Graphic Novel Trilogy: Suffrajitsu: Mrs. Pankhurst’s Amazons

Suffrajitsu: Mrs. Pankhurst’s Amazons comprises three suffrage-themed graphic novels, set in World War I-era Britain, that blend historical fiction with martial arts. Primarily distributed as e-books, the series was written by Tony Wolf and illustrated by Joao Vieira. This excerpt comes from Suffrajitsu‘s website:

The year is 1914, and with Europe on the brink of war, the leaders of the radical women’s rights movement are fugitives from the law. Their last line of defence is the elite secret society of “Amazons”; women trained in the martial art of Bartitsu and sworn to protect their leaders from arrest and assault. The stakes dramatically rise when the Amazons are thrust into a deadly game of cat and mouse against an aristocratic, Utopian cult.

Though the secret society featured in the trilogy is fictitious, Wolf was inspired by an actual group of suffragette bodyguards.

You can purchase the Suffrajitsu trilogy in e-book format via Amazon.com. You can also buy Suffrajitsu—both as individual issues and as a series—from comiXology.

For a more extensive account of some British suffragists’ use of militant tactics, see Andrew Rosen’s Rise Up, Women!: The Militant Campaign of the Women’s Social and Political Union, 1903-1914.

Pro-Suffrage Illustration: The Awakening, Puck 1915

Henry “Hy” Mayer’s pro-suffrage illustration first appeared as a two-page spread in Puck magazine’s suffrage issue, published February 20, 1915. The German-born Mayer was Puck’s head cartoonist at the time.

This description is an excerpt from a Library of Congress entry on “The Awakening”:

[The] Illustration shows a torch-bearing female labeled “Votes for Women,” symbolizing the awakening of the nation’s women to the desire for suffrage, striding across the western states, where women already had the right to vote, toward the east where women are reaching out to her. Printed below the cartoon is a poem by Alice Duer Miller.

“The Awakening” appeared in Puck during the Empire State Campaign, a 1915 referendum on a proposed amendment to the New York State constitution that would have granted women in the state full suffrage. New Yorkers voted against the referendum.

You can access and download the image in various formats—and find out more about it, including how to access the original work—here, via the Library of Congress.

You can access a free digital archive of various issues of Puck, including the issue in which “The Awakening” appeared, here, via the HathiTrust Digital Library.

The Puck Magazine Suffrage Issue

The satirical magazine Puck was one of the most influential American publications of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Making liberal use of cartoons and drawings, Puck gave its readers an irreverent mix of current events, pointed social commentary, political opinion, and often-scathing criticism of the day’s prominent figures. 

Although in earlier years Puck had ridiculed the idea of women’s enfranchisement, the magazine took the opposite tack with its February 20, 1915 “Suffrage Number.” Conceived as part of a massive mobilization campaign in support of a 1915 referendum to grant New York women the vote by amending the state’s constitution, the issue was a full-throated, heavily promoted endorsement of women’s right to vote. Puck enlisted the aid of a raft of major suffrage organizations and invited prominent pro-suffrage media figures to serve on a board of honorary editors. The issue borne of this collaboration devoted virtually all its content—including some of the most enduring imagery of the suffrage era—to the topic, and proved a milestone in the campaign for women’s enfranchisement.

Though the constitutional referendum failed that year, it gave momentum to the cause. New Yorkers voted their approval of a similar measure two years late in November 1917.

Adapted from Brooke Kroeger, The Suffragents: How Women Used Men to Get the Vote (2017), pp. 159-160:

“Puck joined the charge, devoting almost the entirety of its February 20 issue to the subject of suffrage. The magazine ceded editorial direction for that month to the state’s major suffrage organizations, including the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage, as prominently noted in the upper right-hand corner of its cover next to a sumptuous full-color illustration, titled “The Mascot.” The image depicted a young woman and a girl toddler, each draped in bright yellow “Votes for Women” sashes. A juggernaut of an editorial board came together to oversee the issue, dominated by Men’s League stalwarts: Oswald Garrison Villard of the New York Evening Post; Peter Finley Dunne aka “Mr. Dooley”; Arthur Brisbane of the New York Journal; Norman Hapgood, by then running Harper’s Weekly; Erman J. Ridgway of Everybody’s; William Dean Howells; S.S. McClure; Ogden Mills Reid of the New York Tribune; Irvin S. Cobb; John O’Hara Cosgrave of the New York World; and Frank Munsey of Munsey Publications. Cartoons, aphorisms, editorials, magnificent four-color illustrations, plenty of satire, and sufficient ridicule of the antis filled the issue. A note from the editor promised that Puck would keep hammering away at the subject week after week, ‘from now until the battle for woman suffrage is won’.”

