During her long life Catherine Helen Spence sought to make her voice heard in a world dominated by men. She penned editorials, delivered sermons and spoke at public meetings both in Australia, in the United States and in Britain. Both by her own example and in her support for women's cause, she sought ‘to unbridle the tongues of women’. Although she was well-known in her day, indeed renowned as the ‘Grand Old Woman of Australia’ at her death in 1910, knowledge of her life of achievements slipped in subsequent years. When in 1985, Susan Magarey published her prize-winning biography of Spence, Unbridling the Tongues of Women, Spence had become largely forgotten. Unbridling did more than recover the story of Spence's life and work, it suggested new approaches to Australian history. It was the first biography of a first-wave Australian feminist written by a second-wave feminist historian. As such it inspired and set an example of feminist biography and history which has seen a great outpouring of feminist historical and literary scholarship in biographies of Australian feminist activists and of Australian women writers; Spence herself was of course both a writer and a political activist. Unbridling must also be located as an influential early text in the development of Australian feminist history in the last three decades. In this and her other work, Susan Magarey has achieved much in the on-going campaigns to ensure that women's voices and perspectives are heard in public debate.