Revolutionary Heart: The Life of Clarina Nichols and the Pioneering Crusade for Women's Rights

by Diane Eickhoff

Overview

The author's meticulous quest to collect her subject's scattered writings has yielded a biographical triumph with striking parallels to today's #MeToo movement.

In 1998, author Diane Eickhoff stumbled upon a handmade historical exhibit in a small Kansas museum and was introduced to one of the most remarkable women in feminist history. Clarina Nichols (1810-1885) was a newspaper publisher and political speaker at a time when few women dared make their voice heard. Despite ridicule and verbal abuse, Nichols thrived by using humor and pluck to persuade men to grant unprecedented rights for women.

A key player in the first women's rights movement following the historic Seneca Falls Convention, Nichols left behind the comforts of Vermont and the company of colleagues like Susan B. Anthony and was among the first white inhabitants of Kansas. There her presence ensured the new state's Constitution gave rights to women that they enjoyed nowhere else.

Eickhoff's seven-year, coast-to-coast quest to piece together the life of Nichols resulted in an exciting account of a life unconventionally lived. Revolutionary Heart is a window into an overlooked period in American history. It has been honored with a Willa Cather prize and named a Kansas Notable Book as well as ForeWord's Book of the Year in Biography for 2007.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940165319501
Publisher:	Quindaro Press
Publication date:	03/01/2006
Sold by:	Draft2Digital
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Diane Eickhoff, an editor turned historian, published her first biography, Revolutionary Heart: The Life of Clarina Nichols and the Pioneering Crusade for Women's Rights, with Quindaro Press in 2006. It was a Kansas Notable Book and a ForeWord Book of the Year.

Aaron Barnhart is lead critic for Primetimer.com. He was television critic for the Kansas City Star from 1997 to 2012.

—This text refers to the paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Clarina Nichols (1810-85) is not as well known as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or Lucy Stone, but during the first half of the 19th century, her witty and persuasive writing and lecturing on women's rights and other important reforms gained her a national reputation. Freelance writer Eickhoff offers an engagingly written portrait of this fascinating woman. After divorcing a man who squandered her assets and tried to separate her from her children, she married a progressive newspaper editor, writing for and eventually editing his newspaper until she moved on to a career as a traveling speaker. Nichols crossed the country, calling for abolition, temperance, and women's rights. Eickhoff has produced a readable treatment of this important feminist, based on solid research evidenced by the useful appendixes (e.g., on genealogical information), significant primary documents, and short biographical treatments of other early women's rights advocates. This first book-length biography of Nichols is recommended for larger public and all academic libraries with an interest in the early women's rights movement in the United States.-Theresa McDevitt, Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

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