By Beatrice Ricketts | On June 20, 2020 | Updated September 5, 2022 | Comments (0)
At the age of eleven, Françoise d’Eaubonne (March 12, 1920 – August 3, 2005) wrote on a convent wall, “Vive le féminisme!”
This was just the start of what would be a radical life as a member of the French Communist Party, writing more than fifty novels and essays and, most importantly, coining her defining theory: ecofeminism.
One of the best-known leaders of the French feminist movement, d’Eaubonne’s most famous work was her essay “Le Féminisme ou Le Mort” (Feminism or Death), published in 1974. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On March 1, 2020 | Updated September 2, 2022 | Comments (0)
Shirley Chisholm may have been the first woman to seek the presidential nomination from one of the two major political parties — that was in 1972 — but exactly one hundred years before that, Victoria Woodhull (1838 – 1927) was the first woman to launch a national presidential campaign. She did so under the banner of the Equal Rights Party.
And running for president long before women even had the right to vote was just one chapter in an incredibly colorful, yet largely forgotten American life.
Victoria was a suffragist, publisher, stockbroker, orator, and agitator. She was also accused at various points of being a bigamist, prostitute, spiritual charlatan, and adulteress. Read More→
By Skyler Gomez | On December 8, 2019 | Updated July 19, 2026 | Comments (2)
Presented here are twelve Black American suffragists whose contributions shouldn’t be overlooked. This is just a small sampling of the many Black women who fought for women’s right to vote.
The women’s suffrage movement in the United States led to the establishment of the legal right for women to vote nationally when the 19th amendment was ratified in 1920.
As the women’s suffrage movement gained momentum in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Black women were often marginalized. They dealt with the political concerns of white suffragists who were aware that they needed the support of Southern legislators both on the state and federal levels. Read More→
By Erica Obey | On November 5, 2019 | Updated September 2, 2022 | Comments (1)
Despite having published seven books in her long lifetime, Candace Wheeler (1827–1923) might not be classified as a “literary lady,” let alone a classic author. She was one of the first American women to practice as an interior and textile designer, and opened the profession to other women who followed in her footsteps.
Born Candace Thurber, her father was a Puritan abolitionist so severe that he would not allow the family to use sugar or cotton, and he applied similarly stringent standards to his children’s reading habits, decreeing that they read nothing more fanciful than the Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress.
Yet, she evolved into a superlative aestheticist and the godmother of many female artists, writers, and designers. Often referred to as “the mother of interior design,” she was the actual mother of the accomplished artist and book illustrator Dora Wheeler Keith. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On April 3, 2019 | Updated June 16, 2021 | Comments (2)
Though Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870 – 1942) wasn’t a literary figure, we also highlight pioneering female journalists here on Literary Ladies Guide, and she was a true trailblazer.
Though Jessie rarely contributed the texts to the news stories she took, she was a storyteller with her camera. As America’s first woman news photographer, she broke many barriers and encouraged other women to follow suit.
Jessie was the first woman to be hired as a staff photographer on a U.S. newspaper and the first American woman to get a byline as a photojournalist. She herself found nothing extraordinary about the pursuit, claiming that photography was a profession that could be mastered by any woman who “has good health, perseverance, and a nose for news.”
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