Solitude of Self.
“THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER WRITTEN”
—
ADELAIDE JOHNSON’S COPY OF STANTON’S MOST FAMOUS SPEECH
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. Solitude of Self. An Address Delivered by Elizabeth Cady Stanton Before the United States Congressional Committee on the Judiciary. Monday January 18, 1892. Edited by Harriot Stanton Blatch. [NP: ND but 1910].
12mo., 20pp; brown wrappers, sewn, title and author in black on front cover; underlining in blue pencil on each page. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition thus; one of 100 copies; stamped in purple, “5/ Copy_” on the verso of the title page. Pencil note on verso of the title page: “Gift / Mrs. Philip Cristal / (Adelaide Johnson Papers) 1962.” Copy #1 resides in the Library of Congress and was part of the bequest of the papers of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. This copy is probably a duplicate de-accession from the 1970s.
Stanton served for 21 years as the first President of the National Woman Suffrage Association, which merged in 1890 with the American Woman Suffrage Association. When she resigned as President in 1892, she intended to deliver this speech, The Solitude Of Self, at the NAWSA Convention. Instead, she was called upon to deliver the speech to the U.S. Congressional Committee on the Judiciary on Monday, January 18, 1892.
Stanton’s daughter, Harriot Stanton Blatch, published The Solitude of Self in 1910 and oversaw the distribution of the 100 copies. The fact that Adelaide Johnson, the artist responsible for the seven-ton sculpture of white Carrara marble, “The Woman Movement,” which contains portrait busts of Mott, Stanton, and Anthony, received a copy indicates that it was given only to those in the highest echelons of the suffrage movement.
Stanton described The Solitude Of Self as “the best thing I have ever written” and immediate reaction to the speech was highly favorable. The speech was printed in the Congressional Record for that date. Also, by order of the House Committee, 10,000 copies were reprinted from the Congressional Record for distribution throughout the country. Despite this large run, no copies of this reprint have been located in any institutional database or known private collections.
Susan B. Anthony called the speech, “the strongest and most unanswerable argument and appeal ever made for the full freedom and franchise of women.” The Woman’s Journal published the speech on January 23, 1892, and an excerpt was reprinted in Volume IV of The History Of Woman Suffrage, which came out in 1902, the year of Stanton’s death:
Is it then consistent to hold the developed woman of this day within the same narrow political limits as the dame with the spinning wheel and knitting needle occupied in the past? No! no! Machinery has taken the labors of woman as well as man on its tireless shoulders; the loom and the spinning wheel are but dreams of the past; the pen, the brush, the easel, the chisel, have taken their places, while the hopes and ambitions of women are essentially changed.
We see reason sufficient in the outer conditions of human beings for individual liberty and development, but when we consider the self-dependence of every human soul we see the need of courage, judgment, and the exercise of every faculty of mind and body, strengthened and developed by use, in woman as well as man. (18-19)
The Solitude of Self immediately became a touchstone of the American woman’s rights movement and is still relevant today; in 2006, The Solitude Of Self: Thinking About Elizabeth Cady Stanton, by Vivian Gornick, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and well-received by critics.
OCLC locates eight copies of this work, and we have never seen another copy offered for sale. While the text is probably the most often reprinted statement of woman’s rights in the United States – from the turn of the century through today – copies of the first edition are extremely rare. Our copy, apart from blue pencil underlining by a contemporary reader, is in stunning condition.
History Of Woman Suffrage, Vol. IV. The Feminist Companion, p. 1022. Krichmar 5034. NAW, pp. 342-7. 100 Most Influential Women of All Time, (with Susan B. Anthony), pp. 27-30. Stanton, E.C. Eighty Years And More. Gornick, Vivian. The Solitude Of Self: Thinking About Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
(#11641)
Print Inquire