In their time Ethel Smyth (b.1858), Rebecca Clarke (b.1886), Dorothy Howell (b.1898) and Doreen Carwithen (b.1922) were celebrities, composing groundbreaking music and pioneering creative careers. But today, they are ghostly presences in history, surviving only as muses and footnotes to male contemporaries like Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Britten. This group biography resurrects these forgotten voices, recounting lives of rebellion, heartbreak and ambition, and celebrating their musical masterpieces