The British Women's Suffrage Campaign: National and International Perspectives
Taylor & Francis Ltd
“This is an invaluable anthology.” — Valerie Sanders, The University of Hull
“This is the richest collection yet of suffrage materials, fully introduced, annotated and illustrated. The initial contextualizing of the campaign is followed by an impressive collection of difficult-to-obtain literary texts. Satirical poetry and drama, presented alongside formal political argument, and the passionate testimonies of key campaigners, prove just how literary a campaign this was. The vivid prison narratives, short stories and complete one-act plays anthologized in this volume fully personalize the campaign and give one a sense of how ordinary people were caught up in the momentum of history. This is an invaluable anthology.” — Valerie Sanders, The University of Hull
During the British women’s suffrage campaign of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women wrote plays to convert others to their cause; they wrote essays to justify their militant actions; and they wrote fiction and poetry about their prison experiences.
This volume is a diverse collection of these writings, focused on the women’s suffrage campaign in England and written primarily during the brief period between the New Woman writers of the 1890s and the modernists of the twentieth century. Many of these works have not been reprinted since they were first published.
This important collection includes essays reflecting a variety of opinions and political positions; excerpts from autobiographies by women involved in the movement; suffrage poetry; the song that became the official song of the British suffrage movement; several one-act plays that were written and performed specifically to advance the suffrage cause; and short stories and excerpts from novels about suffrage.