOSSIPS' CHOICE - published April 2020.
THE MIDWIFE'S TRUTH - to be published Spring 2023