Susan B. Anthony
A Biography
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- $29.99
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- $29.99
Publisher Description
Brings to life one of the most significant figures in the crusade for women's rights in America
This comprehensive biography of Susan B. Anthony traces the life of a feminist icon, bringing new depth to our understanding of her influence on the course of women’s history. Beginning with her humble Quaker childhood in rural Massachusetts, taking readers through her late twenties when she left a secure teaching position to pursue activism, and ultimately tracing her evolution into a champion of women’s rights, this book offers an in-depth look at the ways Anthony’s life experiences shaped who she would become.
Drawing on countless letters, diaries, and other documents, Kathleen Barry offers new interpretations of Anthony’s relationship with feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and illuminating insights on Anthony’s views of men, marriage, and children. She paints a vivid picture of the political, economic, and cultural milieu of 19th-century America. And, above all, she brings a very real Susan B. Anthony to life. Here we find a powerful portrait of this most singular woman—who she was, what she felt, and how she thought.
Complete with a new preface to honor the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage and Anthony’s vital role in the fight for voting rights, this thorough biography gives us essential new insight into the life and legacy of an enduring American heroine.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The young women who left their farm homes to work in factories and boarded with Susan Anthony's Quaker family in Massachusetts, unwittingly set an example of women's emancipation for future feminist leaders, notes this comprehensive biography by feminist sociologist Barry, author of Female Sexual Slavery. Her political consciousness aroused early, Anthony's oratory was honed in the causes of temperance and anti-slavery, which she shared with other women's-rights champions such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone. Striving to rescue women from a state she considered marital feudalism, Anthony (1820-1906) organized conventions, petitioned and canvassed for support, ceaselessly campaigning for women's property and other legal rights, and most especially for suffrage. The author recounts the split in the feminist movement, factions that, after three decades, combined to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association of which Anthony was president from 1892-1900. A charismatic figure, loved and hated, internationally acclaimed, she was often ridiculed in the press as a ``strident spinster.'' Although nationwide suffrage for women was not enacted until 1920, Anthony lived to see several of her ambitions for women fulfilled and her own role recognized. Photos not seen by PW.
