Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, The…volume I and II.
Anthony, Susan B. The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many from her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper A Story of the Evolution of the Status of Woman in Two Volumes, Indianapolis and Kansas City: The Bowen-Merrill Company, 1899 and 1898.
Large 8vo., [I]xxiv, 1-513); [I]-xi, 515-1070 (including index); green buckram stamped with title, author, volume number and publisher [“Bobbs-Merrill”] at spines; silhouette of Susan B. Anthony within a medallion stamped in heavy gilt front cover of both volumes, teg; Volume I hinge with split at dedication page; minor wear to tips and ends; medallions a little rubbed; spines of both volumes sunned to brown; some soiling to covers; interiors fresh; illustrated with frontispiece portraits of Susan B. Anthony in each volume and half tones and facsimile autographs throughout the text; very good. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition, each volume inscribed by the author as follows: at the front flyleaf of Volume I: To George Francis Train / In grateful memory of his / good service for our good cause / in the Kansas Amendment Campaign of / 1867 – and of the good Old / Revolution of 1868 – 69 & 70 – and with / Christmas greetings of 1898 – from / Susan B. Anthony / Rochester – N.Y. / December 25, 1898. In addition, this page had been signed by George Francis Train with the notation in his hand, First / 9000 votes ever / cast for / Woman’s Franchise, and an inscription indicating he is giving this to someone else for Christmas, Dear Sue / X-Mas. / 98 Geo. Francis Train. In the second volume, Anthony has written, George Francis Train / With Christmas Greetings and / grateful memories of the Kansas / campaign and the brave old / Revolution - --from his / Sincere friend / Susan B. Anthony / Rochester / N.Y. / Dec. 25, 1898.
This is an extraordinarily important association copy as it was inscribed to Train by Anthony when he was no longer supporting the Revolution, but after the establishment of the NWSA. The controversy caused by Anthony and Stanton associating with Train resulted in the establishment of the two suffrage organizations: Stanton and Anthony’s National Woman Suffrage Association and the Boston abolitionist-suffragist’s American Woman Suffrage Association. This is an important documentation of a relationship that supposedly had ended by this time and is startling primary resource material.
George Francis Train (1829-1904), eccentric and flamboyant financier, a dandy who supported Irish freedom, was against Negro suffrage (and had been a Copperhead), met Susan B. Anthony in Kansas in 1867. Both Anthony and Stanton worked in Kansas in the 1867 campaign and saw defeat in popular vote. They did, however, find support in Train who had helped in the Kansas referendums. He underwrote a speaking tour by Stanton, Anthony and himself in the cause of woman suffrage and, more importantly, agreed to finance a woman suffrage paper in New York. The new weekly, the Revolution, made its debut in January 1868 with Anthony as publisher and Stanton and Parker Pillsbury as editors. It was a radical journal for its day, espousing woman suffrage, equal pay for equal work, education for females and a liberalization of divorce laws. The journal also advocated Train’s ideas: boycott of foreign goods, encouragement of immigration and greenback currency, printing articles he had written, much to the dismay of many in the suffrage camp.
Within months Train had stopped supporting the journal (he had gone to England as soon as the first issue appeared and was immediately imprisoned by the English for one year due to his Irish sympathies), and Anthony had to pick up the task. The Equal Rights Association (advocating suffrage for all) met in 1869 and the usual disagreements ensued. Anthony and Stanton called a meeting in the office of the Revolution and formed the National Woman Suffrage Association. It was to be an orga
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