Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words

by Lynn Sherr

Overview

“Susan B. Anthony didn’t live long enough to see women get the vote, but her tireless dedication shines through on every page.”—The Washington Post Book World
 
Failure Is Impossible brings together—for the first time—a wide-ranging, spirited collection of Susan B. Anthony’s speeches, letters, and quotes, linked by contemporary reports and Lynn Sherr’s insightful biographical commentary.
 
By allowing the legendary suffragist to speak for herself, Sherr brushes the dust off of the Susan B. Anthony icon, introducing a new generation to the brave, brilliant, funny, and, most of all, prescient woman she really was.
 
“Lynn Sherr has done us all a great service by bringing to spectacular light the too long neglected story of one of our greatest patriots—a genuine hero who helped change for the better the lives of a majority of American citizens.”—Ken Burns

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307765291
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/29/2010
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	653,156
File size:	35 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Lynn Sherr is the author of the New York Times bestseller Sally Ride: America’s First Woman in Space, and was an award-winning correspondent for the ABC News program 20/20. Sherr is the winner of an Emmy, two American Women in Radio and Television Commendation awards, a Gracie Award, and, among other honors, a George Foster Peabody Award. She lives in New York.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	xi
1	Miss Anthony	3
2	School Days	17
3	Oh Slavery, Hateful Thing	29
4	What Do Women Want?	45
5	The Cause	60
6	General Anthony	70
7	One More Screech For Freedom	80
8	The Years Of The Women	91
9	A Fine Agitation	107
10	The Original Frequent Flier	119
11	The Speakeress	131
12	The Enemy	142
13	Gentlemen, Take Notice	155
14	Sisterhood Is Powerful	165
15	With Friends Like These ...	178
16	Dressing For Success	188
17	Publish Or Perish	199
18	Current Affairs	212
19	Get Money--Get Wealth	226
20	Perpetual Motion	239
21	Divine Discontent	247
22	The Pleasure Of Her Company	265
23	Sparrows, Spoons, And Surnames	275
24	Foremothers	285
25	The New Woman	293
26	Saint Susan	308
27	Failure Is Impossible!	319
	Epilogue	328
	Acknowledgments	331
	Notes	335
	Bibliography	367
	Photo Credits	369
	Index	371

Editorial Reviews

This collection of excerpts from speeches and letters by women's rights advocate Anthony (1820-1906) reflects her activism on many issues, including female suffrage, the abolition of slavery, temperance, domestic violence and legal rights of married women. Sherr, a correspondent for ABC's 20/20 and coauthor of Susan B. Anthony Slept Here, accompanies Anthony's eloquent words with informed biographical essays. Anthony's spirited 50-year fight to gain the vote for women is detailed here, as well as the anger she expressed when friend and antislavery activist Frederick Douglass excluded women from his fight for voting rights for African Americans. After being jailed for voting illegally, Anthony wrote, ``It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, but we, the whole people who formed this union.'' The 19th Amendment, granting voting rights to women, was passed 14 years after Anthony's death. Illustrations. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

"Away with your man-visions! Women propose to reject them all, and begin to dream dreams for themselves," writes Anthony in one selection from this sprightly collection of her correspondence, speeches, interviews, and published writings. Sherr, 20/20 correspondent and coauthor of Susan B. Anthony Slept Here (LJ 5/1/94), has arranged the selections by topic-"Oh Slavery, Hateful Thing," "The Original Frequent Flier," "Get Money, Get Wealth," etc.-and chronologically within topics. Specialists may object that this arrangement distorts the historical meaning of some selections; this reader regretted that the leading chapter concerned Anthony's marital status. These are quibbles, however, for this is a fascinating and accessible volume. Sherr includes a brief but choice bibliography and notes that most of the selections are in the microfilm edition of The Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, available to library patrons in some areas. Essential for public, high school, and academic libraries.-Carolynne Myall, Eastern Washington Univ. Libs., Cheney

Library Journal

Made up of public statements, private letters, and entries from the diaries of Susan B. Anthony that Sherr places in a narrative historical continuity that includes biographical essays, reproductions of period engravings, and contemporary newspaper accounts, this book offers the great nineteenth-century woman's rights advocate in her totality. Here we read Anthony on a diverse range of subjects: her close friend Frederick Douglass and the slavery--that "hateful thing"--from which he escaped; foremothers and women of the future; making money and developing wealth; her own publishing career; President Cleveland, "the enemy"; dressing for success--that is, the issue of dress reform involving corsets, petticoats, and bloomers; and, of course, The Cause--women's suffrage. Anthony traveled widely--notably in a long series of journeys across the Midwest and West to promote the cause of women's suffrage--until age 85 (on account of this near constant movement, ABC News correspondent Sherr dubs her "the original frequent flier"). This biographical documentary commemorates the 175th anniversary of the suffragist's birth and the 75th of the Nineteenth Amendment most appropriately, indeed.

Whitney Scott