Papers of Mary E. Gawthorpe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gawthorpe, Mary, 1881-1973, author.

Series:

Women's Studies Archive: Voice and Vision.

Women's Studies Archive: Voice and Vision

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Suffragists--Correspondence.

Suffragists.

Gawthorpe, Mary, 1881-1973--Correspondence.

Gawthorpe, Mary.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (333 manuscripts) : illustrations.

Summary:

Born in Leeds in 1881, Mary E. Gawthorpe was a British suffragist and campaigner who worked full time for several feminist and social organisations in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, both in the UK and the United States. She initially became involved in socialist and labour politics, working as an organiser for the Women's Social and Political Union from 1906 to 1912, but became increasingly interested in women's suffrage, stimulating interest in the cause throughout Yorkshire by writing letters to the press and speaking at local labour events. Alongside Dora Marsden she started a new radical feminist journal, The Freewoman, in 1911. In 1916 she sailed to the United States and supported the struggle for women's suffrage in America, joining the Women's Suffrage Party. The collection includes her diaries, notes, postcards, extensive personal correspondence, and printed materials, such as handbills, flyers, and annual reports of local suffrage societies, which cover the period of her involvement with the militant British suffragettes as well as some of her activities in the United States. The papers form an extensive collection of personal and political material from a woman whose political involvement spanned many decades and went beyond supportive activism. They are an excellent resource for researchers exploring the British militant suffrage movement, with papers relating to this forming a large part of the collection, while her position as a working-class socialist from Northern Britain expands our knowledge of the social, cultural and geographical basis of the Women's Social and Political Union's work. Much of the later material in this collection helps to situate suffrage involvement as part of a broader political life, including communications with fellow suffragettes, outlines of demonstrations and more complex plans, and material on Gawthorpe's association with The Freewoman publication. For suffrage historians and researchers with an interest in the political cultures of feminism, the extent to which the collection allows the key friendship networks of activists to be traced and recreated is a particularly useful dimension. Although Gawthorpe is best known as a suffragette, the collection also offers evidence of her extensive involvement in a number of political campaigns in the United States, providing valuable material for anyone seeking to understand the complex ways in which class and political activity were connected at the end of the nineteenth century.

Notes:

Date range: 1881-1973.

Reproduction of the originals from the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University, New York, NY.

Includes the following subcollections: Series I: Diaries/engagement books, 1918-1972; Series II: Correspondence, 1903-1972; Series III: Subject files, 1881-1990; Series IV: Educational materials and notes, 1898-1932; Series V: Postcards, 1903-1972; Series VI: Addendum: photographs, graphic material, oversize items and books, 1900-1962.

OCLC:

1162486739