THE PHILOSOPHER QUEENS - New Book Claims it is the FIRST of its Kind.

I am devastated that the introductory style and format of my EIGHTEEN AMAZING WOMEN PHILOSOPHERS has been appropriated by some university graduates. This new university-supported book is not the "first" at all, and the editors shouldn't be using this claim as a promotional tool and to pursue crowdfunding, especially as the original edition of my book dates back to 2014.

I am not sure how anyone could have missed my work if they were really looking as is claimed.




My Fifteen Women Philosophers was published in 2014, five years ago by decodedscience.org, and since Decoded has recently folded, the rights reverted to me and the new edition in ebook EIGHTEEN AMAZING WOMEN PHILOSOPHERS (inc. 3 extra chapters, see above) was independently published on Amazon in May 2019, swiftly followed by the paperback. During its first edition it appeared on several platforms, Amazon, Decodedscience.org, Smashwords, Goodreads. The editor of my monthly column has plugged it for me since inception. If you google me on Goodreads you can access all the editions with one click.

Both books start with Hypatia - well she is an icon. Also in the last five or six chapters, both books include ANSCOMBE, WARNOCK, MURDOCH and MIDGLEY.  Altogether we have eight identical philosophers.  There's also a lot of anger about the disregard for women's philosophy. Not true, there might not be many books out there, (apart from mine) but plenty of essays and blogs! Women are passionate about these role models.

CHAPTER 1  HYPATIA
CHAPTER 2 MURASAKI SHIKIBU
CHAPTER 3 MARIE LE JARS DE GOURNAY
CHAPTER 4 MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
CHAPTER 5 SOJOURNER TRUTH
CHAPTER 6 ERNESTINE ROSE
CHAPTER 7 ADA LOVELACE
CHAPTER 8 ELIZABETH CADY STANTON
CHAPTER 9 AYN RAND
CHAPTER 10 HANNAH ARENDT
CHAPTER 11 SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
CHAPTER 12 SIMONE WEIL
CHAPTER 13 PHILIPPA FOOT
CHAPTER 14 ELIZABETH ANSCOMBE
CHAPTER 15 IRIS MURDOCH
CHAPTER 16 MARY WARNOCK
CHAPTER 17 MARY MIDGLEY
CHAPTER 18 MARY BEARD

This has all been a great deal of hard work and it's not easy self publishing either, once you have had your work published in the traditional way, as I had to do after my publisher went out of business. I self-published for speed as people were asking where the book had gone, as well as one or two other books of a more general nature.

This feels really bad and I hardly know how to deal with it. My writer friends are equally anguished for me and understand my pain and frustration. I had a post on FB a few weeks ago which I replied to, in a similar vein, but nobody is listening!

EIGHTEEN AMAZING WOMEN PHILOSOPHERS you should have heard about in school but probably didn't! (first edition published 2014. Credit for the catchy subtitle, my editor Victoria Nicks.)  And here is the cover of the original, designed by Victoria Nicks - there are still plenty of URLs out there to prove how long it has been available.

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