Constitutional Rights of the Women of the United States.
Beecher, Isabella. The Constitutional Rights of the Women of the United States. An address before the international council of women, Washington, D.C., March 30, 1888. [Washington, D.C.]: Fowles and Miller, 1888.
8vo.; two NYPL stamps and one indicating that this has been microfilmed; wrappers, sewn; rear wrapper missing; few chips to front panel. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition of this work arguing women’s Constitutional right to suffrage without interference. Not in Krichmar.
Born in Litchfield, Connecticut, Beecher (1822-1907) was the youngest daughter of Lyman Beecher, and half-sister of Henry Ward Beecher, Catharine Beecher, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Wife of the lawyer, social reformer, and woman’s suffrage activist John Hooker, Beecher first came to women’s rights work in the late 1860s. Soon, due in part to her family name and to the financial support she was able to supply to the movement, she was on the board of nearly every major suffrage group and was a co-worker and a trusted friend of Susan B. Anthony. According to Anthony’s biographer Kathleen Barry, Beecher was a “veritable disciple” who once characterized Anthony, apparently with seriousness, as “a powerful instrument in God’s hand, one not to be despised nor set aside” (Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist, NY: New York University Press, 1988, p. 199). In 1868 Beecher co-founded the New England Woman Suffrage Association, and became nationally known in 1870 when she spoke at the second convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association.
An exceptionally scarce item, the first we have encountered in commerce.
(#3734)
Print Inquire