Christine Bolt - The Womens Movements in the United States and Britain from the 1790s to the 1920s

The Women's Movements
in the
United States and Britain
from the 1790s to the 1920s

To
IAN ,
a feminist ally for over thirty years

Contents

I t is a pleasure to acknowledge the assistance I have received from many people in the course of this project. I should like to express my sincere appreciation of a generous grant from the Leverhulme Trust, which enabled me to undertake research at a number of libraries in the United States and Britain. My grateful thanks to the many people who have advised me, and granted permissions, at: the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA, especially Patricia King; the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA, especially Margery Sly; the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA, especially Thomas Knowles; the Lamont and Widener Libraries at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; the Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA; the British Library; the University of London Library; and the Fawcett Library, London Guildhall University, especially David Doughan. I have benefited from the unfailing helpfulness of the staff of the Templeman Library at the University of Kent, notably Brian Hogben, Stephen Holland, Olive Lindstrand and Margaret Smyth. In the busy Eliot Secretarial Office, the manuscript has been deciphered, typed and retyped with efficiency, cheerfulness and interest by the Secretarial Supervisor, Yvonne Latham, Nicola Cooper, Joan Hill and Suzanne Sherwood. I am particularly indebted to Yvonne, for her hard work and encouragement. My thanks, also, to Jean Gil, of Eliot, and to Di Mayes, of DIMA Consolidates, for their meticulous labours on the endnotes. I have learned much from the diverse and questioning students at Kent who have taken my course on the women's movements in Britain and the United States; and I hope that my students, and others, will find this book useful. My close colleagues at Kent - David Turley, Julian Hurstfield and George Conyne - have made it possible for me to have study leave in which to write, and they understand how much this is valued. The three readers of the typescript for Harvester raised many important points, from which I have greatly profited, and I am extremely grateful to Joyce Berkman for her thorough and constructive reading for the co-publishers, the University of Massachusetts Press. I am indebted to my editor at Harvester Wheatsheaf, Jackie Jones, for her excellent advice and forbearance, and to the helpful production editor, Alison Stanford. My husband, Ian, knows how much I owe to him.