C. C. (Charlotte Carmichael) Stopes

Born in Edinburgh on February 5, 1840, Charlotte Brown Carmichael Stopes became known as C. C. Stopes: a British scholar, author, and advocate for women’s rights. She wrote widely, but she is especially remembered for her studies of William Shakespeare, including books on his family, his environment, and the arguments around Shakespearean authorship.

Her best-known non-Shakespeare work was British Freewomen: Their Historical Privilege (1894), a book later noted for influencing early twentieth-century suffrage thinking. She was also active in public debates about women’s status and reform, and contemporary accounts of her life connect her with causes such as women’s education, voting rights, and rational dress.

Stopes died on February 6, 1929, and remains an intriguing figure because her career crossed several worlds at once: literary scholarship, journalism, reform politics, and public speaking. She is also often remembered as the mother of Marie Stopes, but her own writing and campaigning make her an important figure in her own right.