SUSAN B. ANTHONY: A Biography of a Singular Feminist

by Kathleen L. Barry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1988

A fine, feminist biography of American suffragist and feminist leader Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906). Using letters, diaries, papers, letters, and the personal library of Anthony, Barry (Sociology/Brandeis; Female Sexual Slavery, 1979) re-creates the life and times of Anthony from her humble Quaker upbringing in Adams, Mass.--where as a child she was schooled to accept attitudes that later she would challenge--to her abolitionist activism and her well-known efforts on behalf of suffragism and women's rights in alliance with such prominent feminists as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone. Anthony did not live to see the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, but the forces that she set in motion ultimately resulted in this declaration of full voting rights for women. Berry's biography places Anthony in her historical context and dramatizes the immense courage and power that Anthony brought to confronting the deeply embedded antifeminist politics and society of her day. It captures moments of both victory and defeat. Barry's acknowledged feminist approach to biography sets out to show Anthony's legitimate place in the progress of society and ideas rather than just her personal or private life. According to Barry, the task of the feminist biographer is to ""discover what masculine history has suppressed,"" a process that ""demands the rewriting of all history."" The result, in this case, is a compelling and moving narrative.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1988

ISBN: 1587210096

Page Count: -

Publisher: New York Univ. Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1988

Categories: NONFICTION