1st Edition

Suffrage Days Stories from the Women's Suffrage Movement

By Sandra Holton Copyright 1996
    324 Pages
    by Routledge

    324 Pages
    by Routledge

    This is a history of the suffrage movement in Britain from the beginnings of the first sustained campaign in the 1860s to the winning of the vote for women in 1918. The book focuses on a number of figures whose role in this agitation has been ignored or neglected. These include the free-thinker Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy; the founder of the women's movement in the United States, Elizabeth Cady Stanton; the working class orator, Jessie Craigen; and the socialist suffragists, Hannah Mitchell and Mary Gawthorpe. Through the lives of these figures Holton uncovers the complex origins of the movement and associated issues of gender.

    Introduction 1 FROM ‘SURPLUS WOMAN’ TO INDEPENDENT PERSON Elizabeth Wolstenholme and the early women’s Movement 2 ‘THE REVOLT OF THE WOMEN’ Sexual subjection and sexual solidarity 3 A ‘STRANGE, ERRATIC GENIUS’ Jessie Craigen, working suffragist 4 ‘THE GRANDEST VICTORY’ Married women and the franchise 5 AMONG THE ‘INSURGENT WOMEN’ Hannah Mitchell, socialist and suffragist 6 ‘A MERRY, MILITANT SAINT’ Mary Gawthorpe and the argument of the stone 7 WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE AMONG THE BOHEMIANS Laurence Housman joins the movement 8 ‘ON THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA’ Alice Clark, liberal Quaker and democratic suffragist 9 MEN, WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE AND SEXUAL RADICALISM, 1912–14 10 WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR 11 LAST WORDS Women’s suffragists and women’s history after the vote

    Biography

    Sandra Stanley Holton is Australian Research Fellow at the University

    'This book... compels a re-evaluation of the whole (suffrage) movement, and its historiography... It is a must for anyone who wants to be informed about women's suffrage.' – The Fawcett Library Newsletter

    'This fine, impeccably researched book.' –  The Times Higher Education Supplement

    'Her marvellous new book, Suffrage Days, is both sufficiently readable to engage new students' interest and sufficiently provocative in its aim and its fresh discoveries to engross old suffrage hands. Holton is a hard act to follow.' –  Jill Liddington, University of Leeds.

    'A splendid job ... highly enjoyable.' –  Reviews in History