BuzzFeed writer pens 100 'Nasty Women' for Hodder

Hodder & Stoughton has commissioned BuzzFeed writer Hannah Jewell to author 100 Nasty Women of History, a book profiling women united by the fact they were all "too scandalous, too difficult, and too unladylike for their time".

Pitched as "a guide to the history-making women whom you probably don't know - but definitely should", those profiled, including 3rd-century Syrian Queen Zenobia and 20th-century Nigerian women’s rights activist Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, are said to be "bold and powerful" women who have "for their sins, since been written out of canonical history". The profiles will be written in a "compelling, subversive but wholly informative style", according to Hodder.

Publisher Hannah Black acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Charlie Viney at The Viney Agency. The publication date will be 2nd November 2017.

Black said: "Hannah’s day job is to be intelligent, provoking and very funny and she delivers in spades in her essential, timely book. These are the unsung women who shaped our world, their stories told at last in the most dazzling and gratifying way. Every nasty one of us should have a copy."

Jewell said: "Getting to know the women in this book has been a delightful but humbling journey. I have been like a mad, time-travelling prospector panning for flecks of gold in the terrible, muddy, murdery river of history. What I’ve found is that women have, in fact, always been excellent, and have always been told that they are not. So take this book and punch the patriarchy with it. If these gals could do it, so can we."