The Radical Women's Press of the 1850s

by Cheris Kramarae, Ann Russo

In 1853, Paulina Wright Davis, editor of a women's periodical, called the women's movement the greatest feat in the entire history of public opinion. This collection contains critical works from six radical periodicals of the 1850s. The editors and many of the contributors to the newspapers (including Amelia Bloomer, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frances D.Gage and many others who should be well known writers and activists) called themsleves strong-minded women; today they would be called radical feminists. The introductions and excerpts indicate the writers' independence of men's definitions, and the women's concern with such topics as the damaging effects of men's accounts of history, men's battering of women, women's economic poverty and restrictions on women's freedom including unhealthy fashion norms and requirements.

368 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Cheris Kramarae is the co-editor of the new Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women: Global Women's Issues and Knowledge, and a past professor of communications and of women's studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and is a visiting professor at the Center for the Study of Women in Society at the University of Oregon.

She is the author of Women and Men Speaking; editor of Technology and Women's Voices; and co-editor of Feminism Challenges in the Information Age; Women,Information Technology and Scholarship; The Information Explosion; Feminism Challenges in the Information Age; The Revolution in Words: Righting Women 18680-1871; Radical Press of the 1850's; A Feminist Dictionary; For Alma Mater: Feminist Scholarship in Theory and Practice; Language and Power; Language, Gender and Society; and The Voices and Words of Women and Men, as well as dozens of chapters and articles on language, education, radical feminism, and technology.