Joyous Greetings The First International Women's Movement, 1830-1860 [Paperback]

Over one hundred fifty years ago, champions of women's rights in the United States, Britain, France, and Germany formed the world's earliest international feminist movement.Joyous Greetingsis the first book to tell their story.
From Seneca Falls in upstate New York to the barricades of revolutionary Paris, from the Crystal Palace in London to small towns in the German Rhineland, early feminists united to fight for the cause of women. At the height of the Victorian period, they insisted their sex deserved full political equality, called for a new kind of marriage based on companionship, claimed the right to divorce and to get custody of their children, and argued that an unjust economic system forced women into poorly paid jobs. They rejected the traditional view that women's subordination was preordained, natural, and universal. In restoring these daring activists' achievements to history,Joyous Greetingspasses on their inspiring and empowering message to today's new generation of feminists.

In this new look at the networks established among early nineteenth century feminists, Bonnie Anderson documents the importance of international influences in the building of movements for women's emancipation. The book challenges the idea that these movements were uniquely national in character and insists instead on the fact that feminism was an international movement from its inception.Joyous Greetings, clearly and passionately written, is a welcome addition to the history of feminism. --Joan Wallach Scott, Institute for Advanced Study

Bonnie Anderson has given us a very original and exciting portrait of 'the first international women's movement.' From the women's rights activists of Seneca Falls, New York, to the 'Vesuviennes' of Parisian Street battles, she shows us women who knew themselves to be sisters and struggled for the universal emancipation of their sex. Anderson's work will permanently alter how we will see a whole l#-