Women and Smoking since 1890

The changing face of the female smoker, from the lady smokers of the late nineteenth century to the lone mother of the late twentieth century, suggests that the history of smoking among women is not just about the assimilation of women into a male practice, but about the changing, and varied, circumstances of women’s lives. In this innovative study, Elliott articulates the way in which the history of smoking among women raises complex questions about the construction of female identities in relation to smoking, and the implications of this for understanding smoking among women as a medical and public health problem. In addressing these questions,Elliott uses a variety of source material, frompopular magazines to films to medical discourse, tomap the history of smoking among women on to changing understandings of gender and social expectations of women over the twentieth century at a societal and an individual level.

List of illustrations; Acknowledgments; List of abbreviations; Introduction; Chapter One The Lady Smoker; Chapter Two Cigarettes and supporting the war; Chapter Three Flappers and the changing face of femininity; Chapter Four Personal perspectives: smoking among women in Mass Observation and oral history; Chapter Five Smoking in war and peace; Chapter Six The construction of the health risks of smoking; Chapter Seven The feminisation of the cigarette; Chapter Eight From pregnant women to teenage girls: the shifting focus of smoking among women as a health issue; Conclusion

Dr. Rosemary Elliot is a researcher at the Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Glasgow.