Friends and Sisters: Letters between Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell, 1846-93 (Women in American History)

The complete correspondence of two important figures in the woman suffrage and antislavery movements: Lucy Stone, woman's rights and abolitionist leader, and Antoinette Brown Blackwell, a prolific author who conducted a lifelong feminist exploration of social mores and science and who became the first woman ordained in the United States in the Protestant ministry. They met as students at Oberlin College, and Antoinette Brown later married Samuel Blackwell, the brother of Lucy Stone's husband, Henry Blackwell. These women exchanged letters for nearly fifty years, touching on some of the most significant topics of the time: abolition, suffrage, marriage, dress reform, the temperance movement, literature, and religion. The letters also reveal the frustrations and rewards of two first-generation college-educated women who sought to affirm their roles as wives and mothers while pursuing their professional careers and political commitments.