An updated and condensed edition of Susanna de Vries' Great Australian Women, this is a celebration of women who broke the mould, crashed through the ceilings, and shaped the nation in the fields of medicine, law, the arts and politics.

From Lillie Goodisson, pioneer of family planning, to Eileen Joyce, world-famous pianist, Enid Lyons, our first female cabinet minister, Stella Miles Franklin, who endowed our most celebrated literary prize, and Catherine Hamlin, who has given hope to thousands of women through her fistula hospitals in Africa, these are women who have made a difference. They are the women who helped to forge the Australia we know today.