History Council of Victoria's first event in their book and author series for 2026 is curated and hosted by Dr Yves Rees, and showcases new books from some of Australia’s most exciting historians. This conversation is with legal historian and author Jessica Lake about her recently released book, Special Damage - The Slander of Women and the Gendered History of Defamation Law.
In Special Damage, Lake offers a comparative legal history of gendered hate speech, verbal abuse, and sexual harassment across 19th-century America, Australia, and England. Drawing upon original archival material, she tracks the creation of the Slander of Women reforms that made it easier for women to sue when called 'whores'. Lake reveals, for the first time, the cases brought by women that spurred and benefitted from these reforms. In doing so, she details how debates about women, speech, and reputation circulated through transnational common law networks, connecting countries, colonies, and continents.
