Gleanings.
An Anthology Dedicated To The Unmarried Woman,
Compiled By A Long-Time Activist In Women’s Issues
[Gibbes, Emily Oliver]. Gleanings. A Gift To The Women Of The World By A Woman. [New York]: Privately Printed, 1892.
8vo.; brown endpapers; occasional marginal pencil marks by a previous reader; previous female owner’s bookplate on front pastedown; brown cloth, spine stamped in gilt; light wear.
First edition of a scarce book; three copies in the NUC (21505); Kritchmar 420.
A collection of writings by and about the status of women internationally, gathered and anthologized anonymously by Emily Oliver Gibbes, a women’s rights advocate. This 545-page anthology excerpts writing from a vast variety of sources, such as G. Pellow’s Women and the Commonwealth; E. Chester’s Girls and Women; Public Opinion and Popular Science magazines; and much from the work of Camille Flammarion and Elizabeth Blackwell. Articles treat a broad range of subjects from a feminist perspective, including: “Are Women Less Healthy Than Men?”; “A Century of Women’s Rights”; “Women and The Universities”; “Women in English Politics”; “The Women of Japan”; “The Emancipation of Women”; “Plain Words on the Woman Question”; “The Mission of Educated Women”; “Is Education Opposed to Motherhood?”; “Indian Child Marriages”; “Woman Suffrage”; “The Intellectual Progress of Women”; “Barnard College”; “Women in the Medical Profession”; and many, many others.
The author’s dedication to women’s rights is made quite plain in her Preface, which pays homage to the independent woman. In part:
…Let it be understood from the beginning that my efforts are made in behalf of the unmarried woman, and I earnestly hope that the work will be read, understood, and accepted in that light.
My knowledge of the world and women’s position in it has come with years of experience and watchfulness, and it is not to be expected that my generation will realize the advancements I advocate, nor the prejudices I have overcome.
….It is the single women especially to whom I appeal and solicit their united efforts in uprooting the general idea of a woman’s dependence and lack of intellectual and physical ability in coping with the battles and struggles of life.
That they may understand, take up, and carry out the ideas herein so vaguely suggested, is the earnest wish of SHE WHO HAS GLEANED. (Preface [iii]-iv)
Little is known about the woman who compiled this volume besides the opinions that she expresses so strongly in the Preface and at other points throughout the book. (Towards the end, she suggests creating a women-only State in which only unmarried women and widows could live and hold office; married women, like men, would have no rights in her idyllic vision.) Since she does not look up in any of the standard feminist biographical sources, all that can be gleaned about her interests comes from the titles and subjects of this work and of the other two works by her listed in the Library of Congress’s catalog: Origins of Sin, and Dotted Words in the Hebrew Bible (1893); and Women’s Idea for Woman’s Good (1889). These titles suggest that Gibbes might be a fruitful subject for future feminist study.
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