100 books like The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony

By Ann D. Gordon (editor),

Here are 100 books that The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony fans have personally recommended if you like The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Mistress Of Herself: Speeches and Letters of Ernestine L. Rose, Early Women's Rights Leader

Susan Higginbotham Author Of The Queen of the Platform: A Novel of Women's Rights Activist Ernestine Rose

From my list on nineteenth century feminists in their words.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a writer of biographical historical fiction, with some of my novels set in medieval and Tudor England, others set in nineteenth-century America. In researching my books, I try to immerse myself in my characters’ world, and that means reading primary sources, such as newspapers, periodicals, letters, diaries, and memoirs. I especially like to read my characters’ own words. Fortunately, the nineteenth-century feminists featured in this list left a lot of words behind them!

Susan's book list on nineteenth century feminists in their words

Susan Higginbotham Why did Susan love this book?

Ernestine Rose, a Polish-Jewish immigrant who was one of the first women to speak out for women’s rights in the United States, was well-known in her time but is little remembered today.

This book, which includes most of her published speeches and some of her letters, made her come alive for me. With lines like “It is time to consider whether what is wrong in one sex, can be right in the other” (referring to the double standard of sexual morality for men and women), it still holds relevance for us today. I’ll never get to hear Ernestine Rose speak in person, so this is the next best thing.

By Ernestine L. Rose, Paula Doress-Worters (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Mistress Of Herself as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Susan B. Anthony hung a picture of Rose on her wall. Elizabeth Cady Stanton publicly eulogized her as indispensable. Unique among the founders of the women’s rights movement because she was a Polish immigrant of Jewish background, celebrated orator Ernestine Rose (1810-1882) won the title "Queen of the Platform" for her brilliant speeches, advocating and linking women's rights, religious freedom, and the abolition of slavery.


Book cover of Daughter of Boston: The Extraordianary Diary of a Ninteenth Century Woman

Susan Higginbotham Author Of The Queen of the Platform: A Novel of Women's Rights Activist Ernestine Rose

From my list on nineteenth century feminists in their words.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a writer of biographical historical fiction, with some of my novels set in medieval and Tudor England, others set in nineteenth-century America. In researching my books, I try to immerse myself in my characters’ world, and that means reading primary sources, such as newspapers, periodicals, letters, diaries, and memoirs. I especially like to read my characters’ own words. Fortunately, the nineteenth-century feminists featured in this list left a lot of words behind them!

Susan's book list on nineteenth century feminists in their words

Susan Higginbotham Why did Susan love this book?

Before I stumbled across this book, I had never heard of Caroline Healey Dall, a prickly but vulnerable and fiercely intelligent Bostonian who knew almost everyone in the various reform movements that swept across the United States in the mid-nineteenth century.

On one day, Dall is recording the details of a pregnancy that went horribly wrong; on another, passing along salacious gossip about a lady who propositioned Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May). All the while, she champions the cause of women’s rights while clashing with some of the many strong personalities in the movement.

By Caroline Healey Dall, Helen R. Deese (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Daughter of Boston as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This Journal is my safety valve-and it is well, that I can thus rid myself of my superfluous steam . . . I trust posterity will remember this, should it ever be gratified by a glimpse at these pages.

In the nineteenth century, Boston was well known as a center for intellectual ferment. Amidst the popular lecturing of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the discussion groups led by Margaret Fuller sat a remarkable young woman, Caroline Healey Dall (1822-1912): Transcendentalist, early feminist, writer, reformer, and-perhaps most importantly-active diarist.

Dall kept a diary for seventy-five years.She captured in it all the fascinating…


Book cover of Loving Warriors: Selected Letters of Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, 1853 to 1893

Susan Higginbotham Author Of The Queen of the Platform: A Novel of Women's Rights Activist Ernestine Rose

From my list on nineteenth century feminists in their words.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a writer of biographical historical fiction, with some of my novels set in medieval and Tudor England, others set in nineteenth-century America. In researching my books, I try to immerse myself in my characters’ world, and that means reading primary sources, such as newspapers, periodicals, letters, diaries, and memoirs. I especially like to read my characters’ own words. Fortunately, the nineteenth-century feminists featured in this list left a lot of words behind them!

Susan's book list on nineteenth century feminists in their words

Susan Higginbotham Why did Susan love this book?

