Woman Citizen, The. In two large cloth slipcases.
“Read By Women Who Think”
Blackwell, Alice Stone, ed. The Woman Citizen. New York: The Woman Citizen Corporation, 1918-1928.
Folio; a broken run of 96 issues total; first 46 issues black and white self-wrappers, covers illustrated; last 50 issues printed in a new style in color on glossy paper; most issues in good to very good condition; some de-accessioned from the Smith College Library and so stamped. In two specially made cloth slipcases.
Ninety-six issues—roughly a decade’s worth—of this rare official organ of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the 1869 organization whose formation marked the merger of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s National Woman Suffrage Association with Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Henry Ward Beecher and T.W. Higginson’s American Woman Suffrage Association, which had stronger abolitionist leanings.
The Woman Citizen—“Read by Women Who Think,” according to its slogan—was the pre-eminent national periodical of the early feminist movement. A vital tool in the struggle for women’s suffrage, The Woman Citizen printed meeting and convention notes and summaries, reports of national and international victories and setbacks, columns and editorials concerning suffrage issues, poems, stories, travel pieces, book reviews, cartoons, letters, and more. The front covers were decorated with feminist political cartoons designed specially for the magazine; the rear pages print advertisements for hotels, schools and shops that welcomed business from women.
In two specially made cloth slipcases: the 46 issues for December 1918 through February 1920 in one case, the 50 issues for January 1922 through October 1928 in the other. The issues for 1918 through 1920 are consumed, naturally, by the bitter fight to gain the vote, a fight partially won in 1919 (in May of that year the House passed the 19th Amendment; the Senate followed suit in June) and fully won on August 26, 1920, when American women gained the right to vote in the upcoming November elections. The post-1922 issues expand in scope to include surveys of mainstream press treatment of the feminist movement, updates on union support for women’s rights, and regular coverage of the international women’s movement (in Turkey, Palestine, Russia, and elsewhere) and extensive reporting of the growing fascist movement in Europe. Taken as a whole, this compilation captures a riveting slice of women’s history in the making (HAWH, pp. 672-3; see also pp. 25-6, 77, 401, 434-5, and 578).
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