The Four Gospels and Other Essays

by Marilla Ricker, Shirley Strutton Dalton (Editor), Laurence E. Dalton (Editor)

Marilla Marks Ricker (née Young) (March 18, 1840 - November 12, 1920) was a lawyer, freethinker, feminist, abolitionist, suffragist, and author. Born in New Durham, New Hampshire, she became "the first woman to cast her ballot in a state election prior to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1871, the first woman appointed Commissioner and Examiner in Chancery in the District of Columbia in 1884, the woman who opened the New Hampshire bar to all other women in 1890, the first woman to apply for a foreign ambassadorship in 1897, and the first woman to announce her candidacy for governor of New Hampshire in 1910." Despite her life-long efforts to obtain rights for women and her impressive list of "firsts" in that struggle, Marilla Ricker is largely forgotten and unrecognized today. In the fight for women's suffrage, her name has been eclipsed by more famous women, such as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage. Ricker contributed many articles to The Truth Seeker and The Philistine. A number of her essays were later compiled by her into three books, The Four Gospels (1911), I Don't Know, Do You? (1916), and I Am Not Afraid, Are You? (1917) (included in this volume).

192 pages, Paperback

Published November 4, 2009