In 1853, hardware store owner Henry Blackwell proposed marriage to a woman he barely knew: Lucy Stone, who had become prominent as a speaker for the abolitionist and women’s rights movements. Not surprisingly, Lucy refused, but she allowed her younger suitor to write to her, and this collection of letters, spanning the idealistic pair’s courtship and eventual marriage, is the result.

I found it to be a moving portrait of a couple falling in love and managing to stay in love despite the usual ups and downs of wedlock and their quite different personalities. And did you know that Lucy was one of the first American women to keep her own surname upon marriage?

By Leslie Wheeler (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Loving Warriors as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A collection of the letters of feminist and abolitionist Lucy Stone and her husband Henry B. Blackwell provides a fascinating look at an unusual marriage and information on life in Victorian America


Book cover of Selected Letters of Lucretia Coffin Mott

Susan Higginbotham Author Of The Queen of the Platform: A Novel of Women's Rights Activist Ernestine Rose

From my list on nineteenth century feminists in their words.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a writer of biographical historical fiction, with some of my novels set in medieval and Tudor England, others set in nineteenth-century America. In researching my books, I try to immerse myself in my characters’ world, and that means reading primary sources, such as newspapers, periodicals, letters, diaries, and memoirs. I especially like to read my characters’ own words. Fortunately, the nineteenth-century feminists featured in this list left a lot of words behind them!

Susan's book list on nineteenth century feminists in their words

Susan Higginbotham Why did Susan love this book?

How did Lucretia Mott—the courageous Quaker who was active in so many good causes—find the time to write so many long, intimate letters? I like to dip into this collection; there’s always something of historical or simply human interest.

And given Mott’s small handwriting and her thrifty but maddening habit of “crossing”—saving paper by turning a letter sideways and writing across the existing handwriting on the page—I’m eternally grateful that someone else did the transcription of these letters so we don’t have to struggle with the originals.

By Beverly Wilson Palmer (editor), Lucretia Coffin Mott, Holly Ochoa , Carol Faulkner

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Selected Letters of Lucretia Coffin Mott as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This landmark volume collects Lucretia Mott's correspondence for the first time, highlighting the length and breadth of her work as an activist dedicated to reform of almost every kind and providing an intimate glimpse of her family life.

Mott's achievements left a mark on reform movements from abolition to women's rights. The letters cover her work in these causes as well as her founding of key antislavery organizations; her friendships with Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth; her efforts to bring Quakers into the abolitionist movement; and her part in organizing the 1848 Seneca Falls Woman's Rights Convention. Other correspondence cover…


Book cover of The Specter of the Archive: Political Practice and the Information State in Early Modern Britain

Asheesh Siddique Author Of The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World

From my list on understand the history of data.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated by information technology since I was a child–whether in the form of books, libraries, computers, or cell phones! Living through a massive expansion in the volume of data, I believe it is essential to study the long history of information to make sense of our current data-driven times–which is why I became a historian of data, which I teach and write about full time. Here are some of the most informative and insightful books that have helped me make sense of our issues, ranging from information overload and artificial intelligence to privacy and data justice.

Asheesh's book list on understand the history of data

Asheesh Siddique Why did Asheesh love this book?

Today, archives are places where we go to research and learn about the past. But as Popper’s fascinating book shows, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, governments used archives like we use computers and databases today as facilities for storing information they considered immediately relevant to solving political problems.

Just like we use computers today, governments mobilized archives to collect, organize, and redeploy information to advance their specific policy objectives. While the early modern world might seem quite distant from our own, Popper shows us that the problem of using information to exert political power is a very old one.  

By Nicholas Popper,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Specter of the Archive as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An exploration of the proliferation of paper in early modern Britain and its far-reaching effects on politics and society.

We are used to thinking of ourselves as living in a time when more information is more available than ever before. In The Specter of the Archive, Nicholas Popper shows that earlier eras had to grapple with the same problem-how to deal with too much information at their fingertips.

He reveals that early modern Britain was a society newly drowning in paper, a light and durable technology whose spread allowed statesmen to record drafts, memoranda, and other ephemera that might otherwise…


Book cover of Forget Burial: HIV Kinship, Disability, and Queer/Trans Narratives of Care

Marika Cifor Author Of Viral Cultures: Activist Archiving in the Age of AIDS

From my list on how to have sex in an epidemic.

Why am I passionate about this?

