Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings

This essential volume gathers more than forty of the most important historical writings on feminism, spanning 150 years of struggle for women's freedom. Ranging from the American Revolution to the first decades of the twentieth century, these works—many of them long out of print or forgotten—finally emerge from obscurity and into the light of contemporary analysis and criticism.

This widely diverse collection contains excerpts from books, essays, speeches, documents, and letters, as well as poetry, drama, and fiction by leading feminist writers, among them: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, George Sand, Mary Wollstonecraft, Abigail Adams, Emma Goldman, Friedrich Engels, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, John Stuart Mill, Margaret Sanger, Virginia Woolf, and many others.

The works in Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings address crucial challenges facing women, including marriage as an instrument of oppression; woman's desire to control her own body; woman's economic independence; and the quest for selfhood, and extensive commentaries by the editor help the reader to see the historical context of each selection.