Woman: A Few Shrieks!

X. [SMEDLEY, Constance]; Appendix by Mrs. Philip Snowden [Ethel Snowden].

$750.00

Item Number: 134985

Letchworth Herts: Garden City Press , [1907].

First edition of Constance Smedley’s rare feminist tract, published under the pseudonym X and with an appendix by Ethel Snowden. Octavo, original cloth, morocco spine label lettered in gilt, patterned endpapers. Appendix by Ethel Snowden. In good condition. Stamps throughout including to the front and rear panels and top edge. Bookplates to the pastedown.

The mid-19th century women’s suffrage movement was broad, made up of women and men with a wide range of views. In terms of diversity, the greatest achievement of the twentieth-century woman suffrage movement was its extremely broad class base. One major division, especially in Britain, was between suffragists, who sought to create change constitutionally, and suffragettes, led by English political activist Emmeline Pankhurst, who in 1903 formed the more militant Women's Social and Political Union. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott were the first two women in America to organize the women's rights convention in July 1848. Susan B. Anthony later joined the movement and helped form the National Woman's Suffrage Association (NWSA) in May of 1869. Their goal was to change the 15th Amendment because it did not mention nor include women which is why the NWSA protested against it. Most major Western powers extended voting rights to women in the interwar period, including Canada (1917), Britain and Germany (1918), Austria, the Netherlands (1919) and the United States (1920). Author, illustrator and campaigner for women's rights Constance Smedley published this feminist tract, Woman: A Few Shrieks, under the pseudonym ‘X’ in 1907 with an appendix by radical English suffragette Ethel Snowden.