Dorothy Katharine Gane Thompson (née Towers) (30 October 1923 – 29 January 2011) was a social historian, a leading expert on the Chartist movement. She entered Girton College, Cambridge

Girton College, Cambridge

Girton College is one of the 31 constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge. It was England's first residential women's college, established in 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon. The full college status was only received in 1948 and marked the official admittance of women to the...

, in 1942. During the war, her work as an industrial draughtswoman for Royal Dutch Shell

Royal Dutch Shell

Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...

 interrupted her formal education. Nonetheless, she continued to pursue a career in history and was politically active. She joined the Young Communists, married the historian Edward Thompson

E. P. Thompson

Edward Palmer Thompson was a British historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is probably best known today for his historical work on the British radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in particular The Making of the English Working Class...

 in 1948, and moved to Halifax where they both worked in adult education

Adult education

Adult education is the practice of teaching and educating adults. Adult education takes place in the workplace, through 'extension' school or 'school of continuing education' . Other learning places include folk high schools, community colleges, and lifelong learning centers...

 and the peace movement

Peace movement

A peace movement is a social movement that seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war , minimize inter-human violence in a particular place or type of situation, often linked to the goal of achieving world peace...

. They had three children. Kate Thompson

Kate Thompson (author)

Kate Thompson is an award-winning writer for children and adults. Born in Halifax, Yorkshire, she has lived in Ireland, where many of her books are set, since 1981. She is the youngest child of the social historians and peace activists E. P. Thompson and Dorothy Towers...

, the award-winning children's writer, is their youngest child.

In 1968 Dorothy Thompson took a teaching post at the University of Birmingham

University of Birmingham

The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...

. She taught in the School of History from 1968 to 1988. In January 2006 she was presented with a festschrift

Festschrift

In academia, a Festschrift , is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during his or her lifetime. The term, borrowed from German, could be translated as celebration publication or celebratory writing...

, The Duty of Discontent. Edited by Owen Ashton, Stephen Roberts (both former students of Dorothy Thompson) and Robert Fyson, the volume consists of twelve essays, spanning the whole range of nineteenth and twentieth century British social history. The importance of Dorothy Thompson's writings on Chartism and Irish and women's history is recognised by scholars across the world. Her work, like that of her husband, was always been informed by a passionate radicalism and a deep sympathy for the underdog.

Selected articles/works

• Early Chartists (1971)
• Bibliography of the Chartist Movement, 1837-1976 (with J. F. C. Harrison
  J. F. C. Harrison
  J. F. C. Harrison is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Sussex and author of books on history, particularly relating to Victorian Britain.-Career:...
  
  ) (1978)
• The Chartist Experience : Studies in Working-class Radicalism and Culture, 1830-60 (edited with James Epstein) (1982)
• Over Our Dead Bodies : Women against the Bomb (editor) (1983)
• The Chartists : Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution (1984)
• Chartism in Wales and Ireland (1987)
• British Women in the Nineteenth Century (1989)
• Outsiders : Class, Gender and Nation (1993)
• The Duty of Discontent : essays for Dorothy Thompson (edited by Owen Ashton, Robert Fyson, and Stephen Roberts) (1996)
• Queen Victoria: Gender & Power Virago Press (2001)
• Selected Poems by Frank Thompson, edited by Dorothy Thompson and Kate Thompson (2003)