The definitive biography of American suffragist and women’s rights pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton, from a preeminent historian of women’s suffrage

“The life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton still has much to teach us. The invented prisons of race, sex, and class are still with us, but learning about successful past struggles against them can help to equalize the future.” —Gloria Steinem

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a singular leader, thinker, and organizer whose fight for women’s emancipation stretched from the 1840s to her death in 1902, a full fifth of America’s history. Yet her legacy has been marked by controversy. In this landmark biography, eminent historian Ellen Carol DuBois paints a fresh portrait of this complex crusader whose tireless work made contemporary feminism possible. 

Born in 1815 into a family deeply marked by the tumult of the American Revolution and surging evangelicalism, Stanton was captivated by Enlightenment ideas about individual freedom and transformed by early experiences in what she called “the school of antislavery.” Though most remembered for her fight for the vote, she was also an early crusader for women’s reproductive autonomy and reforming the institution of marriage, and against Christianity’s subordination of women. Her rifts with Black reformers and embrace of nativist ideas tarnished her reputation, but her words still have the ability to move and agitate people today.  

Building upon exhaustive archival research and a deep engagement with Stanton’s copious writings, Elizabeth Cady Stanton brilliantly captures a crucial reformer in all of her intelligence, moral ambiguity, and power.