Synopses & Reviews
Over one hundred and fifty years ago, champions of women's rights in the United States, Britain, France, and Germany formed the world's earliest international feminist movement.
Joyous Greetings is the first book to tell their story.
From Seneca Falls in upstate New York to the barricades of revolutionary Paris, from the Crystal Palace in London to small towns in the German Rhineland, early feminists united to fight for the cause of women. At the height of the Victorian period, they insisted their sex deserved full political equality, called for a new kind of marriage based on companionship, claimed the right to divorce and to get custody of their children, and argued that an unjust economic system forced women into poorly paid jobs. We meet Jeanne Deroin, jailed for organizing unions, who wrote inspirational tracts from her Parisian cell to women abroad; Matilda Anneke, who fought on horseback during the Revolution of 1848 and published women's newspapers in Germany and, after emigrating, in America; Ernestine Rose, a Jewish woman who sued her father for control of her dowry and became a popular public speaker; and Lucretia Mott, the Quaker minister and abolitionist, who maintained international connections and helped to found the American women's movement. These women were part of the vanguard of a feminist movement that emerged as early as the 1830s, proving that feminism transcended national boundaries and existed decades before the suffragettes.
These women rejected the traditional view that women's subordination was preordained, natural, and universal. Restoring these daring activists' achievements to history, Joyous Greetings passes on their inspiring and empowering message to today's new generation of feminists.
Review
"In this new look at the networks established among early nineteenth century feminists, Bonnie Anderson documents the importance of international influences in the building of movements for women's emancipation. The book challenges the idea that these movements were uniquely national in character and insists instead on the fact that feminism was an international movement from its inception.
Joyous Greetings, clearly and passionately written, is a welcome addition to the history of feminism."--Joan Wallach Scott, Institute for Advanced Study
"Bonnie Anderson has given us a very original and exciting portrait of 'the first international women's movement.' From the women's rights activists of Seneca Falls, New York, to the 'Vesuviennes' of Parisian Street battles, she shows us women who knew themselves to be sisters and struggled for the universal emancipation of their sex. Anderson's work will permanently alter how we will see a whole generation of pioneering European and American feminists."--Ellen Carol DuBois, University of California, Los Angeles
"Joyous Greetings is joyous news to nineteenth-century women's historians in the U.S. and Europe. Tracing the personal and political connections among a core group of twenty woman's rights advocates from the U.S., England, France, and the German states, many of whom met each other as they travelled or migrated over the course of their lives and all of whom corresponded with pioneer activists in other countries, Bonnie Anderson offers the first in-depth portrait of mid-nineteenth century international feminism. Linking revolutionary events in France and the German states with radical activities in England and the U.S., this book argues persuasively for the significance of international connections in inspiring and sustaining national movements to advance the rights of women. In the process it changes our understanding of feminism in each of the nations discussed and opens up whole new worlds for future exploration."--Nancy A. Hewitt, Rutgers University
[for adoption] "Joyous Greetings is joyous news to nineteenth-century women's historians in the U.S. and Europe. This is a marvelous and important book which will, for the first time, recognize and analyze the international connections among early women's rights advocates....I would certainly use this book in both undergraduate and graduate classes."--Nancy A. Hewitt, Rutgers University
"Thorough, compelling, and inspiring. Anderson showcases an array of European and American feminists--Frederika Bremer, Jeanne Deroin, Lucretia Mott, Pauline Roland, Ernestine Rose, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton--and highlights their work in promoting a world free of sexism, racism, and inequality....Engrossing and insightful"--Eleanor J. Bader, Library Journal
Review
"Thorough, compelling, and inspiring. Anderson showcases an array of European and American feminists--Frederika Bremer, Jeanne Deroin, Lucretia Mott, Pauline Roland, Ernestine Rose, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton--and highlights their work in promoting a world free of sexism, racism, and inequality....Engrossing and insightful"--Eleanor J. Bader, Library Journal
Synopsis
Over one hundred fifty years ago, champions of women's rights in the United States, Britain, France, and Germany formed the world's earliest international feminist movement.
Joyous Greetings is the first book to tell their story.
From Seneca Falls in upstate New York to the barricades of revolutionary Paris, from the Crystal Palace in London to small towns in the German Rhineland, early feminists united to fight for the cause of women. At the height of the Victorian period, they insisted their sex deserved full political equality, called for a new kind of marriage based on companionship, claimed the right to divorce and to get custody of their children, and argued that an unjust economic system forced women into poorly paid jobs. They rejected the traditional view that women's subordination was preordained, natural, and universal. In restoring these daring activists' achievements to history, Joyous Greetings passes on their inspiring and empowering message to today's new generation of feminists.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [259]-275) and index.
About the Author
A life-long New Yorker,
Bonnie S. Anderson is a Professor of History at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, where she teaches women's history and British history. With Judith Zinsser, she co-authored the classic two-volume narrative
A History of Their Own: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present (revised edition, OUP, 1999). Long active in the women's movement, she has been a volunteer rape crisis counselor at St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village for over ten years.