A Vote of One's Own

This book presents a life unlike those of most advocates of women's rights. Caroline Severance did not focus on a cause requiring primarily militant organization. Rather, she saw women's first need as new opportunities to discover interests and potentials within themselves. In proposing and co-launching the New England Woman's Club, Severance and her colleagues provided both a retreat from domestic pressures and a means of worldwide outreach. This club and its partner groups revived isolated minds, built organizing skills for business and politics, and introduced the leaders of the day to women as a constituency. The foundation of women's rights, as Severance saw it, was helping women to cultivate self-awareness, latent individual abilities, and self-knowledge. That foundation, she thought, represented the most direct and durable route to corporate organization and sociopolitical influence. These ordered visions, to which Severance signally contributed, amplified the national conversation about women's rights.
About the Author: Elizabeth Coons is an independent scholar who seeks to turn an interdisciplinary eye on under-documented stories. A college major in history and literature prompted her to ask why certain works of literature and art were possible only after a given time; and, in turn, how those works may have contributed to events to come. After her first graduate training in English literature and language, Elizabeth has worked as a software technical writer. With additional (and continuing) education, she qualified and works as a medical writer and editor in the life sciences. While wearing a technical hat by day, Elizabeth has a vocal and literary nightlife. Throughout her professional life, she has been a member and later an officer of the National Coalition of Independent Scholars and its local predecessor (the Alliance of Independent Scholars in Cambridge, Massachusetts). That fellowship is so diverse in training and experience, and so resilient, that Elizabeth is never without "stretch goals" and good influences. Elizabeth also belongs to the American Medical Writers Association, the Unitarian Universalist History Society (UUHS), the Union of Concerned Scientists, an active UU church, and the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences. She enjoys creative nonfiction, 18th-century rhetoric, running, swimming, choral singing, and running a household of busy people and two busy cats.