As some of you know, I am working on a biography of nineteenth-century feminist Ernestine Rose, who is also the subject of my historical novel The Queen of the Platform. An accomplished public speaker who lectured on women’s rights, the abolition of slavery, religious freethought, and other issues of the day, Ernestine Rose was a […]
Travels With Susan B. Anthony (and Ernestine Rose): March 20 and 21, 1854 Read More »
In July 1899, Susan B. Anthony, who was nearly eighty, was in London for the International Council of Women. She wrangled a visit to Windsor Castle for the group: One day I said to Lady Aberdeen, “Now if this great Council were in Washington, I should certainly get an invitation for you to call on
Susan B. Anthony at the Queen’s Court Read More »
In May 1855, American newspapers were abuzz with talk of a wedding. The bride and groom were not society folk or European royalty: they were Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell, abolitionists and women’s rights activists. Although in many ways their wedding ceremony was typical of the time—the bride wore a lovely dress, a clergyman performed the
The Marriage Protest: The Wedding of Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell Read More »
For Women’s History Month, here’s a short piece I posted on Facebook about dress reformer, army surgeon, author, and eccentric Dr. Mary Edwards Walker (1832-1919). (She doesn’t appear in The Queen of the Platform, as I have no evidence that she and Ernestine Rose ever met, but it would have been fun to overhear a
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker Read More »
In 1851, a new word entered the fashion lexicon: the “Bloomer.” It referred not to undergarments but to what had been known previously by such names as the “reform dress” and the “Turkish dress”: essentially, a short dress paired with pantaloons, in place of the constricting women’s garments of the day. It would become associated
The Bloomer Movement Read More »
In July 1863, the infamous “draft riots” roiled New York. Among those caught up in the violence were the two people most associated with the nineteenth-century women’s rights movement: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s husband, Henry Stanton, had been appointed Deputy Collector of the New York Custom House in 1861.
Stanton and Anthony Caught Up in the Draft Riots Read More »
Ernestine Rose, the subject of my novel-in-progress, was a contemporary of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Ernestine was much closer to Susan B. Anthony, who accompanied Ernestine to Washington, D.C., in 1854, defended Ernestine against those who would have kept her off the platform because of her open atheism, and visited Ernestine, a