Amidst COVID-19, HIV/AIDS is a touchpoint for journalists, scholars, writers, and a public who seek a usable past in understanding the present and making an uncertain future less so. The challenge of how to love, live, and survive amidst pandemics isn't new, I play here on the title of one of the first safer sex books, How to Have Sex in an Epidemic. As someone who studies how activists document their work and how they bring those materials to life today, I'm both fascinated and troubled by pandemic comparisons. These books offer crucial stories and productive tools to think with as we navigate questions of how to survive, and maybe even thrive amidst intersecting pandemics. 

Marika's book list on how to have sex in an epidemic

Marika Cifor Why did Marika love this book?

Marty Fink’s book is one of the best examples of recent and groundbreaking scholarship on HIV/AIDS.

Fink examines HIV/AIDS histories through critical disability studies discourse to show in a compelling and very readable way how queer and trans people in the 1980s and early 1990s came together to take care of each other when faced with stark and far-reaching state violence.

This book has deep contemporary relevance showing how multifaceted HIV care-giving narratives continue to inform how individuals and our wider society makes sense of gender, disability, and kinship.

Such work is essential in this political moment where we are seeing ever-more challenges to bodily self-determination, for women, queer and, especially for trans people. 

By Marty Fink,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Forget Burial as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Finalist for the LGBTQ Nonfiction Award from Lambda Literary

Queers and trans people in the 1980s and early ‘90s were dying of AIDS and the government failed to care. Lovers, strangers, artists, and community activists came together take care of each other in the face of state violence. In revisiting these histories alongside ongoing queer and trans movements, this book uncovers how early HIV care-giving narratives actually shape how we continue to understand our genders and our disabilities. The queer and trans care-giving kinships that formed in response to HIV continue to inspire how we have sex and build chosen…


Book cover of Recorder

Stefanie Lozinski Author Of Magnify

From my list on Christian fantasy if you like The Lord of the Rings.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have longed to move to the Shire ever since I first saw the film version of The Fellowship of the Ring. I wasn’t aware at first of Tolkien’s deep Catholic faith, but once it was pointed out to me, I was amazed at how he managed to weave Christian virtue into everything he wrote. As a long-time writer myself, I realized that I wanted to tell stories about the big stuff—love and hope, good and evil, doubt and courage—in a way that was genuine and unflinching. I think that all of the authors on this list have pulled off just that.

Stefanie's book list on Christian fantasy if you like The Lord of the Rings

Stefanie Lozinski Why did Stefanie love this book?

Part of what I love the most about The Lord of the Rings is the way that J.R.R. Tolkien made Middle Earth feel like it could be real. I have to remind myself it’s not history, but fiction. Reading Recorder gives me the same feeling. Sure, technically, it’s science fiction. It’s set in space. But there is a depth and honesty to the world that Cathy McCrumb has created that is rare and worth exploring. It is both a prescient warning about the future of humanity and a powerful story about found family and finding hope when up against impossible odds. Also, the romantic subplot of this book will absolutely shatter you.

By Cathy McCrumb,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Recorder as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Consortium is All. But Recorder Can No Longer Obey.

Recorder has no family, no friends, and no name. Donated to the Consortium before birth, her sole purpose is to maintain and verify the records. A neural implant and drone ensure compliance, punishing for displays of bias.

Suddenly cut off from controlling technology, Recorder tastes what it means to be human. But if the Consortium discovers her feelings, everyone she knows will be in danger.

With no name, no resources, and only an infinitesimal possibility of escape, Recorder's time is running out.

"McCrumb achieves a fascinating coming-of-age story in a…


Book cover of Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

John Wood Sweet Author Of The Sewing Girl's Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America

From my list on Revolutionary America focus on the lives of women.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm an American historian and former director of UNC-Chapel Hill's Program in Sexuality Studies—and former pizza maker, gas pumper, park ranger, and tour guide at the house in which Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women. As a historian, I've spent my career trying to understand the lives of people in early American history who weren't well known at the time. In writing the Sewing Girl's Tale, which focuses on a survivor of a sexual assault, it was especially important to keep her at the center of the story. Ultimately, I wanted to know: What was life in the aftermath of the American Revolution like—not for some Founding Father—but for an ordinary young woman.

John's book list on Revolutionary America focus on the lives of women

John Wood Sweet Why did John love this book?

