American Women. Fifteen Hundred Biographies with Over 1,400 Portraits. A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of the Lives and Achievements of American Women During the Nineteenth Century [Two Volumes] by Willard, Frances E. (Elizabeth) and Livermore, Mary A. (Ashton Rice), eds - 1897

New York: Mast, Crowell & Kirkpatrick, 1897. Revised edition. Decorated paper wrappers. Wrappers rubbed, spines worn especially at the joints, title pages reattached with some tearing still present, volume 1 with repair to inner margin of endpapers and a small marginal dampstain to the fore-edge of the first five leaves, all edges a bit darkened, but binding solid, contents very good.. 824 pp. Illus. with b/w photos. Sm. 4to. "Newly revised, with the addition of a classified index; also many new biographies and recent portraits together with a number of full page illustrations." The second, largest, and finest of these biographical compendiums, formerly published in 1893 as "A Woman of the Century." Frances Willard (1839-98) was president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and a leading advocate of social reform in Victorian America.... "As one of the foremost women of the late 19th c. Willard united the divergent strains of Victorian reform, setting the stage for the women's involvement in the Progressive reforms of the twentieth century that culminated in women's suffrage and prohibition," (Weber, American Woman's History, p. 663). Mary Livermore (1820-1905) worked for the Sanitary Commission during the Civil War and was later instrumental in founding the American Woman Suffrage Association, serving as its vice president and editor of its journal.