Selected Special Collections

Susan B. Anthony Collection

Library and papers of Susan B. Anthony

In 1903 Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), one of the founders of the woman suffrage movement in America, presented her personal library of feminist and antislavery literature to the Library of Congress. The collection contains inscribed volumes presented by admireres, the official reports of the national suffrage conventions, addresses made at congressional hearings after 1869, and files of reform periodicals such as the Women's Journal. In many of the 272 volumes Miss Anthony has written notes about the donor or author. Perhaps the outstanding feature of the library is Miss Anthony's thirty-three scrapbooks of newspaper clippings, programs, handbills, and memorabilia. The scrapbooks were begun at the suggestion of her father in 1855 and document changes in public opinion toward Miss Anthony and the suffrage movement.

Mary Wollstonecraft. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). This work was considered one of the first books written by a woman promoting women's rights to equality.

In her inscription in this copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Susan B. Anthony explains the book was originally given to well-known anti-slavery and women's rights advocate Lydia Mott (1793-1880) by her friend William Topp, a tailor and black abolitionist from Albany, New York. In 1874, Lydia Mott gave the book to Susan B. Anthony.