Inez: The Life and Times of Inez Milholland

by Linda J. Lumsden

Overview

Inez Milholland was the most glamorous suffragist of the 1910s and a fearless crusader for women's rights. Moving in radical circles, she agitated for social change in the prewar years, and she epitomized the independent New Woman of the time. Her death at age 30 while stumping for suffrage in California in 1916 made her the sole martyr of the American suffrage movement. Her death helped inspire two years of militant protests by the National Woman's Party, including the picketing of the White House, which led in 1920 to ratification of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. Lumsden's study of this colorful and influential figure restores to history an important link between the homebound women of the 19th century and the iconoclastic feminists of the 1970s.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253020604
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	09/06/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	280
Sales rank:	842,711
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Linda J. Lumsden is Associate Professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Arizona. She is author of Black, White and Red All Over: A Cultural History of the Radical Press in its Heyday, 1900-1917. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Malaysia in 2012-2013.

Table of Contents

Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: "The full, reliant, audacious way in which they go about"
1. Childhood: "He sings to the wide world, she to her nest"
2. London: "Hard to find a more interesting family"
3. Vassar: "Fascinating-but a trifle dangerous"
4. Strike: "Our cause is your cause"
5. Villager: "Simple but magical words new and free"
6. Lawyer: "To discharge my own debt to society"
7. Spectacle: "High priestess of woman suffrage"
8. Riot: "Every inch the herald of a great movement"
9. Love: "The most completely vital force in the world"
10. Marriage: "Here's to our work-yours and mine"
11.Crusader: "I must have a value somewhere"
12. Italy: "The spirit of war hangs heavy"
13. Pacifist: "I have worked well"
14. Execution: "You are your brother's keeper"
15. Campaign: "Women will stand by women"
16. Martyr: "Like depriving the desert of some oasis"
17. Icon: "How long must women wait for liberty?"
Epilogue: "Take up the song"
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Lumsden wrote in a heroic style that implicitly challenges scholars experienced in U.S. women's history to take on this important icon to provide a more critical analysis of the context and impact of Milholland's activism and strategies on behalf the fight for women's rights."—H-Net

From the Publisher

Lumsden wrote in a heroic style that implicitly challenges scholars experienced in U.S. women's history to take on this important icon to provide a more critical analysis of the context and impact of Milholland's activism and strategies on behalf the fight for women's rights.

H-Net

Had her life not been cut so tragically short by illness in 1916, activist Inez Milholland most likely would have attained suffragette stardom on par with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. In this first biography of Milholland, Lumsden (Rampant Women: Suffragists and the Right of Assembly) recounts her subject's vivid life as a lawyer, war correspondent, and suffragist and clearly delineates her as a "starlet" of her time. Named best all-around athlete at Vassar, Milholland was Amazonian in stature yet in appearance was the embodiment of the Gibson Girl. Lumsden makes the case that Milholland's natural beauty, followed only by her eloquence as a speaker, helped propel her to the forefront of the suffragette movement and, especially, onto the front page of the day's newspapers. Leaving no stone unturned, Lumsden digs up the conflicted person behind the persona: Milholland was the daughter of a wealthy, religious businessman, yet she proclaimed herself an atheist and was an advocate of "free love" even after she married Dutch businessman Eugen Boissevain in 1913. She championed the cause of working women during the notorious shirtwaist strike yet lived with all the luxuries of the class that exploited them. The book's many photographs of Milholland bring her to life, as does the author's fine prose. This spellbinding biography is highly recommended. Janet Sassi, New York Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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