The best books on 19th-century women’s rights activists who weren’t Susan B. Anthony

The Invention of Wings is set in the early 19th century and tells the story of a young white woman who helps her personal slave escape to freedom. It has several themes that are comparable to my novel: an unlikely, interracial, and sacred friendship; male domination; and the courage to chase a dream that will benefit others. Both books rely on alternating narratives: mine switches back and forth in time, and Kidd’s alternates between narrators. Both novels also invoke the power of spiritual lore. Kidd introduces the myth of the spirit tree while mine revolves around the grizzly bear as a spiritual force.

You might be surprised to learn that some prominent suffrage leaders had intimate relationships with women, including Susan B. Anthony and Jane Addams. However, some of these women destroyed their papers to make it difficult for historians to learn about their personal lives (ahem, Anthony and Addams). Scholars are in the process of recovering these stories as much as possible, and Anya Jabour’s Sophonsiba Breckenridge gives us an amazing glimpse into one woman’s experiences. Born in 1868, Breckinridge became one of the first American women to earn a PhD in Political Science. She was a prominent social worker, peace activist, and women’s rights activist until she died in 1948. Breckinridge navigated the spotlight and same-sex relationships, and Jabour tells us how she did it.

Alice Paul is nearly as obscure as Gandhi is famous, but not because she deserves to be. Paul led the American suffrage movement during its final decade, from 1910 to 1919, when the nineteenth amendment was finally passed. Claiming Power is the best biography out there about the underappreciated Paul.  Zahniser and Fry detail the life of this indefatigable activist, who changed the suffrage movement from an often “ladylike,” deferential campaign to an unapologetically confrontational crusade. My own book emerged from a desire to tell Paul’s story as an example of nonviolent activism at work, because she is rarely understood in this context.  But make no mistake about it, Paul was a nonviolent leader of the first order.