This book brings the format of a graphic novel to the subject of women's resistance during enslavement and the trans-Altantic slave trade—and the result is fresh and compelling. As a historian myself, I appreciated the interwtined narratives of Hall's own research quest as a historian following the documentary record—and her reconstruction of the extraordinary revolt of the women held captive in 1772 on the slave-ship Unity. Both the search for truth and the dramatic uprising are conveyed with great skill and emotional power. The account of the Unity revolt calls attention to what we know, how we know it, and what we don't know. But Hall refuses to stop there. Instead, carefully marking speculation as such, Hall offers a fascinating, well-informed, effort to imagine a fuller account of what might have actually happened. We are left with a powerful sense of why this history matters two and a half…

By Rebecca Hall, Hugo Martínez (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Wake as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'A must-read graphic history. . . an inspired and inspiring defence of heroic women whose struggles could be fuel for a more just future' Guardian

'Not only a riveting tale of Black women's leadership of slave revolts but an equally dramatic story of the engaged scholarship that enabled its discovery' Angela Y. Davis

Women warriors planned and led slave revolts on slave ships during the passage across the Atlantic. They fought their enslavers throughout the Americas. And then they were erased from history.

In Wake Rebecca Hall, a historian, a granddaughter of slaves, and a woman haunted by the legacy…


Book cover of Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life

Kendra Allen Author Of The Collection Plate: Poems

From my list on finding inspiration and motivation.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a person who reads solely for pleasure regardless of research, I make it a mission while writing to read books I actually enjoy on topics I wanna learn more about. I chose the books on this list because I’m also a person who reads multiple books at once in various genres, it keeps me honest; aware of holes and discrepancies in my own work and pushes me towards some semblance of completion. All the writers on this list do multiple things at once and I admire their skill and risk in coupling creativity with clarity.

Kendra's book list on finding inspiration and motivation

Kendra Allen Why did Kendra love this book?

What bell hooks has shown me about the possibility of personal narrative and memoir writing is endless because she consistently shows that your story is never-ending. But mostly bell hooks likes to hurt me on purpose. This is my favorite memoir by her because it centers on two of my favorite topics: words and whirlwind romance that refuses to interfere with the words at stake, and I knew this book would be one I would return to in order to figure out my own priorities once I read, “I’m willing to give up everything I love if it means I won’t be crazy.”

By bell hooks,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Wounds of Passion as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“bell hooks’s brave memoir of struggling to find her own work, love, and independence.” ―Gloria Steinem
With her customary boldness and insight, brilliant social critic and public intellectual bell hooks traces her writer’s journey in Wounds of Passion. She shares the difficulties and triumphs, the pleasures and the dangers, of a life devoted to writing. hooks lets readers see the ways one woman writer can find her own voice while forging relationships of love in keeping with her feminist thinking. With unflinching courage and hard-won wisdom, hooks reveals the intimate details and provocative ideas of the life path she carved…


Book cover of Groundswell: Grassroots Feminist Activism in Postwar America

Melissa Estes Blair Author Of Revolutionizing Expectations: Women's Organizations, Feminism, and American Politics, 1965-1980

From my list on U.S. grassroots feminism.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have loved history since I was a girl, visiting my grandparents in Virginia and reading American Girl books. I began to focus on women’s history when I learned in college just how much the women’s movement of the generation before mine had made my life possible. So much changed for American women in the ten years before I was born, and I wanted to know how that happened and how it fit into the broader political changes. That connection, between women making change and the bigger political scene, remains the core of my research. I have a B.A. in history and English from the University of Kentucky, and a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Virginia.

Melissa's book list on U.S. grassroots feminism

Melissa Estes Blair Why did Melissa love this book?

By looking at three local NOW chapters around the country, Gilmore shows that the leading organization of 1960s feminism wasn’t nearly as centralized as people think. Memphis NOW, for example, was a radical feminist group simply by being a feminist group in the South. San Francisco NOW, by contrast, made coalitions with many more radical groups as they worked together to make change. A great read and an important insight into how NOW actually worked as an organization.

By Stephanie Gilmore,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Groundswell as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Groundswell: Grassroots Feminist Activism in Postwar America offers an essential perspective on the post-1960 movement for women's equality and liberation. Tracing the histories of feminist activism, through the National Organization of Women (NOW) chapters in three different locations: Memphis, Tennessee, Columbus, Ohio, and San Francisco, California, Gilmore explores how feminist identity, strategies, and goals were shaped by geographic location.

Departing from the usual conversation about the national icons and events of second wave feminism, this book concentrates on local histories, and asks the questions that must be answered on the micro level: Who joined? Who did not? What did they…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in feminists, feminism, and Susan B. Anthony?

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Susan B. Anthony 10 books