Description
Signed by Susan B. Anthony, three volumes of History of Woman Suffrage, edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, covering the years 1848-1885.
Thick octavo, [three volumes], 878pp; [x], 952pp; [xx], 1013pp. Publisher’s maroon cloth, decoratively stamped in blind on covers, title in gilt on spines. Errata slip tipped in Volume III requesting errors be sent to Anthony for a second edition. Complete with 47 full-page portraits protected by tissue guards, including a frontispiece in each volume. Solid text blocks, light wear to spines and edges, near fine examples. Occasional pencil marginalia in Volume I. Inscribed on the front flyleaf of each volume by Susan B. Anthony to suffragist Annie McLean Marsh while lecturing in Cincinnati, OH on February 10, 1889. Provenance: Hindman Auctions, 2022.
Susan B. Anthony worked with Stanton and Gage in creating the first two volumes of History of Woman Suffrage, but the women faced financial difficulties in preparing the third volume. Due to high costs for proofreading, resetting type, and steel engravings ($500, $900, and $6,000, respectively), the set had a high retail price of $15 in cloth or $19.50 in leather. Both Stanton and Gage sold their book rights to Anthony, leaving her the sole proprietor by 1886. Anthony valued this work not for its monetary gain, but instead “as a most valuable means of educating the people.” (Harper, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, pp. 612-614)Annie McLean Marsh (1859-1932) of Cincinnati was a member of the Hamilton County Equal Suffrage Association. Anthony signed Marsh’s copy when she was in Cincinnati to give a lecture for the Unity Club’s Sunday Afternoon Lecture series held at the Grand Opera House on February 10, 1889. A year after Anthony’s lecture, Marsh was selected as an alternate delegate to the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association held in Washington D.C. in 1890.
