Woman Suffrage Cook Book, The.
A Woman’s Suffrage Fundraiser
[Cookbooks]. Burr, Mrs. Hattie A., editor. The Woman Suffrage Cook Book. Containing Thoroughly Tested and Reliable Recipes for Cooking, Directions for the Care of the Sick, and Practical Suggestions, Contributed Especially for this Work…In Aid of the Festival and Bazaar, December 13-19, 1886. “Country Store,” April 21-26, 1890. (Boston: Mrs. Hattie A. Burr, 1886.)
12mo.; previous owner’s copious notes throughout, occasional pages with relevant newspaper clippings carefully tipped in; preliminaries, occasional pages, offset and foxed; original paper-covered printed boards; front cover with elaborate decorated title, surrounded by leaf motif; two small chips to front cover, not affecting illustration or text; rear cover stamped with retail ad; brown cloth spine, hinges tender; a used but sound copy.
Second edition, exact number of copies published uncertain; preceded by an edition published some months earlier: Bitting, 70 (Gastronomic Bibliography, San Francisco: A.W. Bitting, 1939, p. 70, for the first edition; Bitting had apparently not seen a copy of the scarce second edition of this volume).
A fundraising vehicle containing original recipes contributed by such luminaries as Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth W. Stanton, Rev. Annie Shaw, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Julia A. Kellogg; the revenue from The Woman Suffrage Cook Book went towards rallying public support for women’s voting rights. By the last decade of the 19th-century, the bitter fight for women’s enfranchisement had assumed top priority among American feminists. This volume provides a vivid example of the ways in which small local women’s groups cooperated with larger national organizations in the campaign for woman’s suffrage; it is also to our knowledge the first time that the cookbook—one of the few forms of publication to which women had easy access and (since the Civil War) a frequent tool in charity drives—was used to fund a specifically suffragist agenda.
According to its impassioned preface:
…this little volume is sent out with an important mission....Among the contributors are many who are eminent in their professions as teachers, lecturers, physicians, ministers, and authors...A book with so unique and notable a list of contributors, vouched for by such undoubted authority, has never before been given to the public....I believe the great value of these contributions will be fully appreciated, and our messenger will go forth a blessing to housekeepers, and an advocate for the elevation and enfranchisement of women....Hattie A. Burr Boston, November 25, 1886.
This particular copy has a few added touches which capture the mood of the times. The previous owner, clearly a dedicated homemaker and suffragist, has heavily annotated the margins throughout (with notes on recipes, etc.); she has also tipped in various topical newspaper clippings and ephemera, including a business card for the Boston-based “Women’s Educational and Industrial Union” (glued in just above the table of contents). In addition to printing recipes by the major feminists of the era, the book includes “Eminent Opinions on Woman Suffrage,” five pages worth of quotes in support of women’s voting rights from such figures as Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, and T.W. Higginson. Page viii of the cookbook advertises subscriptions to “The Women’s Journal,” a “weekly newspaper...devoted to the interests of women...” whose editors and writers include Lucy Stone, Alice Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe, and Louisa M. Alcott; the same publisher offers sample copies of “Twenty-seven different Woman Suffrage Tracts” for only ten cents (to cover postage).
A charming relic of a crucial chapter in the American women’s rights movement.
(#4632)
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