The Call is a 1924 novel about a female scientist who abandons her research work (in chemistry) to be a suffragette. Although it has been ignored for nearly a hundred years, it is an important, and extremely readable, book. Edith Zangwill (1874-1945) - her husband was the writer Israel Zangwill - bases the detailed descriptions of Ursula's working life on the life of Edith Zangwill's stepmother, Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923), a physicist who became an expert on the electric arc. Yet, as Elizabeth Day 'The Call gives a rare insight into a woman's domestic life in the first two decades of the 20th century... domestic details about running a house are, most unusually, given their due alongside Ursula's political actions, elegantly making the point that a woman's work behind closed doors is just as worthy of our attention as what goes on in the wider world.' By making political points in the guise of a 'woman's novel', the author stunningly reveals her commitment to feminism.'