Fearless Beatrice Faust

‘Beatrice Faust’, said Helen Garner, ‘is not scared of anybody.’

Faust was the transformative feminist activist, writer and intellectual who founded the Women’s Electoral Lobby in Melbourne in 1972. She campaigned for abortion law reform, and thought, talked and wrote about sex and feminism, from the sexual revolution of the 1960s through to the neoliberal 1990s, always with her own demanding body as her guide. She was a force to be reckoned with.

She also endured a miserable childhood, and suffered chronic ill health as well as a later-life addiction to prescription drugs. Her letters reveal a complex, troubled inner life that belied the confident charisma of her public persona.

Fearless Beatrice Faust celebrates, explains and questions her struggle to change both herself and her world. Drawing on public records and private writings, award-winning biographer Judith Brett creates a compelling and psychologically nuanced portrait of a gifted, argumentative woman who refused to be a victim.

Judith Brett is a political historian and biographer and emeritus professor of politics at La Trobe University. Among her books are Robert Menzies’ Forgotten People: Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class, The Enigmatic Mr Deakin, which won the 2018 National Biography Award, and From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage, which was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award.

‘A superb biography of a brave, independent—and seriously important—sexual revolutionary.’ Frank Bongiorno