The Stairway

Radical feminist and pacifist Alice Chown was born in Kingston, Ontario, in 1866. Until the age of forty she cared for her devoutly religious mother and acted as matriarch of the family household. When her mother died in 1906, Alice was at last free to live as she chose, travelling widely and exploring a number of avenues of social reform. The diaries she kept for the next thirteen years were the basis from which she wrote The Stairway. First published in 1921, and for many years out of pri...