The autobiography of womenâs rights pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stantonâpublished for the 100th anniversary of womenâs suffrageâincluding an updated introduction and afterword from noted scholars of womenâs history Ellen Carol DuBois and Ann D. Gordon.
Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences 1815â1897, is one of the great American autobiographies. There is really no other American womanâs autobiography in the nineteenth century that comes near it in relevance, excellence, and historical significance.
In 1848, thirty-three-year-old Stanton and four others organized the first major womenâs rights meeting in American history. Together with Susan B. Anthony, her partner in the cause, she led the campaign for womenâs legal rights, most prominently woman suffrage, for the rest of the century. In those years, Stanton was the movementâs spokeswoman, theorist, and its visionary. In addition to her suffrage activism, she was a pioneering advocate of womenâs reproductive freedom, and a ceaseless critic of religious misogyny. As the mother of seven, she also had pronounced opinions on womenâs domestic responsibilities, especially on raising children.
In Eighty Years and More, Stanton reminisces about dramatic moments in the history of woman suffrage, about her personal challenges and triumphs, and about the women and men she met in her travels around the United States and abroad.
Stantonâs writing retains its vigor, intelligence, and wit. Much of what she had to say about women, their lives, their frustrations, their aspirations and their possibilities, remains relevant and moving today.