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    Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time
    Unavailable
    Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time
    Unavailable
    Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time
    Ebook790 pages8 hours

    Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time

    By Michael du Preez and Jeremy Dronfield and Jeremy Dronfield

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    As featured on the BBC Radio 2 Book Club

    The Times Book of the Week

    Dr James Barry was many things in his life: Inspector General of Hospitals, army surgeon, duellist, reformer, lady killer, eccentric. He performed the first successful Caesarean in the British Empire, outraged the military establishment, and gave Florence Nightingale a dressing down at Scutari. At home he was surrounded by a menagerie of animals, including a cat, a goat, a parrot and a terrier. But most astonishingly, long ago in Cork, Ireland, he had been a young girl and a mother.

    Drawing on a decade of research in archives all over the world, including the unearthing of previously unknown material, Michael du Preez and Jeremy Dronfield tell the amazing true story of Margaret Anne Bulkley, the young woman who broke the rules of Georgian society to become one of the most respected and controversial army surgeons of the century. In an extraordinary life, she crossed paths with the British Empire’s great and good, royalty and rebels, soldiers and slaves. A medical pioneer, she rose to a position that no woman before her had been allowed to occupy. However, for all her successes, her long, audacious deception also left her isolated, even costing her the chance to be with the man she loved.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOneworld Publications
    Release dateAug 25, 2016
    ISBN9781780743141
    Unavailable
    Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time

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    Reviews for Dr James Barry

    4/5

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    • 3/5
      The subject is fascinating. The biography is really well written. And yet - this took me far too long to get through. I kept falling asleep! Basically, a young Irish girl assumes a male identity to train as a doctor, qualifies, joins the army, for god's sake, travels the world, rises through the ranks - and is only officially 'outed' on her death bed 60 years later. Like the stuff of bad Georgette Heyer novels - only 100% true!Dr James Barry, the male persona of Margaret Anne Bulkley, was a pioneer in many senses, not least that he was actually a she (many people suspected, a few knew the truth, but nobody spoke a word, such was Barry's reputation and professional skill). Barry's original plan was to qualify as a man and then travel to Venezuela with one of 'his' early patrons and practice medicine openly as Margaret Bulkley, but instead James Barry remained, voyaging from Mauritius to Malta, St Helena, Corfu, Crimea and Canada, saving lives (including one the early successful cesarean operations) and generally pissing people off. Barry might have dressed like a man, but he was still a working class Irish woman at heart, headstrong and oustpoken. Every chapter seems to run along the lines of 'New country, higher rank, more responsibility, Barry balls somebody out (even challenging a fellow officer to a duel!), reprimanded, moves on'. A character, definitely, but not a particularly engaging or sympathetic one.Apparently, a film is going to be made of Barry's story, with Rachel Weisz playing Margaret/James? I would have gone with Tilda Swinton or Anne Marie Duff, but this might be one instance where cherry-picking through a life to fit a film might work better than a full biography.