Finding Community in Nineteenth Century Suffrage Periodicals

This study by Professor Linda Steiner of the University of Maryland extends William Goode’s discussion of professions as communities to provide an analysis of the importance of periodicals in sustaining and solidifying the 19th century woman’s suffrage community in America. The study intends to show how newspapers and journals produced by woman suffragists helped women locate themselves in an exciting but entirely plausible community and find there a sense of significance and meaningfulness.

An abstract of this article in American Journalism is available here from Taylor and Francis online, available through many public and academic libraries.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08821127.1983.10730999

Novel: The Bostonians by Henry James

Henry James’ The Bostonians was originally published as a serial in Century magazine (Vol. 30, 31, 1885-1886), starting in February 1885. Much of the magazine is digitized so the serial can be accessed in part via Google at this link for Volume 29 (search “The Bostonians” or “Henry James”) and in Volume 30. (W.D. Howells’ The Rise of Silas Lapham ran concurrently in the Century. Howells was not only pro-suffrage but eventually a vice president of the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage of the State of New York.)

Macmillan published the novel as a book the following year and there have been numerous subsequent reprints. The Internet Archive has digitized the original, which you can read free of charge. James also wrote a version as a play.

From the cover copy and blurb of the 2003 Modern Library edition (free, via Amazon, for Kindle Unlimited subscribers):

This brilliant satire of the women’s rights movement in America is the story of the ravishing inspirational speaker Verena Tarrant and the bitter struggle between two distant cousins who seek to control her. Will the privileged Boston feminist Olive Chancellor succeed in turning her beloved ward into a celebrated activist and lifetime companion? Or will Basil Ransom, a conservative southern lawyer, steal Verena’s heart and remove her from the limelight?

From the introduction to the Modern Library edition of 2003:

The Bostonians has a vigor and blithe wit found nowhere else in James. It is about idealism in a democracy that is still recovering from a civil war bitterly fought for social ideals . . . [written] with a ferocious, precise, detailed—and wildly comic—realism.

For further reference, see also, “The Bostonians, the ‘Woman Question,’ and Henry James: A Critical Analysis of the Characterization of Basil Ransom” by Kyle Lascurettes for The St. Lawrence Review.

This page of the commercial newspaper archive Newspapers.com provides a link to many of the contemporaneous books reviews of The Bostonians. Your local or school library may have access.

“Suffrage Newspapers,” in Taking Their Place: A Documentary History of Women and Journalism, 2nd ed.

Chapter Six, titled “Suffrage Newspapers,” gives a concise overview of two contrasting suffrage newspapers, The Revolution, run by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the more moderate Woman’s Journal associated with Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell. It contains examples of material from both: A Feb. 5, 1868 Revolution editorial on “Infanticide and Prostitution” by Stanton, and Julia Ward Howe’s 1870 editorial, “Salutatory,” from the first issue of the Woman’s Journal.

More information about Taking Their Place is available here, on the website of the publisher, Strata Publishing, Inc. You can search for a nearby library that has the book here, via WorldCat, or request it via Interlibrary loan.

ISBN: 9781891136078