Was Emily Dickinson as miserable as film suggests?

Susan B Anthony family

The film A Quiet Passion did not serve up the Emily Dickinson I know. Having read some biographies of Dickinson as well as her poetry, I have to say that the movie seemed pretty one-sided in portraying her life as one of angst and frustration.

Author Talk on Susan B. Anthony’s Kin

Susan B Anthony family

“All For Suffrage: Susan B. Anthony’s Kin” will be Jeanne Gehret’s topic in an evening presentation at the Penfield (N.Y.) Public Library this coming Thursday, April 27, from 7-8:30. Admission is free. Miss Anthony’s devotion to woman suffrage is well-known. Lesser-known is how she also campaigned for black suffrage–and how her entire family supported her […]

Clarina Nichols: A Woman Alone

Woman in high-necked dress with long curls

Clarina Nichols was a woman alone for most of her life. And some of the time she was married, she was miserable. Like D.R. Anthony, Nichols emigrated to Kansas in 1854 with one of the earliest parties of the Emigrant Aid Company. By the time she set foot in Kansas, D.R. had returned east to […]

The death of Susan B. Anthony: when she retired her red shawl

Folded red shawl with long red fringe

Today we commemorate the death of Susan B. Anthony. According to Susan’s official biography, it was said that Washingtonians marked spring each year with two signs:  the return of Congress to the nation’s capital and the return of Miss Anthony in her red shawl to lobby Congress. In her later years, the shawl was such […]

The Scandal of Speaking in Public

Susan B Anthony family

The National Women’s History Project salutes “countless millions of women who planned, organized, lectured, wrote, marched, petitioned, lobbied, paraded, and broke new ground in every field imaginable, [making] our world…irrevocably changed. Women and men in our generation, and the ones that will follow us, are living the legacy of women’s rights won against staggering odds in […]

Susan B., Up Close

Susan B Anthony family

Did young Susan B. dutifully eat her vegetables, wonders Sonja Livingston, in Queen of the Fall. And when she got older, was she too preoccupied with higher things to attend to such mundane realities as food? Hardly! For an up-close and personal view of Rochester’s very own heroine, come see my costumed portrayal of her this month: Writers & Books, […]