Patricia Crawford

From The Age:

Patricia Crawford, a pioneering historian and author whose seminal work in revealing fresh insights into 17th-century England won her the Royal Historical Society's prestigious Whitfield prize in 1979, has died in Western Australia after an eight-year battle with breast cancer. She was 68.

Crawford, emeritus professor of history at the University of Western Australia's school of humanities, illuminated life in that extraordinary period — in particular women in 16th and 17th century England— and opened up a whole new field of investigation and revelation from archival documents.

There was almost nothing in print about women of that period when she started writing on the subject in 1980; now, almost every aspect of ordinary women's lives has been written about, and in many cases, the groundwork was done by Crawford.