Click here to view a free digitized version of Puck‘s suffrage issue, via the HathiTrust Digital Library.

You can also browse decades’ worth of other archived Puck issues here, via the HathiTrust Digital Library.

For more background on Puck and its political cartoons, see this article from Sidesplitter.

If you want to view and read more about iconic images from the suffrage issue, see “The Awakening” and “The Mascot.”

The Catherine H. Palczewski Suffrage Postcard Archive

This website provides a virtual tour of my archive of suffrage postcards. It is meant to provide a resource for scholars researching the visual images associated with the struggle for women’s suffrage in both the United States and Great Britain. These images have been collected by me and my partner, Arnie Madsen, PhD, over the last 15 years.

Feel free to use these images for non-commercial purposes, but please remember to provide attribution by indicating where you found them.

See also “War on women: Propaganda postcards from suffragette era show fierce battle fought by American women to get the vote… and Obama can thank them for his job,” an article about the collection by Helen Pow in the London Daily Mail of November 21, 2012 with a display of choice selections this “sobering collection of anti-feminist propaganda.” Postcard images from the Daily Mail article are below, along with more from a post on dangerousminds.net, published December 11, 2014.

Cartoon Against Women’s Suffrage

This cartoon from the New Zealand History government website contains typical anti-suffrage imagery, warning how changing gender roles could harm society. In it, a harrassed and brow-beaten husband wears women’s clothing while making a mess of domestic chores. Meanwhile, his domineering wife—just returned from somewhere outside the domestic realm—criticizes his housekeeping. Though the scene is humorous, it argued that giving women the vote could upset traditional gender roles—to the detriment of men.

Pro-Suffrage Illustration: The Mascot, 1915

This Puck magazine cover by Rolf Armstrong, later one of the most famous American pin-up artists, depicts a woman suffragist alongside the publication’s namesake mascot, Puck, who holds a pencil. Both sport a “Votes for Women” sash, an emblem of the suffrage movement that readers of the day would instantly have recognized.

The title of the work, which graced the cover of the magazine’s February 20, 1915 suffrage issue, is “The Mascot,” an apparent reference to the strong pro-suffrage stance the influential satirical magazine was taking: Puck was now a mascot not only for the magazine but also for the fight for women’s enfranchisement.

You can learn more about Puck‘s seminal suffrage issue here, and you can view a free digitized version of the issue here, via the HathiTrust Digital Library.

You can also browse decades’ worth of archived Puck issues here, via the HathiTrust Digital Library.

American Woman Suffrage Postcards: A Study and Catalog

Google books provides significant excerpts from this book, which offers a fascinating look at suffrage-themed postcards from the era.

An abstract:

American women’s suffrage activists were fascinated with suffrage themed postcards. They collected them, exchanged them, wrote about them, used them as fundraisers and organized “postcard day” campaigns. The cards they produced were imaginative and ideological, advancing arguments for the enfranchisement of women and responding to antisuffrage broadsides. Commercial publishers were also interested in suffrage cards, recognizing their profit potential. Their products, though, were reactive rather than proactive, conveying stereotypes they assumed reflected public attitudes–often negative–towards the movement. Cataloging approximately 700 examples, this study examines the “visual rhetoric” of suffrage postcards in the context of the movement itself and as part of the general history of postcards.

Additional information and commentary on suffrage-era postcards can be found on the author’s curated site, womansuffragememorabilia.com. (Not ready to commit to visiting the site? You can read our description here.)

Both American Woman Suffrage Postcards and Robert P. J. Cooney, Jr.’s book Winning the Vote have gorgeous full-color images of suffrage photographs and ephemera.