Colmore (G. [Gertrude])
Suffragette Sally.
Description:
FIRST EDITION, foxing to prelims, occasional spotting to text, largely restricted to margins, a few leaves with crease to corners,
pp. 319, [1, Author's Note], 16 [Publisher's catalogue], crown 8vo,
original (later issue?) red cloth, lettered in gilt to backstrip and red to upper board, dustsoiled overall with a few marks, some wear to joints and extremities, lacking free endpapers, and with a small patch of the final leaf of publisher's catalogue adhering to rear pastedown, fair
Publication Details:
Stanley Paul, [1911]
Notes: A significant documentary novel, conveying an intimate knowledge of the activities of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) - and scarce, with four holdings on COPAC and no others on the market at time of cataloguing (and no auction records).Colmore was a pseudonym, a vestige of her first marriage, for Gertrude Baillie-Weaver (née Renton), who published a biography of Emily Wilding Davison in the same year; she was active in the WSPU, and her husband Harold supported the cause in print and in speech - the two also campaigned for animal welfare, pacifism during the War, and were membe...moreA significant documentary novel, conveying an intimate knowledge of the activities of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) - and scarce, with four holdings on COPAC and no others on the market at time of cataloguing (and no auction records).Colmore was a pseudonym, a vestige of her first marriage, for Gertrude Baillie-Weaver (née Renton), who published a biography of Emily Wilding Davison in the same year; she was active in the WSPU, and her husband Harold supported the cause in print and in speech - the two also campaigned for animal welfare, pacifism during the War, and were members of the Theosophical Society. The couple were figures of their time, a fact represented in Colmore's fiction - and perhaps, above all in this novel, the work of hers which has proved the most enduring. It has twice been republished, by Pandora in 1994 and Broadview in 2007.Suffragette Sally tells the story of three women of differing class, to form a sort of collective biography of the suffrage movement across social strata; the titular heroine being the working-class representative and Edith Carstairs a middle-class suffragist opposed at first to militancy - both come under the sway of Lady Geraldine Hill, based on Constance Lytton, whose zeal inspires them to action under the militant banner of the WSPU. As well as including fictionalisations of many of the leading figures of the movement, the narrative incorporates numerous key events: Black Friday and its aftermath, the hunger strike, the Conciliation Bill.The Author's Note at the close proclaims that the work - meant to imply both this novel and the fight for suffrage - 'cannot be finished now'.This copy has its faults, but the book is scarce in any condition - it is also seen in green cloth and with a larger publisher's catalogue dated to Spring 1911 (that to the present version is not dated, but includes books published in 1912). HIDE
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Price: £1,500
Subject: Modern First Edition
Published Date: [1911]
Stock Number: 66498
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