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Born in 1952, Gillian Spraggs was brought up in Greater London before attending Girton College, Cambridge to read English. She completed a PhD in 1980 on rogues and vagabonds in Tudor and early Stuart literature and is an eminent scholar currently working at Loughborough University.
Gillian Spraggs also gained distinction as a campaigner for the right and equality of lesbians and gays, particularly within the education system. A teacher for many years, Ms. Spraggs began to take part in campaigns and discussions of gay and lesbian rights in 1986 when she became an active member of the Leicester Working Party and the National Union of Teachers. Through the Leicester Working Party she sought "to see a resolution in support of gay rights passed by the Union's [National Teaching Union] National Conference, and to press for such a policy, once adopted, to be translated into effective action". It was through this forum that the group worked to publish the book Outlaws in the Classroom, which was launched in 1987 at the National Conference and which grabbed the attention - both good and bad - of not only the unions, but also the national press and brought to their attention the plight of gay and lesbian teachers within the education system.
The Leicester Working Party, like many lesbian and gay action groups in the country, also involved themselves heavily in the campaign against the introduction of Clause 27 into the Local Government Bill 1988. The work of the Leicester Working Party can be seen as contributing to the condemnation of Clause 27 by the National Teaching Union and with it their support for the employment rights of lesbian and gay teachers.
Now an academic, Gillian Spraggs is the author of Outlaws and Highwaymen, The Cult of the Robber in England from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century as well having published numerous essays, poems and translations. She is also the editor of Love Shook My Senses: Lesbian Love Poems, an anthology of poetry which journalist Siân Hughes called "a book about women by those who know what they are talking about".
Sources: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/mar/07/bestbooks.fiction http://www.gillianspraggs.com/