Story of a Pioneer.
The Autobiography Of Anna H. Shaw,
Minister, M.D, And Suffragist Leader:
A Three-Way Nawsa Association Copy
Shaw, Anna Howard, D.D., M.D. The Story of a Pioneer. With the Collaboration of Elizabeth Jordan. Illustrated From Photographs. New York: Harpers, (1915).
8vo.; frontispiece photograph of “Reverend Anna Howard Shaw in her pulpit robes,” original tissue guard; thirty other photographs and illustrations throughout; a few pages and the endpapers offset, other pages fresh and bright; 1917 ownership signature; bright red cloth covered boards, stamped in gilt; front cover decorated with inset reproduction of a photo of Shaw, cover’s borders stamped with elaborate gilt design; covers and spine fresh, bright, unrubbed; pictorial dust-jacket with few small chips and internal mends.
Together with:
Shaw, Anna Howard, D.D., M.D. The Story of a Pioneer. With the Collaboration of Elizabeth Jordan. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, (1915).
8vo.; frontispiece photograph of Shaw; bright red cloth, stamped in gilt; covers and spine fresh, bright, unrubbed.
First edition of the autobiography of a major suffragist leader, together with an association copy linking three important figures in the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The association copy is a later printing from Carrie Chapman Catt‘s library, with her bookplate on the front pastedown and her pencil errata notes throughout. Beneath the bookplate Catt has inscribed this copy: To Mary Gray Peck from her coworker Carrie Chapman Catt.
Shaw, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Mary Gray Peck were all linked through their work for the National American Women Suffrage Association. Catt preceded Shaw as NAWSA head from 1900-1904. She was later Shaw’s successor as President, once again, of the same organization during the crucial years 1915-1920, dramatically shifting the course of the fight for the vote when she devised a plan to cement local support for suffrage nationwide. Mary Gray Peck, recipient of this presentation copy, was born in Seneca Castle, New York, nineteen years after the historic Seneca Falls convention. A journalist and English teacher, Peck resigned a tenured professorship in literature at the University of Minnesota in 1909 in order to devote herself full-time to women’s rights. Peck was the Headquarters Secretary of the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s New York City branch from 1909 through 1910, in which capacity she worked hand in hand with both Catt and Shaw. Peck did not hold NAWSA office after 1910, but she continued a wide range of suffrage activities: in 1911 she represented the Women’s Trade Union League to the International Suffrage Conference in Stockholm (she also reported on the conference activities for the Boston Transcript and other papers); the following year she was Press Chairman of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association’s campaign in support of a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. She was a lifetime member of NAWSA and other suffrage organizations of the era.
Shaw broke ranks with traditional female roles early on when she put herself through college, theological school, and then medical school. By 1885 she had both her divinity and medical degrees; her anger at being refused ordination by the New England Conference and the Methodist Episcopal church led her into the suffrage movement. Shaw was, not surprisingly for someone with her training, an accomplished and popular speaker. In 1904 she was elected head of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, a post she held for a decade.
Shaw’s detailed autobiography provides a fascinating glimpse into the intimate lives of several suffragists: entire chapters are devoted to Susan B. Anthony, to Lucy E. Anthony, “Dr. Shaw’s friend and ‘Aunt Susan’s’ favorite niece,” to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to Bryn Mawr President M. Carey Thomas and other notable women of the time. The book prints scores of photographs of femin
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