This unusual book traces the development of the feminist movement in America and, to a lesser extent, in England. The comparison between the movements is enlightening.

Professor O’Neill starts with Mary Wollstonecraft and traces the development of the attack on Victorian institutions right up to the 1920s and on to the ”permissive” society in which we live. But the story covers all facets of the movement: the struggle for enfranchisement, for property rights, and education, for working women in industry, for temperance and social reform. These remarkable women leaders live in these pages, but even more in the Documents which form the second part of the book. Here their own voices come to us across the years with a sincerity which gives life to the language of a past age.