Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality

Stone, a dedicated, pioneering 19th-century suffragist, is zealously championed in this biography, which seeks to bring her out from the shadow cast by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. After working her way through Oberlin College, then a ``hotbed of abolitionism,'' Stone became a paid lecturer for an anti-slavery society, sometimes addressing as many as two thousand people. Soon her interests--and her speeches--shifted to women's suffrage. She continued to tour (and kept her surname) after her marriage to Henry Browne Blackwell. Although Blackwell, as depicted here, was an annoying and financially incompetent man with a dash of charm, Stone was devoted to him and wanted him to stay out of the Civil War ``at any price.'' But feminists became divided among themselves. When women's interest in obtaining the vote flagged in the 1870s, Stone blamed Stanton and Anthony; she found Stanton brilliant, but ``disingenuous and damaging,'' while Anthony's dislike of Stone became almost ``an obsession.'' Although this study lacks narrative fluidity, historian Kerr offers readers much to ponder regarding Stone's place in women's history. Photos not seen by PW. (Jan.)