Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings

Front Cover
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Jun 11, 2014 - Social Science - 400 pages
This essential volume brings together more than forty of the most important historical writings on feminism, covering 150 years of the struggle for women’s freedom. Spanning the American Revolution to the first decades of the twentieth century, these works—many long out of print or forgotten—are finally brought out of obscurity and into the light of contemporary analysis and criticism.

This richly diverse collection contains excerpts from books, essays, speeches, documents, and letters, as well as poetry, drama, and fiction by major feminist writers, including: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, George Sand, Mary Wollstonecraft, Abigail Adams, Emma Goldman, Friedrich Engels, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, John Stuart Mill, Margaret Sanger, Virginia Woolf, and many others.

The pieces in Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings cover the crucial challenges faced by women, including marriage as an instrument of oppression; a woman's desire to control her own body; the economic independence of women; and the search for selfhood, and extensive commentaries by the editor help the reader see the historical context of each selection.
 

Contents

ABIGAIL ADAMs
2
FRANCES WRIGHT
18
GEORGE SAND
25
GRIMKé
35
THOMAS Hood
58
MARRIED WOMENs PROPERTY ACT
72
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
83
LETTER FROM PRISON OF ST LAzARE PARIS
91
FRIEDRICH ENGELS
189
AUGUST BEBEL
205
THORSTEIN VEBLEN
212
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
230
EMILY JAMES PUTNAM
247
SENATE REPORTHISTORY OF WOMEN IN INDUSTRY
254
ANNA GARLIN SPENCER
268
CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT
286

LUCRETIA MoTT
99
Elizabeth CADY STANTON
110
MARRIED WOMENs PROPERTY ACT
122
SojourneR TRUTH
128
VICTORIA WooDHULL TENNESSEE CLAFLIN
143
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON
155
John STUART Mill
162
HENRIKIBSEN
179
EMMELINE PANKHURST
293
BREAD AND ROSES
305
MARGARET SANGER
325
CLARA ZETKIN
335
Virginia WOOLF
344
MARY RITTER BEARD
356
SOURCES OF SELECTIONS
369
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About the author (2014)

Miriam Schneir is the editor of the anthology Feminism in Our Time: The Essential Writings, World War II to the Present and Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings. She coauthored “Remembering the Ladies”: Women in America, 1750-1815, and wrote with Walter Schneir Invitation to an Inquest, a study of the Rosenberg case. Her articles have appeared in Ms., The Nation, The New York Times Magazine, and various other publications. Under the auspices of Columbia Teachers College, she prepared a critique of the coverage and treatment of women in a multivolume encyclopedia, which was the basis for revision of the encyclopedia. She was a research associate with Columbia University Center for the Social Sciences Program in Sex Roles and Social Change.

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